Is the Mini Too Big?
Walking into my home office this morning I looked at the mini and thought "Wow, it sure takes up a lot of desk space!" It is just over 42 sq inches. This made me wonder why Apple didn't orient the Mini with the longest dimension vertically. It's pretty solid, so I don't think it would really need feet. If placed vertically it only occupies 13 square inches of space, a savings of 70%! Other thin clients, like this Sun Model and these Neoware models took the vertical approach. Even my inexpensive Netgear Wireless Access Point is designed to go vertical if that is what the user prefers.
I suspect that heat was a motivating factor. The Mini has intake venting around three sides of the base, over nineteen linear inches of it. The air flows in through those vents and out through a vent that goes completely across the top of the rear panel. If they oriented it vertically the venting would be more difficult. They might even need some openings on the side, or, gasp, the top. This would really break up the smooth clean look.
Another problem might be the slot loading drive. I gave it a quick test, and it works fine vertically, but I don't know if it would be reliable in that orientation.
My PC, which is on the smallish side, occupies 136 square inches of floor space. Over four times as much, so there is considerable progress here. One thing other thing I noticed this morning was that my feet were cold. Likely the result of the fact that my space heater, umm, I mean PC, was off and not blowing hot air into the area under my desk.
It will be interesting to see if some of the aftermarket vendors come out with vertical mounting feet. It would be even more interesting to see what happens to the internal temperature with the Mini oriented vertically. I however, plan to give up the forty two square inches it needs in the orientation it was designed for. It is well deserved space.
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