I’m currently considering two purchases… (Read: Trying to talk myself out of spending money on two things I really want…)
What’s that you say? You want to know what could possibly be interesting enough to draw the attention of such an uber cool guy like Chris? Ohh, well, then by all means, read on loyal minion…
Mac Mini
I want a 17″ PowerBook more than anything right now, but I figure this would be a good first step to take, right? It would replace my aging iBook (600mhz) as the only Mac in the house and look oh-so-wonderful sitting next to my iPod, right?
I’ve already saved a shopping cart over at Apple’s store containing my baby, with the following specs:
- Mac Mini 1.42 GHz
- 512MB RAM
- 80GB Hard Drive
- Wireless (Airport Express + Bluetooth)
- Keyboard & Mighty Mouse Set (wired version)
Now I just have to convince myself to spend the $650, rather than saving it like I keep telling myself I should. Any Mac addicts out there want to help me make my decision? 
Das Keyboard
Our DBA at work was working from home one day a week or so ago, and called in to ask me to go install VNC on his desktop (he’d recently gotten a new one). I toddle over to do so, and realize that I love his keyboard. It’s really a pretty cheap model, but the keys are so easy to hit (ie: less force required) that it made typing a joy.
Since finding a really good (and comfortable) keyboard is quite difficult these days, I figured it’d be a good idea to go with something that’s gotten good reviews and has some brand recognition behind it. The Das Keyboard was clearly the only choice…
The only problem there is… What if I get addicted to this thing at work and have to buy one for each computer here at home? There’s no way I could afford that!
So those are my wants for the time being. I think I’ve managed to convince myself that I can wait until after Thanksgiving to decide on anything, so who knows… Maybe I’ll get wrapped up in an after-Thanksgiving sale and spend enough to convince me I don’t need either.
Logitech Ultra-X is a great keyboard… It’s very similar to a laptop keyboard but a bit more expanded. Check it out!
I think you should choose a Mac Mini.
Reasons:
-It’s a fully working computer which can do alot of things.
-You can perhaps buy a Das Keyboard later and hook it up with the Mini.
-You can overclock the Mac Mini from 1.42Ghz to 1.5Ghz (i read it’s easy)
-Mac Mini looks way sexy
-You can carry it around / easily movable.
Just my 2 cents
*Shakes*
Must… stay away… from 1-click shopping…
Hey did my original comment get deleted or did I forget to hit “Submit”???
Don’t buy the mac mini.
I have one the same spec (plus Superdrive) and it is slow as a dog. Apps take forever to load up.
Perhaps I should put a 1Gb RAM stick in there and just leave it switched on and all the apps running, but I don’t like leaving things switched on!
About the only thing it is good for is an iTunes repository.
YMMV.
Cal: I certainly didn’t delete it (I don’t do that unless it’s SPAM), and it didn’t get blocked by Akismet / blacklist, so I’d say you forgot to submit it.
So no Mac Mini? Hmmm… The RAM shouldn’t make that big of a difference in your case. Unless the base OS is maxing it out, app load times should stay about the same regardless.
So what would you suggest? I want a Mac and I was hoping a Mini (read: cheap one) would satisfy my urge. Do you have any other Macs, or recommend a specific line?
I read earlier today on some random blog that the Intel-based PowerBooks are supposed to be 25% thinner (according to rumors of rumors or a leaked rumor), so buying my new baby will have to wait a little longer, just to see. Still, I could live with myself if I were to drop $500-600 on a Mini, only to have it replaced by a smaller, better Intel-based version a few months down the line.
Anyone else have an opinion? I’m out of my element here, guys…
The mac mini is crap for the simple fact the hard drive is only 4200RPM (5400RPM if you are lucky) Mine was awful to use because of that. Even with 512mb of ram and overclocked to 1.5Ghz, the hard drive bottlenecks you.
Personally, if you ask me, the Intel systems won’t be any faster. This is just a marketing scheme by Apple to bring in the money faster. There is no way an Intel chip is faster then a PowerPC chip, regardless of the clockspeed difference.
