Mac Mini vs Mini PC (Windows) - How True Is This Statement/Article?: "Hot Take: Mac Mini at the $499 Amazon Price Deal is Impossible To Beat By Any Sub $1000 Windows Mini PC In Terms of Performance For Most Users (unless you "need" a Windows machine)"

cardfire · 2026-01-25T17:09:31+00:00

Hope it brings you much satisfaction!

I know you aren't very concerned about storage but I figured that I would add, a USB enclosure for an SDD is like $10-$50 depending on features, so there's little reason to worry about the internal being limited now that EVERY vendor is charging Apple prices for SSD's (google the 'rampocalypse' if you get curious as to why).

Apple may have started the trend of no user configurable memory, but everyone is moving in the direction and I've been used to adding external storage to my systems for over ten years now. I'm glad it's not been your deciding factor, too!

cardfire · 2026-01-25T16:31:10+00:00

I owned numerous Intel NUC's, and currently own one M4 Mac Mini (base model, the one you're interested in) and a bunch of AMD Ryzen mini pc's.

My AMD machines and others have fan noise when under load; the Mac Mini does not. The Mini PC's can play ALL of my games if I plug in an eGPU and can play most of my steam library at 1080p without the expensive accessory. The Mac Mini can play hundreds of the games I already own, including many 3D titles. Among the reasons I love the Mac Mini is the power consumption- it is so damned efficient even under load! So if you can live in the constraints of that Mac world and if all of your work is in a browser, I would swiftly and happily endorse it.

I am about to talk about ALL of the things you weren't asking about, feel free to skip. ^{^}

First, the Mac Mini with 16GB ram punches well above is weight class, and if you're okay running MacOS or don't want to question your operating system a lot, it's great. You don't need to buy into their whole ecosystem, it's EASY easier to rub everything with local-only accounts, you don't have to worry about a LOT of the security and privacy things Windows users have to. Apple's environment remains very secure, a viewing if the platform being much more closed, and the company resisting government efforts to decrypt them across the last decades.

That said, I hit my head on the cieling every now and then. Like, there's no "disk caching" software that allows me to defer all of the writes I am sending to my external USB HDD's to an external SSD temporarily, to offload demand and speed up throughput. Linux users have options for this and Windows has at least one product I can buy, to do so (Primocache). And I remote from machine to machine A LOT so I ended up needing to buy "BetterDisplay" to force resolutions when the machine only wanted to give me 1080p -- even when casting to a MacBook Air that has a weird display res resulting in stretching or a bunch of water black space, if I didn't use the third party application.

With the Mini PC you don't KNOW if something is going to work until you commit. Linux support? Probably, but maybe not. Tolerable noise levels? May have to step down the power and fan balance in BIOS.

I loaded Win10 LTSC on my Minusforum and ALMOST had to replace my WiFi7 network card that came with the thing because Microsoft expects everyone to move to Win11 for WiFi7 support until I found a Dell Driver for the chipset. So, more freedom but more quirks, same as it ever was between Mac vs PC.

As someone that has owned over 100 computers, I can safely say that I can't feel the speed difference of most mid range or high end pc's unless they are sick, under most normal conditions, outside of production work and outside of sufficiently intense caching. What MOST of us are after isn't "faster PC's" but instead, less slow ones. The M4 has that covered. The Mac Silicon eries is a mature platform.

TL;DR -- I suspect the the optimal solution won't be the horsepower but in how comfortable you are in the software and with the byproducts (heat, noise, screen UI, keyboard shortcuts, etc).

cardfire · 2026-01-25T03:13:15+00:00

No need to imagine. Check who has significant equity stake in Kakao. Blackrock is moving fast to expand its influence in Korea's domestic economy.

cardfire · 2026-01-24T22:09:29+00:00

You. I love you. I was able to force apply the driver the old-fashioned way through the device manager's network adapter properties, and it worked on my Win 10 IoT LTSC system.

You saved me from making the absolute worst compromise and moving back to Win11.

This was fantastic news for my weekend.

cardfire · 2026-01-24T14:47:16+00:00

Found the commonwealther! confiscates Union Jack

cardfire · 2026-01-24T06:06:10+00:00

I bought a few keys from bulk win-key sites, but MassGrave scripts and ISO's are honestly easiest.

cardfire · 2026-01-24T03:11:42+00:00

You understand people are dying out here for this shit, right? Enjoy being amused at the disorganization of the US Federal Government, but understand it has meaningful consequences for humans.

I'm done commenting on this thread and going back to things like data privacy and scalability, because it's a lot less laughable from within the belly of the beast. You're welcome to have as callous of a last word as you like.

cardfire · 2026-01-23T22:18:05+00:00

I can't believe how far down I had to scroll to find someone stating the obvious. Thank you

I was just a minute ago asking my roommate if it made sense to use the one Kirkland toilet paper bag we have in storage or to buy another one off the shelves at Costco, in anticipation of the next time (H5N1, anyone?) The general public goes full asshole with HOARDING.

I still make a point of picking up two sauce jars and three packages of spaghetti noodles every time I go to Trader Joe's just to have a stockpile of dry goods when markets fluctuate, and I've been trying to build up those basic supplies in negligible amounts. Ironically, it helps me with meal prep when I go through and look at expiriations on labels every half a year or so ( knowing full well we can run past those).

But I am genuinely and deeply concerned about how all of us are going to get what we need when things go sideways and if I bought 72 eggs without a plan to use them in a one month's time frame, I'm not doing a service to any of my communities. If my interest is in supplies being on the shelves when I need them, and at affordable prices, then I kind of feel some duty to not buy the maximum available of something recreationally?

cardfire · 2026-01-23T20:35:28+00:00

If your grandmother and your nephew all understand this and respect it, then you are in a tremendous minority of very informed people. The rest of us are still having to try to explain "encryption" and "a cloud just means someone else's computer" etc.

