a lot of us have both the normal arduino and the mini.
would'nt it be nice to have a small, cheap adapter board so you can plug in the mini instead of the normal atmega8, just for programming?
maybe even with all the signal pins as well, providing sockets for the extra pins on the mini arduino.
of course it will use its own 16Mhz crystal, but for the rest it is just a pin conversion.
if yo program it, you will use the normal reset button on the arduino board.