As far as the Powerbook goes, your mileage may vary. A friend in New Jersey just bought the pre-update 15.2″ version with nice specs and said it wasn’t as good as what he thought, I don’t remember his issues but he likes it but has considered selling it. (the update was like a month after he bought and that also I’m sure pissed him off)
I’d say, as rich as the mellertime is, get the Das keyboard anyway, if nothing else you can tell me if it’s worth getting one.
I have the Logitech Ultra-X and it’s really nice, especially if you like laptop keyboards, and it’s rather cheap.
If you really want a faster mac, and don’t mind the fact that it might be used. Get a Powermac G4, it doesn’t matter what version, but for my purposes, let’s say a 400Mhz to 533Mhz, something withing a few hundred dollars. Then get the 1.6Ghz (at the low end, you *can* put up to a Dual 2ghz in) G4 CPU upgrade into it, max out the ram, put a better video card in, maybe add a DVD burner (any brand will do) and you’ve got yourself a really nice system for about the same $500 to $600.
That’s my plan at least, the Mini i have is too much of a budget system to be worth anything. After you get past all the features, the motherboard is still a budget based ITX and there is only so much you can do with it.
So that’s my 2 cents.
I’d go with fadumpt.
Specced up G4. The dual CPU’s win hands down and the MAC programs are written for it (mainly the graphics stuff). A friend has one for graphics design and it is smooth as.
The G5’s are nice, but I can’t justify the price of one when there is nothing wrong with the G4. Of course you don’t get portability, but who moves their mini around anyway?
Bah, you guys are killing me here! You think I come to you for a sanity check? NEVER! You’re supposed to be the ones convincing me that maxing out 4 credit cards on a purchase I don’t really need is common!
Where are the recommendations for the $20k Quad G5? Where’s the mention of the dual 30″ Cinema displays? No, all I get is practical advice…
Jeeze, now I have to re-think my entire money wasting scheme to include a G4…
Here are some links to help you along your way
GigaDesigns G-celerator CPU Upgrades
Digital Audio and Quicksilver Upgrades from OWC
Sawtooth and Gigabit Upgrades from OWC
And a howto from Engadget
The basics you need to know (from what i’ve seen so far) on the Powermac G4’s is that the Sawtooth gives you 4 ram slots, the gigabit only 3 but gigabit ethernet and probably other benefits.
The digital audio gives you a digital audio output and internal amplifier (if you have diigital speakers that work with it)
and make sure you don’t buy anything that might possibly be a PCI Powermac G4….you don’t want that.
One last link for specifications:
Everymac.com Powermac G4
You can get ram from newegg or wherever, quicksilvers have DDR, the others below use SDRAM, The video card just has to be Mac OEM or flashed for Mac and you’ll be fine, and any IDE hard drive will work (or SCSI if you have a mac card
)
Hope this helps…and remember praciticality is better then 4 maxed out credit cards, especially when you get more for your money
Of course after building this beast, you’ll want a Powerbook G4 anyway, for mobility and to ditch that crazy Dell :)….but you can wait on that until the Dell kicks the bucket. (we all know how soon that happens)
Dell? Die? I think not! That’s why I got the 3 year warranty on it this time…
And why don’t I want a PCI G4?
“And why don
Hmmmm… See, that’s where we’d start to get into problems. I’m VERY attached to my USB 2.0… I don’t think a G4 would be a good thing for me, because of all the little things like that which would cause problems. Even a mini would be better in that respect.
Ahh, that quad G5 would be oh so nice… Now, to sell my car so I can pay for a quarter of it.
cal kinda dipped into a funky explanation
the PCI G4 is based heavily on the G3 it replaced
What I was referring to though is that the original G4 is basically called a PCI G4 and it *does not* have AGP on it, you don’t want that obviously because you want decent graphics.
