Honestly 1GB is not completely pathetic; I thought that Mini would only be packing 512k. However, I think there is a lot of other things going on with that thing, namely the hard drive.

Your solution will cost just a bit of money, my guess is around $75 depending on whether or not you have two DIMM slots and how much memory you are actually going for. Also, be sure to check that that iteration of the Mini can handle 2+ gigs of memory, as it may not even be able to address it all.

Other than HD issues you should still notice an improvement.