[From today's Globe and Mail] As soon as The Mac Station opened for business yesterday, the phones at the Vancouver computer store lit up with requests for information about the new Mac Mini (pictured left), a tiny but full-powered desktop computer that Apple Computer Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. had unveiled hours earlier at an annual trade show in San Francisco.
Like its popular iMac consumer desktop computer, the Mini turns the world of computer design on its head. Just five centimetres tall and about three times that wide, it weighs a little over a kilogram. It is also the most competitively priced Apple computer ever, with a base model starting at about $630.
That is still more expensive by as much as two or three hundred dollars than the base models from other computer makers such as Dell Inc. of Round Rock, Tex. and Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, Calif.
And so, the first question about the Mini was the same one asked of Apple when it introduced the iMac in 1998: Will it sell? … [Read the full story]