#1 big beige box vs small white almost art worthy

#2 Single core processor (no idea what mhz) and 1mb of ram VS Dual core 2 processor at 1.83ghz and 2gb of ram.

#3 Dos 5.3 on the 286 VS OS X, Windows XP, and Ubuntu 8.something on the Mac Mini (go VMWare Fusion FTW!)

#4 Keyboard (didn’t have a mouse), VS keyboard & 2 button mouse with scroll wheel.

#5 12′ monocrome (orange) VS 30′ widescreen HDTV at however many million colors

#6 286 had a 5.25′ hard drive at 20mb VS 2.5′ (laptop) hd at 120gb (internal), and a Firewire HD at 500gb.

#7 286 had a 5.25′ floppy drive (720k? not the bigger size) the Mini does away with floppy drives completely but can do: USB Thumb/hard drive, Firewire HD, CD’s (R or RW), and online storage (Mobile Me iDisk at 20gb, mounted as an additional drive).

#8 On MB peizo(sp?) speaker VS Optical out for 5.1 Surround sound (along with standard stereo out)

#9 some ski game using ascii art (didn’t have anything that would do more then ascii art) VS… um… I use my PS3 for games, but I can run video at HD res (tv shows, music videos, movies, etc from iTunes)

and you forgot:
#10 $4k + (can’t remember what we paid, too long ago) VS $800 (base price of $600 with upgrades to HD, RAM, and MobileMe subscription bring it close to that price, figure tax for the rest).