wow. 4 pages of complaining and complaining about complainers.
And oddly enough, so does the Aero eye-candy feature of Vista, something that quite a few of dedicated Windows graphics cards can't pull off.
how many times do you think you need to post this claim before it becomes true?
a radeon 9600 non-pro handles Aero without any problems. Microsoft's recommended specs are exaggerating what you need. the GMA950 is able to run it fine. Look at some charts to see where the GMA950 is on the graphics chip pecking order and you'll see that pretty much every single graphics solution available today is faster, and supports DX9. The mini's version of the 950 isn't faster than any other version of the 950, so it stands to reason that any card that's faster would be able to handle Aero just fine, as well.
a LOT of people who are generally PC users are interested in the mini because they want to use it as a HT hub. They have media storage servers and separate gaming rigs (those who play games, anyway), so they're really only looking for:
a small, quiet box
with optical output (for 5.1 and unfiltered CD stereo),
a DVD drive (for upconverted DVD watching),
a hard drive to hold programs any maybe email and stuff,
a fast network connection (gigabit) for streaming video from a media server,
enough memory to keep things working smoothly,
processing power enough to render 720p or 1080p trailers and videos,
a good enough graphics processor to avoid bottlenecking the CPU,
a TV tuner card, preferrably HD with an ATSC tuner.
The mini is 95% there. All you need is an external HD tuner card and a better graphics system. Who cares if it is integrated...that's not the problem. The problem is that when you use exposé, it studders. When Front Row is trying to navigate around, it can be jerky and distracting. Most of all, videos are unreliable in their playback when they're over DVD dimensions.
a lot of you are saying that you don't need a good graphics card unless you're playing games or doing video editing...but that's not true at all. Apple chose to utilize the 3d graphics capabilities of their machines in every aspect of the system. EVERYTHING uses the graphics card now-a-days on OS X.
some things more than others. My dual processor G5 tower hangs when i open my dashboard because it uses the graphics card and i've got a stinky 5200. By all accounts, the 950 isn't much better. In fact by many accounts, it's worse...
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Tv
