I just picked up a new 2009 Mac Mini for my wife so she can have a system that can view iPhoto quickly and make movies with the Flip Mini HD. The old Mac G4 MDD Tower was just slowing to a crawl and the 22" Apple Cinema Display works great!
I saw some videos from Other World Computing on upgrading the hard drive and memory and it looked like a nice simple project to tackle. I picked up the base model Apple Mac Mini model from Amazon for $594. Purchase a 500Gb 7200 laptop drive at the local computer supply for $120 and then the Crucial 4Gb RAM kit from Amazon for $64. I also picked up a sata notebook drive enclosure to put the new drive in and cloned the existing drive with carbon copy cloner.
The upgrade was REALLY straight forward like in the video. The one gotcha is to have a jeweler screw driver for one of the screws on the mini mainboard since it is very skinny and you can't get a regular screwdriver in there. OWC will try to sell you a kit - but you really just need two small Philips screwdrivers (one magnetized to get the screws out), a pair of tweezers and a putty knife.
I used the migration assistant utility to move files over. One gotcha with the migration assistant -- do NOT use the exact same user name on your new system! It can't deal with it (and doesn't deal gracefully imho) and won't find your old computer on the net or firewire.
I highly recommend for anyone looking for a great mini to try this upgrade. (I am not liable for any goofs or problems! You are on your own if you break it and void your warranty).
Enjoy!
John
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