I recently got a Mini S12 on a lightning deal. $240 with a $40 coupon and a $47.80 lightning deal so $152.20 in the cart. The WiFi doesn't work for me, but I'm otherwise very happy with it. I use it as a headless server so I can't comment on it as a desktop. If the fan in it breaks I may be SOL for support, however. It is nearly silent which is great. Check out its price history.

I also have an older MeLE PCG02 and its WiFi doesn't work either so I think it is a common driver issue with some of these machines. I haven't looked too hard into that as I just plug them into my network switch. You'll see they also have a $30 coupon. I'm not sure why these brands like to use coupons so much. Check out its history.

There appears to be plenty of healthy competition in this market so you can probably snag a good deal if you keep an eye out.

I've setup Alpine twice before on smaller machines and I would say I'm getting better at it, but there are always fun hoops to jump through. I always have to look up the commands to get up and running, but things work as advertised for the most part.

Amazon sent me a 1TB QVO instead of the 4TB EVO I ordered so that is lame. At least they sent the right 2TB NVMe. Once I get the right drive this machine will have 6 times the storage, double the ram, and a faster CPU than the last one.

Something happened with my Tailscale network where the new device created a new network instead of joining the existing one. I just logged each of my devices out and back in again and they all joined the new one. Also lame.

No wifi is very lame, but I'm using it as a media box by my TV plugged into my router so not a big deal. It does mean my TV can't see the hostname and has to use the IP address for Jellyfin.

I do initial setup by grabbing one of my Google wifi pods and using it like a wifi dongle and plug it to the mini with ethernet, then plug in a keyboard and monitor. I boot off a USB drive, install Alpine, Docker, Portainer, and Tailscale. Then when I can log into Portainer from my desktop I move the mini to the den, put it by the TV, and plug it into the main wifi pod. Then I setup services in Portainer from my desktop and map a network drive to a samba service running in Docker.

I was watching torrented anime on my tv within the hour and scrubbing through the video is way snappier than the old one and with the lightning deal it was cheaper too. I was afraid the fan would be loud (my smaller one is fanless), but it is as silent as can be. I'm happy enough so far.