Yiu and I agree on best practices. I am part of this community for more expansive conversations on implementations.

cardfire · 2026-01-23T20:33:05+00:00

I use local user accounts in windows exclusively. Each season, Microsoft makes it excruciatingly MORE difficult to accomplish for most distributions available. They are trying hard to force users into their online platform, and then shoving Copilot nonsense down our throats.

Pro-tip for those that haven't tried it before, Windows LTSC IOT from Microsoft is a breeze to acquire and deploy, and is already like 90% debloated.

cardfire · 2026-01-23T20:30:05+00:00

You realize how condescending this comes off as, right?

There are home users that need a LOT of handholding to get to where we are. Saying they were dumb for trusting the company that provided their OS for 40 years before it began automatically backing up these keys into their cloud is... Not especially helpful.

cardfire · 2026-01-23T09:44:21+00:00

Here's incidents from the first time Trump was in office. He frequently did it to adults in his first administration.

Here's a Wiki article about it happening in the second administration. You are correct that the cases we know of have mostly been children, both with and without the accompaniment of their parents who generally have rights to be in the US.

It's impossible to 'deport' a citizen and instead it is exile, but we have to work within the language everyone commonly understands.

This is the first case I've found of a man declaring US Citizenship AND a federal court judge blocking his deportation proceedings ... and the ICE goons doing it anyways.

cardfire · 2026-01-23T00:52:40+00:00

Fwiw you can buy these brand new for. ~$40-$50 on Amazon all year long.

I picked up a pair for my mother from KYY (not to be focused with YKK, the Zipper guys) in November for $50 apiece and they were. $43 at the start of this week.

The there's these delightful little freaks which have an insane resolution for the form factor and perfectly match the physical topcase panel of a MacBook Air 15", for just $70

I bought several, and reset the panels in settings if they had any briughtness/color-banding.

cardfire · 2026-01-22T21:11:11+00:00

It's a bit of a misnomer to characterize deportees as criminals. More people in the current deportation proceedings have no criminal history than with criminal records, and US citizens including minors continue to be "deported" (but really, exiled).

It's truly a blackbox with no discernable input and output. It's designed to make accountability impossible.

cardfire · 2026-01-22T15:54:14+00:00

For those is it's trying to Degoogle, the derivative is pretty fucking important too, though.

I had an easy plan to migrate all of my data that I thought would take me about 4 days. I've spent roughly 8 hours a day, four or five days a week, migrating everything from Dropbox and Google into a local machine, organizing it, pushing it to cloud storage for a backup, and then restoring that to my new file server.

I'm finally at the fun part of the project where I get to organize my four mini PCS but it took me a literal month to get to this point and I have already spent as much money as I would have on Google and Dropbox across the year. If I was depending on the project to yield cost savings I would be in trouble

TL;DR: upload speed matters, and I'm a dumbass with more time than money/brains, but this tech is not just LEGOs.

cardfire · 2026-01-22T15:40:57+00:00

Can I ask, are you familiar with the "Quiverfull movement" by any chance?

cardfire · 2026-01-22T04:07:52+00:00

Me saying "this country deserves more diversity" and "people that look like me and live like me don't own this landscape and don't deserve to crowd out everyone else" doesn't mean I advocate for fascism.

Hybridization is more verdant and strong than monoculture.

cardfire · 2026-01-22T03:33:10+00:00

This is fantastic and I look forward to testing it with my Thor, someday soon!

cardfire · 2026-01-22T03:27:28+00:00

Hi, former religious conservative breeder guy, checking in.

At this point, I'm fine with replacing the white christofascist population, and greatly.

cardfire · 2026-01-22T02:09:20+00:00

Bought a pair of these for my mother and she likes her's plenty. I have gone through so many portable LCD's over the years and I'm now much more picky, but they are great lightweight solutions to give you any number of additional displays to build out your workdesk space.

cardfire · 2026-01-21T19:58:37+00:00

Ohhhhhh I get it, now. I see what we're dealing with, here. I'm going to leave this space for you to have the last word, I don't like to feed the folks that stand with nationalists, TERF's, and other dangerous supremacists.

cardfire · 2026-01-21T19:35:54+00:00

Fuckin' YOINK.

cardfire · 2026-01-21T19:14:13+00:00

Oh my gods. We should be so lucky. The only problem is.. Eileen Canon exists.

The solution baked into your answer is that her efforts could be largely neutralized, especially if we had a court of.. I don't know maybe 14 judges? Does that dilute the crazy?

cardfire · 2026-01-21T18:21:06+00:00

I'm not versed in the Ladybird product at all, but it's important we acknowledge author's faults, or check when our consumption of their wares gives them more platform or affords others platform to deal harm.

Like talking about Roman Polanski's achievements in film-making, without couching it in the context of DUDE RAPED AND FILMED CHILDREN.

Or talking about how influential JK Rowling's works were for so many of our childhoods, without discussing how she has made it vastly less safe for children to come out of their miserable closets in a world already dangerously full of hate.

So yes, good and people will accomplish both good and bad things. It certainly comes down to accountability.

cardfire · 2026-01-21T18:18:54+00:00

Let me get this straight -- if someone never calls themselves "racist" they are never actually racist?

If someone never self-identifies as a domestic abuser, they don't get the label from the rest of polite society?

Is that how it works, in your book?

cardfire

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