mos6507's Blog - Mac Mini

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I bout my mom a 1st gen Mini when they first came out and I've spent enough time with it when she visits me to make me want to eventually ditch windows. I was waiting eagerly to hear what would become of the Mini after Steve Jobs' keynote and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it got a stay of execution since I was counting on buying one as my daughter's first computer. We've been sharing the main computer until now and it was starting to turn into more of a tug of war sometimes. The new Mini seems to have equivalent specs to the current iBook. It finally has a 64-bit processor. It actually has more features than I really need. I don't see myself using the bluetooth or wifi for some time. The gig ethernet may come in handy because I think my Linksys wireless G router may have had it. The new Airport Extreme has a gig ethernet switch and fileserver capabilities which are intriguing. If I were to buy a second Mac for myself and phase out my PC I could hook up a raid to an Airport Extreme to act as a media server. Anyway, the main thing I was concerned about with the Mini, since it has the integrated graphics, is the performance. I downloaded a couple 1080P trailers and they ran without using more than 60% CPU when driving my Dell 24" monitor. This is not a definitive test as I have to try to get it to play some of the HD rips that are floating around online which use a different codec, but it's still very encouraging. Unfortunately, the Mini really isn't a budget computer anymore. For the sake of future-proofing, I opted for the higher-end Mini and after Applecare the final cost was over a grand. That's not taking into account the inevitable highway robbery when Leopard comes out. But if you want refinement, you have to pay. I also noticed it generates a lot of heat, which is to be expected from a dual-core CPU clocked at 2GHZ. I hope there is a way to underclock it or disable one of the CPUs when I don't need the horsepower.

 

I still haven't decided what I'm going to do to replace my current behemoth Pentium IV system but I know I want to downsize it. Plus, the tower uses AGP/PCI so it's really a dead-end on the expansion front. I originally built out the tower for audio recording purposes but I think I can get by with a lot less. However, I've also been procrastinating on the mobile front. I'd love to get a UMPC type device but I'd love to just shed windows for good. So I'm kind of aiming for an iBook but I really wish it were a smaller convertible tablet. I know Apple is working on something along those lines but it's probably a year off. So I'll have to mull that over some more. I tend to make big purchases in batches so I may jump the gun.

 

 

 

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