Considering it is only a [PowerPC G4 processor running at 1.5 GHz][mini], I am impressed that my five-year-old little MacMini can go from pressing the on button to the login screen in 45 seconds, of which the first 10 seconds is the system trying to work out from which disk it should boot. (There is only one disk in the mini – you hear me mini? Boot from that one immediately.)

However it is another 15 seconds from login to a usable desktop, running Mac OS X 10.5.8. My [Macintosh Classic][classic] with an 8 MHz 68000 processor is slightly faster booting [System 6.0.8][608]. Both the mini and the classic can run [some version of Eudora][eudora] for e-mail. Neither machine will run Google’s Chrome browser so I reckon it is even splits on which is the more useful.

Also I don’t need an adaptor to plug in the world’s greatest [aircraft carrier masquerading as a keyboard][keyboard] on the classic. Little baby Jesus to think that Apple used to sell their considerably expensive computers with no keyboard, no screen, no graphics card, no memory, no hard disk, just a mouse! Progress means you can buy a new [MacMini][newmini] and it don’t come with a mouse neither.

[mini]: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/stats/mac_mini_g4_1.5.html
[classic]: http://apple-history.com/?model=classic
[eudora]: http://lowendmac.com/compact/68ksoftware.shtml
[608]: http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English-North_American/Macintosh/System/Older_System/System_6.0.x/
[keyboard]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Extended_Keyboard
[newmini]: http://www.apple.com/macmini/