I'm going to try to ask this question in a way that's consistent with the forum rules. Please forgive me if that's not the case and I'll also ask this in a way to NOT incite the fanboys.

I like the idea of a Mac Mini to fit my needs, which I won't delve into, but my REAL concern is the performance of Flash. NHL Game Center Live (which I just bought) is all flash, and a somewhat crappy player at that. I'll use HuLu occasionally which is also Flash. A few comments in here do mention that while Flash on a Mac sucks, it's tolerable even if the CPU runs hot and fast. Is that still the case? Did Snow Leopard improve or hamper Flash performance? Any qualms out there about streaming 2.5 hours of a hockey game over Flash?

I watched quite a few MLB baseball games using the Flash player inside both Plex and Boxee. The performance was quite good. I watched games the previous year using the Silverlight based player and it was bad. The SL version stuttered, locked up and had serious security issues on the Mac where it would lose track of if you were logged into your account and would require a call to their tech support to unlock. I moved to the Flash version this year and the quality is better, no stuttering unless I am having bandwidth issues (I have Comcast Cable Modem so this happens more than I like), and no security issues. It is not true HD streaming, but for live sports I am quite impressed. I am assuming the hockey streaming should be similar to baseball.

Well if you're ok with it eating your CPU time, but, in general Flash is Junk (http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2009/06/doing_it_wrong.html). Someone should do it in special emulator based on Windows;)

Well, I ended up buying a the latest refresh of the Mac Mini. It's doing pretty well. I'm getting my feet wet with Plex and it does fine with Hulu and Netscape. NHL Gamecenter Live is okay and is arguably the worst performer of any of the online live or delayed video that I've thrown at it. If I put Windows 7 on my home PC I'll have an extra license of XP floating around and I'll probably try the Mini's flash performance on OSX versus XP. That said, the hockey games are generally watchable with a few frame stutters here and there. I've noticed those go away when I hard wire my internet connection and I'll see if upgrading the .g wireless network to .n help with the occasional choppy frame.