All G4’s have PCI slots though, no worries there, they are 64bit PCI slots (longer) so not only can you use mac based 64bit cards, you can use any PC based card for the most part, So if the USB on the G4 isn’t 2.0, then you can easily put a USB 2.0 PCI card in there, and it has 2 Firewire onboard as well.
the G4’s are new enough so that you aren’t actually buying into Apple proprietary
there isn’t any special video port or ADB ports or anything like that, if you are lucky you’ll get a mac with a SCSI card and put a big IDE drive in for data
Don’t let your fears get to you, I think you’d be happier in the long run with a G4 Powermac then a Mini, (me goes and gets the mini to look at the back) as far as ports go, you have a power port, network, modem, DVI, 2 USB 2.0, 1 FIrewire, one audio out
the back of my Powermac G3 has a standard power port, network, (mine didn’t come with the modem but has a spot for it (major loss there), standard VGA, but i could put a PCI card in with DVI if i wished to, 2 USB, 2 firewire, 1 ADB (for backwards compatibility, last model for it), mic in, speaker out, and a scsi card (which runs a 50gig 10K) and this is Just a G3 Powermac, and it runs OS X and Linux rather nice
You might want to peruse ebay and see if you can find a cheap G5 (possibility)
One other question… You mentioned the hard drive bottleneck (5400rpm at best)… Is it naive of me to ask if you actually tried to replace the hard drive? Seems like a simple upgrade to solve the problem…
I think I’ve gotten over this “oohhh, gotta have a new toy… hey look, it’s an Apple logo!!” *thing*… Now I’m actually going to be practical and buy that extra hard drive I need to round out my server to 1TB.
Okay, so the Mini uses laptop hard drives…but it gets better, Apple made this awesome little propreitary adapter that hooks up to the drive and the optical drive in a pretty weird way. and it’s laptop connections all the way (no hope of a 40pin IDE under all the mess
So your only route is to buy an adapter from this one guy in (i think) australia. He fabricates them now, they are like $30 at the most and you can plug your desktop hard drive in.
If you shave off fome unneeded PCB on the adapter you can put your optical drive back in place.
Remember that cute little Mini you just bought though? It’s not so cute anymore, in fact, now it’s topless and has an huge ass desktop hard drive sticking out of it.
You could put a 7200RPM laptop hard drive in (at an awful expense) (unless you have one from one of the dell’s)
but after all is said and done, it’s still only have one ram socket to upgrade on, you still have a 32mb Radeon 9550 that you can’t upgrade, and if anything fries, you probably won’t be able to get off on a warranty with all that crazy upgrading you just did. (especially mine :-/ the guy who owned it before soldered it up to 1.5ghz)
I even considered mounting it in a Cube case because it was almost a perfect fit on paper (without measurments and all that) but I just kept thinking about how budget based this thing is and how I really like expansion and knowing that some of the parts can be ripped out later and replaced.
It might be just what your looking for (what are you looking for?) but make sure it is first, because apple will screw your ass on the resell value….mine is a first generation mini so it’s gonna be hard getting close to what its worth with all the better ones out there
As a matter of fact, I do happen to have extra laptop hard drives laying around… I even had an extra 30gb iPod hard drive (ie: 1.8″) laying around, but I can’t seem to find it anymore… Pitty…
I just ordered 2 new 250gb drives this morning on Newegg, so I’m out of luck with the Mac for the time being. I’d still like to snag a PowerBook eventually, but I guess I’ll just keep with the Windows world for a while longer.
On another note… Ever tried Ubuntu on a laptop? I had some heat issues with Fedora, I’m wondering if Ubuntu would have better fan management… Maybe one of these days when I get some extra time (yeah right…)…
yeah, I can see how another half a terabyte rates just a bit higher
what I meant by laptop hard drives is, if you have a 7200RPM lying around, then it’s worth it, doesn’t entirely matter about the GB size because you can run data off your network or Firewire external.
it’d be great to have one of those little 12″ers now that the replaced one is basically same specs and much cheaper, oh well.
I did run Ubuntu on my Toshiba laptop (before trading the crap for the mini) and it wasn’t half bad, I don’t recall it getting very hot (and that one gets *hot*) and it had a fair amount of uptime.
Also, it didn’t work with the intel wireless onboard (would have taken a lot of work) but the SMC a/b/g card i had worked “out of the box”
Ubuntu is really great to use also, the only computer i had an issue with it on is an old Slot A athlon and it wasn’t ubuntu’s fault (entirely) after 48 days of uptime, the capacitors on the Voltage Regulator Module overheated and burst.
I use ubuntu 5.10 on the powermac G3 and the athlon 2600+ and it’s great.