There’s a sizeable gap between Apple’s low end stand-alone desktop (the mac mini) and the next tier (the $2500 mac pro). I found that my current mini wasn’t keeping up with what I wanted to do. Textmate, passenger, a couple virtual machines and Photoshop were enough to send the machine, and it’s 3G of ram to it’s knees.
Therefore, I did what any person that can handle a philip’s screwdriver would do, I built a “Hackintosh.” A good set of parts, including a Core 2 Quad and 16GB of ram will cost about $900 if you shop the combo deals on Newegg. Also, while of dubious legality, it’s really easy to do.
This guide has all the information.
The only additional advice I have to add is to be patient while installing Snow Leopard. On my machine, it took an hour for the install to boot. Or four hours clock time as I continued to fiddle with the hardware and settings. So do yourself a favor and when you start the install grab a beer, relax for a bit, then come back and check on the progress.
