Contrary to earlier reports, Kasper at AppleInsider is now saying that the Mac mini has a long life ahead of it. Well, at least 12 months worth. According to his sources, "A small team of engineers have recently been tasked with gutting the diminutive desktop and applying fresh internals." Such as...?

The current 65nm chips will be tossed in favor of 45nm Core 2 Duos, starting with 2.1GHz, 3MB of shared L2 cache, 800MHz front-side bus and a better integrated graphics processor, namely the same Intel GMA X3100 found in today's 13" MacBooks. (Kasper is also reporting rumors of a similar bump up for iMacs, which would get pimp Penryns as nice as the 2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme.)

We have to ask, though, who still wants a mini? And more importantly, will the price ever drop below $500? I'd probably rather take an older $400 mini than a brand new Intel-awesome-o-fied $700 one. [AppleInsider]

Send an email to Wilson Rothman, the author of this post, at .