Getting a Mac Mini

[Rich43]

Well second hand anyway, since I am a student on a tight budget

This will be my first Apple product, always been a Windows and Linux user, except for when I am away from home on Uni or Friends Mac

Planning to use it for mainly programming, so processing power etc is a non-issue.
What I would love is to somehow run Lion on it, and since I am looking for the cheapest Mac Mini I can find second hand, its not going to be latest model.

So my question is, How old can a Mac be before it wont run Lion? I know it has to be Intel-based.

Example of a really cheap one I found:
1.66GHZ DUAL CORE PROCESSOR (Some kind of core 2 duo)
60 GB HARD DRIVE
2GB RAM

 

[Rich43]

How does the 9400 really make a difference?
Surly the fancy graphical interface of the modern mac cant use that much gpu power
It will never see a single mac game, basically used for XCode, Safari/Firefox, Terminal, basic stuff like that. Since I am a software developer, I want to be sure everything works well on Lion

I will keep an eye on the Nvidia ones though, to compare the price

 

[Rich43]

The GMA900 (I think it was that one) is pretty much rock bottom of modern graphics, the single worst thing ever made.

Plus the way osx is done if you have even a basic graphics card (9400 or better) the os will off load rendering stuff onto it, saving power on the cpu which is useful (watching a dvd for example)

Ah ok, I am sold on that idea then.

Edit: Nvidia mac mini's are annoyingly hard to find at a good price

 

[Rich43]

Only problem now, is price...

Have you ever seen any 9400 based ones going for less than 400? or maybe 300?
If ends up nearing 400, better to just get a brand new one.

Many OCUK members sell macs on here?