In my home, it’s now farewell Windows, hello Mac Mini.

I ordered the high end 80GB/512MB version on Ebay for under $470 including shipping. PC Connection seems to have a lot of good deals on nearly new Macs going these days.

My tipping point was the spyware that I spent weeks scraping off of the PC. The price/performance of the Mini is hard to beat; it’s beautiful, easy to use, Unix based, yada yada yada.

There are two perhaps more ironic factors that contribute to my switch. The first is the effectiveness of terminal server and broadband. If I’m working on a Windows PC, often as not it’s one at work through a terminal services connection.

The second is the ubiquity of Windows notebooks. If I need Windows at home, and for some reason Virtual PC for Mac isn’t enough, I can always use my notebook.

I’m looking forward to the chance to develop some Mac applications for fun; I’ll have to find more about the developer tools that people are using.