[Slothtyper]

With the addition of the iPad/MB Air/and possibly a new thin 13" MB Pro, are your Mini9 days numbered? Mine could be. I'm not a big fan of the iPad, prefer a machine running OSX, but some of the new machines are just so much more powerful and fairly portable that the end may be near. I do like the iPad for movies and lately have been carrying the iPad/Mini9/and a portable CD drive on trips which pretty much defeats the purpose of being light and portable. I really like the iPad battery life/screen and that it runs so cool but can get something similar now from an 11" Macbook Air so I may soon be carrying one laptop and my external drive instead.

The computing power, screen resolution, and battery life of the Mini are getting old, what do you think? Yet still, it's a great machine which has run 10.6.5 flawlessly for me a long time now and the price can't be beat!.....I'm actually more fond of my Mini now than I used to be of my Powerbook G4 of which I still will not give away

[RMinor]

Well, I don't have a Mini 9, but I do have a Mini 10v which I purchased cheaply from Dell Outlet 2 1/2 years ago. My Mini 10v is running Snow Leopard (10.6.8) flawlessly and is in daily use along with my Dell Zino desktop and my wife's iPad 3.
So, which do I prefer - well it probably depends on what I am doing but in reality, I simply prefer using the Mini 10v, along with a bluetooth mouse. I do not expect this to change for the foreseeable future.

[mrboult]

Well my mini9 running 10.5.8 has seen little daily use since I got my first iPad when iPad first came out.

However it is a great spare machine to have and has seen occasional but important use as a backup computer or when left attached to a projector for a period, or as a traveling/beach computer.

Point is, I would still rather my mini9 with OSX Leopard than any newer cheap Windows/Linux netbook or tablet etc.

It is a great little backup device that I don't need to be precious about. Still love it!