[Rumz]

So back when the Mac Mini first came out, one of the uses people came up with was to create a little cluster or farm out of 2+ Mac Minis. If I recall, one of the bottlenecks was gigabit ethernet, which the new Intel minis now have.

Anyone thought about this? Granted the new minis aren’t as cheap as the last mini, but suppose down the road we reach a point where the lower model also has a core duo. You could get a lot of cores going in a cluster for relatively cheap! Even now you could technically get 4 cores going for cheaper than using 4 G4 mac minis.

Now if only Handbrake were programmed to take advantage of Xgrid to farm out rendering... I might really be tempted. I suppose there might be other options for net-rendering a h.264 video file...

[elvisripley]

I do a lot of DVDs and saving time with distributed compression and rendering has pushed me over the edge on my decision to use a computer for a home theater device. Putting a mac mini in the living room with my powermac in my office is the perfect setup.