Am I crazy for considering a Hackintosh? It's that time of the decade, and I'm shopping around for a new computer. My Mac Mini (1.66Ghz Core Duo) is becoming a bit long in the tooth, and I'd like to repurpose it as a Media Center PC. Lightroom is unbearably slow on it, Portal doesn't work, and goodies like 802.11n would be nice. Although I'd love to replace it with another Mini, Apple's current selection has barely improved over 4 years ago. No way I'm paying $700 for a machine that's less than 1.5x as fast.

On the other end of the spectrum, the iMac fits my needs quite well, but is oh-so-expensive. Building an AMD or i5-based Hackintosh seems like a reasonable compromise, as I could assemble a pretty decent machine in a Micro-ATX case for around $600.

Technical competence is not an issue -- I've built more Windows/Linux machines than I can remember, and am an IT guy by trade. However, one of the nice things about an Apple-based system is that "everything just works." Scattered reports of Apple updates breaking hackintoshes scare me, and I can't get a straight answer about whether 10.6.4 actually works on non-apple hardware.

tl;dr -- Hackintosh users: What is the current state of affairs? How much effort will be required to get a usable (small and quiet) desktop system running, and how much effort is required to keep it running, and current on patches? Any regrets? Should I just pony up the extra $600 for the iMac? Specific requirements are: Quiet, low-ish power consumption, 802.11n, and the ability to sleep and resume as seamlessly as a "real mac."

Yes, this has been discussed before, although the last time was several months ago. Google's turned up a bunch of out-of-date guides, and interest as of late seems to have waned. Is this because everybody who wants a Hackintosh already has one, or because all of those users have given up in frustration?