I know little of Apple products, but I don't know of anyone that trades with one screen. Personally, I have 4 screens dedicated to one computer, can the same be done reasonably with a Mac?
+1 from a programmer with 15 yr professional programming experience. Mac is a close system by design where Windows is an open system. And windows is no longer just a GUI on top of DOS.
I believe the fan makes a lot more noise. Lenovo has a small version that is OK but I do not like the ventilation design. Our little Mac Mini are sitting on motorbike air-intake ventilation foam which keeps a lot of dirt out. However we're actively keeping our eye for some other options, not married to a specific brand or product as long as it meets the requirements. Not happy about still having old technology plus internally the Mac mini's are fragile - you have to be very carefull not to dislodge some of the connector sockets which then requires a new logic board. Neither happy about the temperatures these machines can reach when running large CPU loads for extended times. We're using a single 27" and 29"screen on each Mac mini but each can drive two screens. Why I would need more than one screen?
Still searching for an alternative although at this stage starting to consider going back to a laptop and hooking up an external monitor. A laptop on its own is not going to comply with our requirements - screen size is just too small. Fan noise in a laptop is another issue. We moved to the Mac mini from top of the range IBM Thinkpads when the laptop was four - five times the price of the Mac mini however prices of laptops have come down considerably and no longer needing the fastest laptop gets an very respectable laptop in a comparable price range.
What "believe" in your sentence above is based upon? There are quite a few reviews out there with the noise numbers in dB. I have 2 NUCs in front of me. Cannot hear them. 2nd and 4th generation. Dell Precision M4700 laptop is the loudest in my office, it may be the culprit . Oh, the Quiet PC folks also endorsed Intel NUC. And one can install MacOS on it and claim it runs faster than on an Apple hardware piece.
Thanks for the feedbacks on the NUC. Information that I found 6 months ago was that the NUC had an audible hum at approx 32 dB at idle whereas the Mac mini is around 15 dB @ 1 meter. I would be interested in fanless since with a fan always dust accumulates inside. Any recommendations for a fanless design will be greatly appreciated since I have enough of Apple.