There was much excitement to be had over at macminicolo.net as they received the news that a new Mac mini was announced by Apple yesterday.  Even more joy was had when they managed to get their hands on one.  These lovers of all things Mac mini, describe in loving detail the packaging, exterior and interior of the tiny machine.

The site notes that Apple has reduced the amount of packaging for the mini, something that is in keeping with the company's commitment to becoming more 'green'.  However, Apple seems to have missed a small error in the illustration on the box which shows the mini as having nine vents on the back when it really has ten.

Along with a plethora of photos of the Lilliputian machine, there is also a nice comparison between the exteriors of the two versions (previous on top and new on the bottom).

An unveiling of the interior proved that it is slightly more tricky to do so with the new version and revealed the new SATA optical drive that macminicolo says would make it easier for the device to have a second hard drive in it.

More Mac mini love to come, as the site proclaimed, "We're going to get right to work on benchmarking this Mac mini in server performance. The last version was solid and performed well. With the extra RAM (at a faster speed), and the larger hard drives, these Mac minis should make even better servers."

Updates on said benchmark tests can be followed on macminicolo's Twitter feed.