I really believe that multicore performance is a good thing to have when doing virtualisation. No two ways around it: the latest Mac Mini is a downgrade from its predecessor, because of the dual-core processors. Sure, they’re newer family chips, but they are still slower. Worse yet, RAM is not upgradable, and storage is not upgradable without substantial (and very careful) disassembly. I have no doubt that Apple are, if not intentionally doing it, at least glad that the Mini will no longer threaten their Mac Pros or iMacs, both of which now present alternative options. The Mac Mini is such an attractive machine, and I too have been recently eyeing them up hungrily for their lovely SSD performance and small form factor, but I just can’t bring myself to buy a downgraded machine for any purpose other than the one for which my current dual-core Mini is serving (a simple caching server). Indeed, my previous 2010 Mini could be upgraded `if I chose: both RAM and SSD would bring it up to par with the best Mac Mini, if you discount the slight clock speed boost (2.6 to 3.0), the change in processor family and the addition of an optical drive. Of course, as you said, you could also investigate quad-core options in laptops as well, and get out of the dual-core league entirely. But if you must buy a Mini, get a maximally configured Mini, so as to save long-term on your investment: 1 TB SSD, 16 GB RAM, 3.0 GHz I7 dual-core. This configuration will let you down a bit in the virtualisation department, but will make up for it in general use.
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