Did Dell just outdesign Apple?

I don't know if Dell wins, but they are certainly in the game. I think the biggest difference is that these Dells are designed to be seen where the minis are designed to be invisible.

The Dells are quite a bit larger than a mini, about twice the volume. The Dell has better specs, but the current mini is late in its product cycle, so that is to be expected.

Bluray is a real win if you are the sort of person that uses physical media and plans to use Bluray.

Windows is a win if you are the sort of person that uses Windows.

The hard drive size is a big win if you need disk space.

HDMI is nice, but that is more about supporting the DRM of the blue-ray drive since the mini has the non-crippling DVI port (as does the Dell).

I wonder about the fan noise. On the back port picture you can see a lot of heat sink behind the fan.

Not even close. The Dell has lots of venting, beveling, and recessing that Apple's products don't. Also the way the pieces of plastic come together isn't too neat. Also, the typography isn't good. Etc.

Here's a detailed pic: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/corporate/imagebank/des...

Not really, but they certainly outspecced them. It looks good, but not as good as Apple designs...Apple has an almost magical approach to subtle design (doesn't make up for the other negatives that come with Apple products, IMHO, but they certainly do look pretty).

I checked out the Apple TV thing and the Mac Mini, and when I found they couldn't drive my girlfriends 1080p TV at full resolution (the lack of a BluRay drive was also a factor) I built a Windows Vista based box (cost a couple hundred bucks more, admittedly, due to the BluRay drive). If this had existed at the time, I would probably have bought from Dell, instead. It's a solid effort, though I'm not actually sure if it'll play 1080p. It seems right on the borderline with regard to graphics horsepower. But it certainly looks nicer than the HTPC I built (it's in a nice case that looks like a high end HiFi from the 70's, but it's kinda huge--quiet, though, which is the primary concern). And as a bonus, it can play pretty much all of the latest PC games at nice high resolutions (maybe not full 1080p, but pretty close to it).

No, not really. But by comparison to Dell's usual Stalinist aesthetic it's fairly nice.

They look awesome!