mmmcheese said:
I don't know, but the letters A and E are excellent.
Ka-
ching!
But anyway, a couple of sort-of answers:
1) Yes, the minis are actually awesome computers. As to whether they'll do what
you want, I'm not 100% sure; you said "games online." If that means something like Puzzle Pirates or online poker or that sort of thing, then yes, a Mini will almost certainly be at least as good as your old Gateway, and should cover everything. If you mean beefy, 3D FPS online gaming kind of gaming or fancy 3D MMORPG World of Warcraft kind of gaming, then the integrated graphics in it are gioong to be pretty anemic. If you're not playing the fanciest new games and aren't picky about framerates or having the quality settings turned up, it may get the job done, but don't expect anything at all impressive.
2) The Mini's weak points are *relative* lack of expandability, relatively slow/small internal storage (since it uses a 2.5" laptop-style hard drive), and the integrated graphics chip. If none of those things are likely do heavily affect you, then when you want to "Do more" in the future, you'll probably have no problem at all with the Mini (though you would probably want the dual core model just for the extra grunt). It'll handle iMovie or Garage Band quite capablly, and is enough for basic photo editing or that sort of thing. You might need to supplement the internal drive with an external FireWire one if you're working with video, but that's not a major expense and you'd probably need to do it eventually, regardless of what computer you bought.
Pretty much anything but 3D gaming, heavy-duty video editing (Final Cut, etc), heavy photo editing (pro-level Photoshop type stuff), or 3D animation, and it should be fine.
3) People who run Windows on a Mac do so because there's something they need. And it's worth noting that, assuming most of your day-to-day tasks are done on the MacOS (particularly email and web browsing), your chances of getting a virus in Windows are DRASTICALLY decreased. That is, I (for example) only run the LabVIEW programming environment in my Windows virtual machine; since I'm basically not doing anything with the network (and in fact have external connection attempts locked down through a hardware router), there aren't really any ways for my Windows install to get infected with anything--it's essentailly isolated.
I have yet to buy my mac. I am hoping to get it before the end of the year. I have just started buying magazines to read up on the macs and the mac world. I did not know how people felt about them until i REALLY started to look. I have a couple of questions. Are the mac minis good? I just need a little something better than my old raunchy gateway. I really don't do much on my pc except playing games online and talking to my brother and cousins. Is the mac mini good enough for that? I would like to learn and do more than what I currently do with my gateway. I am really tired of Windows and the dang viruses. 
