Anxious to get in on the mini market, AOpen recently unveiled a Mac Mini look-alike with some fairly impressive tech specs. The MZ855-II centers on Intel’s 855GME mobile chipset and supports Pentium M processors at speeds of up to 2.13GHz. It boasts a pair of memory slots, each capable of accommodating 1GB of DDR400 RAM. Half-sized AGP and PCI slots give the platform some semblance of expandability. USB 2.0, IEEE 1394, Gigabit Ethernet, and a number of digital audio ports combine to enable much better connectivity than the Apple offering, too. And although AOpen makes significant progress in the style and size department, the MZ855-II is about twice as deep and nearly two times heavier than the Mac Mini. It’d be hard to argue that AOpen has bested Apple with the XC Cube mini design. Though attractive, the XC Cube Mini still looks very much like a PC.Then there’s the issue of price; the MZ855-II XC Cube Mini retails for roughly $449. After adding a processor, hard drive, optical drive, and memory to that price, you may very well be topping a grand. On the other hand, Apple sells a fully loaded Mini for $599. Perhaps more exciting than this 855GME-based XC Cube Mini is the Intel mobile 915-based version that’s in the works and expected out within a month or so. Featuring PCI Express connectivity and a more advanced I/O controller, you can expect it to at least support SATA hard drives.
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