Apple Mac Mini Core Duo (1.67GHz)

Pros: So simple and easy to use

Cons: Few games. No hardware based CD Eject button.

Summary: I am not your typical Mac Fan-Boy. My family has recently switched from Windows based computers to the Apple Mac Minis.

We have five kids and we home school. We decided to buy a computer dedicated solely to our school efforts for the kids. Our first computer for this purpose was not made by Apple. I literally hated the machine. Every week my kids came to me complaining that the computer wasn't working again.

I donated it to our church and bought a Mac Mini, on the advice of a dear friend. Since then we have not had the first failure, had to format the hard drive, run spyware removers and such.

I have set up an account for each child. None of these accounts have administrator rights. This means that they can't add things they shouldn't, or remove things that are essential. Everytime they install something it pops up a window asking me for my password, so I get to review what they are doing.

Each account has built in parental controls that allows me to control e-mail, web browsing, chatting and such.

You really can't appreciate how small it is until you have it on your desk. It is T-I-N-Y!

Now we have 3 Mac Minis in our house. One for me, one for my wife, and one for the kids. We use a wired router because I don't know enough about the wireless ones to feel secure with one. That being said, all I had to do was plug the cable in. I didn't have to change a single setting, or tell the Macs anything. All three computers magically get on the internet.

Sorry for the ramble, but I am forty years old, and in my 25 years of computing I have never been this excited about a computer before.