no, really!
we’re running a small studio, no space for a machine room yet (might move next year). as such, most rackmount devices are out of the question for us being too big, noisy, and power hungry.
started looking around for mac-mini clones, assuming there’d be a cheaper/better alternative from shuttle or similar. couldn’t find one. we needed a media player for the main tv anyway, so thought i’d pop by the apple store and grab a mini.
our workstations are dell 2.6 core 2 duo’s with 4gb of ram and vista, they render our test image at 4mins/frame. a year old dell (core duo) does 8 mins, a 3 year old xeon 12, then various other machines that end in a poor old athlon thats doing 45 mins (about to be retired, RIP).
the mac mini, 1.8ghz c2d+1gb ram: 6 mins! thats with xp+bootcamp.
our new workstations were roughly £1000 from the dell outlet, the mac mini was £340 ex VAT. its also dead silent, and we could fit 5 of those on the shelf where we have 1 of our old workstations in the farm. at that price if they die we can happily toss it and get a new one.
will keep testing, but i trawled the net for info on mac mini’s as farm machines, couldn’t find anything. thought this might be useful to someone.
oh, it also looks lovely. i look forward to seeing a shelf full of them, all configured to start deadline with a press of an apple remote… 
-matt