I was given a Mini for Christmas last year & I love it! However, I'm not the sort of person that creates my own designs so was not interested in being able to use SCAL. For my use I find the basic cartridges which are supplied are almost enough - I have supplemented with a few additional ones which I bought digitally - I don't have any real cartridges. I have also played around with welding images together. I've not found the way to stop bits of the pattern being cut - I would love to know how to do that!
I do check the website each week to see what the freebies are (although these do appear in your list of cartridges anyway) and try to make use of them when they are free.
You can buy some images individually but not very many - I have bought a couple when I know that I won't use much else on the cart.
I re-sticky my mat by taking off all the old sticky using 'sticky stuff remover' (but I guess that nail polish remover will do the same thing). Then I mask off the edges of the mat and spray it with repositionable spray mount. (If I'm feeling lazy then I just spray over the top of the old gunk!).
When I first got the MINI I was running a windows laptop which was incredibly slow & I had similar issues with scrolling up & down the virtual mat. However, I have since got an iMac (OSX 10.8). The Mini & software installed with no issues & the speed is great. The only problem I have is if the computer goes into sleep mode it seems to drop the connection to the Mini & I need to shut craft room & reopen it. It doesn't lose anything in craft room so I can simply save what I was doing before closing.
Would I replace my Big Shot with the Mini - no way!
Am I glad that I've got the Mini - definitely.
Alison