Apple SuperDrive Mac Mini (1.42GHz)

Pros: Quiet, compact, fast, easy to move to from Windows

Cons: Region locked DVD player, rather unstable

Summary: I recently bought the Core Duo version with 1 GByte.

Setup was a breeze, and it's taken about 4 hours spread over a week to get used to the differences from Windows.

Wireless network connection was easy, and it was also easy to share files on a Windows PC, but only after I'd clicked the Help button...

The software is still a bit flaky - Firefox crashes at least daily, and iPhoto weekly. No harm done, but irritating.

The original plan was to use it do feed my home theater system - for which its low noise and compactness make it perfect.

Unfortunately, I have 100s of DVDs from 3 different regions (collected while working around the world over the past 6 years), and, unlike those on most PCs, the Mac Mini SuperDrive can't be persuaded to accept multiple regions. In particular, the VLC program used to enable multi-region on previous Macs does not work.

So my media player will have to be a PC, but at least I have an elegant machine for other uses.

If all your DVDs have (and future purchases will have) the same region code, the Mac Mini is a great choice to drive your home theater.