Looking towards buying a Mac Mini

Question

My G4 Cube has died it's last death. The HD is gone. I had backed up a couple of days before, so I'm not in hysterics, but I am bummed ( I did lose some stuff, but nothing that I hadn't printed out and saved). I'd owned the Cube since April 2001. It had been through two hard drives, one new video card, several crashes that were "fixed" via DiscWarrior, but this time the Tek Serve folks said, "it won't boot at all except form our bench drive." Meaning, my HD is no more. I could replace it for about $200.
But what's the point? At 500 MHz, it's too slow to run all the neat things I want it to run - including Classic Applications. I also had purchased an impressive (to me) collection of peripherals, like a DVD drive (my cube only had the CD RW), etc.
Thusly, my relationship with the Cube was bad generally. Analogous to the old car that kept on breaking down no matter what you tried. It was serviced under warranty, but now it's been classified as "vintage" so there's little support out there - why should I even bother with something similar...?
But: the Mac Mini is appealing because it's compact and will allow me to use all the neat peripherals I have, it's fast, etc., etc., etc.
Questions:
1. I am an engineer and have the desire to run some applications that would normally only run on windows, I would thus plan on using Parallels. From other discussions, Parallels works great!
2. [Edited by Host, please do not speculate on future Apple products.]
3. Overall, you Mac Mini owner, is the Mac Mini generally good? Are you happy with it? Is it robust? That is, do you expect it to start up regularly and use it 8+ hours a day for all sorts of things? Is it a good investment? I'd like to think that once purchased (with the Apple care and such) that I'd get five solid years' worth of production out of it.

Answer 1

[Post Edited by Hosts]
In addition, because of my generally BAD experience
with the G4 Cube, I don't want to get hosed by
purchasing a slower machine a month before a faster
one comes out. As a loyal Apple customer for quite a
while, I think I deserve to be a bit skeptical.
Whether you like it or not, attempting to discuss Apple's future plans or products that as yet don't exist IS a violation of the terms of use of the site here, because as you'll know as a long-time Apple user, Apple doesn't discuss it's plans or policies with anyone. As such, they created this site as a user-to-user forum for the specific purpose of discussion of technical matters relating to existing products. A brody may not have expressed it in an elegant manner, but your question could do nothing but solicit responses from those who can't contribute anything but speculative responses, and since those would be highly likely to get the thread removed completely, would not be in your own interests to see posted.
You are at liberty to avail yourself of any of the other sites which discuss Apple products and seek information about future plans there, though in truth you'll still get nothing more than guesswork - which seems to me a rather poor foundation on which to make a purchasing decision.
There is nothing, however, to prevent you seeking help with potential upgrades - as has actually been detailed here before, including information about possible processor swap-outs for minis which you'll find if you search for it.
That said, with a history of Apple systems use, you have earned the right to be a bit skeptical! All the more reason I'd think to ensure that regardless of what might or might not be the next product off the production line, the system you buy actually meets your needs, since if it does, the fact that it will be replaced at some point (as all systems are of course) will not matter because it will continue to meet that need.
The question therefore seems to me to be whether the current mini can run the software you need at sufficient speed to allow you to work, or whether you'd be better with a PC. Since it appears from your comments that you're going to require Parallels (or BootCamp) and Windows, the only advantage of buying a mini is if you would like to continue use of MacOS in addition to your Windows-based work or not. Only you can answer that, but it does reflect on the one real advantage of buying a mini - that doing so will give you the option to run both, while buying a PC will give you only Windows.
If, and only if, you would like the option to run both operating systems, the mini is an excellent system to choose. Not perfect and not lightning fast, but with 2Gb RAM it would outperform your now-deceased Cube by a significant factor. In context, it would give you roughly equal performance to a G5 dual processor system, and in processor-intensive work, actually be able to outperform it.
The limitations of the mini are that it contains a laptop 5400rpm drive and doesn't permit internal expansion (other than maxing out the RAM). However, it can be expended with additional storage and peripherals by adding them externally, so the core system does not really limit your options in the way that many people at first assume.
Since overall reliability seems to have been pretty good, there is not reason NOT to buy a mini unless the system isn't capable of supporting other needs, or if you have no wish to continue to run MacOS. I would certainly urge you not to base your choice on what may or may not be next - you will always be disappointed that way because even if you wait and get the latest/greatest thing when it comes out, it's not going to stay latest/greatest for long! My G5 was once the fastest system available, but while it's been overtaken by just about every mac in the product range, it still delivers the same power and runs the same software as it always did, and gives truly excellent service. In the world of Macs, as you'll know from your Cube, software does advance quite dramatically over time, but rarely to the point that it creases to be backwards compatible with earlier systems, so the imperative to keep hardware 'up to date' isn't entirely the same as in the Windows environment.