Apple Mac Mini 2010

Apple’s compact Mac Mini computer has been overshadowed in recent years by the huge success of the company’s phones and Macbook laptops.

However, it’s now got a major redesign that should help to put it back in the spotlight.

The new Mini is smaller than last year’s model, housed in a slimline metallic casing that measures a mere 1.4in high, and 7.7in wide and deep. It’s certainly a lot more attractive than most small PCs, which makes the Mac Mini particularly suitable for use as a media centre computer that can be hooked up to a TV in the front room.

With that in mind, Apple has given the Mini an HDMI socket for the first time, which allows it to connect easily to a suitably equipped flat-panel television. You can also use its built-in Front Row software to provide an attractive display when playing music or videos through the TV.

There’s a new SD memory card slot for transferring photos from a camera, along with four USB ports, a Firewire socket for attaching a camcorder, and a network socket. It can also connect to wireless networks (including the latest and fastest) and Bluetooth devices.

It doesn’t come with a screen, keyboard or mouse, but a supplied adapter allows the computer to be connected to the DVI connector on some monitors (but not to the VGA connector on others, so check yours is compatible).

There is a price premium for the super-sleek design. The £649 price tag is the same as before, but the speed of its Intel Core 2 Duo processor has actually dropped from 2.53GHz in the previous model to 2.4GHz, while the memory has also been reduced from 4GB to 2GB (the 320GB hard disk remains the same). The dip in processor speed is almost negligible, but a computer costing over £600 really should have more memory as standard.

To compensate, Apple has given the Mac Mini a new Nvidia Geforce 320M graphics card to give a major performance boost for graphics and video. We tried out a few games and found that graphics performance was considerably faster.

That makes the Mini more than adequate for casual gaming and will also help with demanding tasks such as video-editing work. And, of course, it includes Apple’s iLife suite, which has all the software needed to get started with editing and organising music, photos and videos.

The Mac Mini’s design is superb, and there are welcome improvements in the new model, but it’s expensive for what you get.

As a result, the Mac Mini will mainly appeal to people who are prepared to pay extra for the minimalist design, though actually it’s a good living-room computer.