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03/24/2006: "macMini, now with 2GB"

My 12" 1.0GHz PowerBook has been in and out of AppleCare for the past three weeks. First the drive went bad, they replaced it, but less than 24 hours after I got it back (last Friday) it suddenly shut itself off, and wouldn't turn back on. I had to wait until Monday

In the meantime, tired of having to survive with "desktop linux" (what a crock of shit) I went to the local CompUSA and bought myself a single-core Intel macMini. Brought it home, plugged it in, and relaxed in the cool water of a superior desktop. After spending a few days getting things "back to normal" (transferring all of my mp3s, and a few of the songs I've purchased from ITMS, getting used to the keyboard (I do miss my IBM Model T), loading Quicksilver and the like, it was clear that this is not only a fucntional desktop replacement, but it puts a lot less heat into the room than my Shuttle SFF linux box.

You will note that I didn't buy the mini from the local Apple Store. The reason is, I hate being lied to. I did go look at/try out the mini in the store, and had a credit card at the ready. They would have sold me a machine that day, except for one little problem.

I'd noticed that the two minis on one side of the room were way slow (icons on the Dock would bounce 3-4 times before a window would appear (and we're talking things like System Profiler and iTunes here, not some PPC program running under Rosetta), and in-general the machines seemed "pokey". Other Intel-powered machines (an iMac, a "MacBook Pro") seemed fine, and the other two (Intel) minis that were shown were also both just fine. I asked the man-in-black and he, needing to provide an answer beyond "I don't know", offered up that the Apple store runs some software in the background that helps the store employees recover the machine after J. Random Customer frobs the configuration into machine catatonia.

Which, ya know, doesn't explain why the other machines were fine.

I then asked about memory upgrades, and the guy started trying to talk me into an iMac, rather than a macMini. I thanked him, left, and decided to try CompUSA the following day (Sunday). The nice man in the red shirt at that store was able to say "I don't know" when.. he didn't know. Refreshing.

On Wednesday I ordered a 2GB "matched pair" of SO-DIMMs from Other World Computing. They arrived today, so I dug out the putty knife and performed surgery. I'm happy to say that the patient survived. I've never had this much RAM in a personal machine, its nice. 'top' reports that I've used about 1/2 of it after an hour of doing my normal set of things. Thats nice, because I expect to fire up the compiler (Xcode) soon and get to work on the next project.

Oh yeah, my PowerBook came back (via DHL) today. We'll see if they really did fix it, or if they simply stuffed it back in the box.

This marks the fifth Mac I've owned in my life. The other four, in cronologic order:

A "fat" (512KB) Mac (the original kind), which I eventually traded for a (Valid) Unix box.

A "Blue & White" G3, upgraded to a 550GHz G4 CPU and 1GB of memory, which was the original Musenki build machine.

The 12" PowerBook, (1.25GB) purchased to replace the 15" Powerbook that I'd carried at Vivato.

A PowerPC mini, (1.25GB) which I received for a birthday present last year. It sits downstairs, attached to the 50" Sony, and makes for a far superior DVD player than anything I might want to buy in a "consumer electronics" store.