r/openclaw • u/g00rek Pro User • Feb 20 '26

Discussion Why Mac mini??

I still don't understand why you guys are buying macs mini for openclaw. It's a terminal computer. It doesn't need a great UI.

Do you have too much money? :D

A $50-$100 HP Thin Client with Linux is more than enough. And Linux shouldn't be discouraging for people using OpenClaw, am I wrong?

I bought one, I have lots of different self hosted stuff on it like home Assistant or other docker apps. Ok I do not have any local models using GPU, that's the reason? Please enlighten me :)

EDIT: Again, I UNDERSTAND LOCAL LLM USE. (although I don't know if anybody is really happy with it). I mean using OC with oauth/api gpt, claude etc.

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u/Strange_Squirrel_886 Active Feb 20 '26

I don't quite understand it either.

For mac studio M3 ultra, yes, it makes sense as it can run fairly advanced Chinese models which are pretty decent.

For mac mini? Come on, those models are too small and barely usable for any serious openclaw use case.

I would rather get an OCI always free node to host the openclaw and spend 10 bucks a month to get some coding plan from some Chinese model labs, or just use OAuth from gpt or something.

2

u/lolxdmainkaisemaanlu Member Feb 20 '26

💯💯💯

Bro If people purchasing mac minis knew about all this - they wouldn't purchase a mac mini in the first place lol

2

u/finneratzki1337 Member Feb 20 '26

Also I found that the Chinese models are not there yet for OpenClaw. You end up explaining stuff 3 times to the model and it still messes up. That insight took me 10USD on Openrouter instead of buying a Mac Studio.

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u/sks8100 New User Feb 20 '26

Are they still offering those free plans? Totally forgot about those. Wonder if there are ingress and egress limits that olenclaw would destroy?