rb

[jeshyr]

Am exceedingly happy to report I now have an actual computer! After eight days with no computer and no iPad, this is something of a happy thing.

My iPad has been on the blink now for a bit and is waiting at the hole-in-the-wall repair replace to be blessed with a new dock connector as it is not hugely useful for me without the ability to sync to the computer.

My trusty Mac Pro computer has been upgraded to a Mac Mini and as part of the deal the wonderful folk at Streetwise Hawthorn agreed to transfer my mountain of data to the new Mac Mini and NAS to save me days of messing around with USB drives setting things up. This seemed like a simple and quick thing to do until they started looking and discovered bad sectors corrupting many things on the Mac Pro - cue 5 more days of Dan and the other Dan at Streetwise heroically rescuing my data off these bloody disks. And then this morning they showed up (complete with a cute hat!) and installed the new computer and the NAS and hooked up all my bits and pieces with very good grace.

I am still astonished at how incredibly TINY the Mac Mini is... I knew the specifications for size and somehow still envisioned something with at least twice the volume this thing has. It's sitting on my bench looking quite stupid next to some enormous old peripherals including a lunchbox sized EyeTV 410 digital TV tuner which is now larger than my entire new computer.

... am now doing the usual multi-day "install ALL THE THINGS" dance.

r

Comments

[dragonsally]

yah for new tiny computers!

May it give you years of faultless servic.

[jeshyr]

*touch wood* It's so very CUTE!

[acelightning]

congratulations, and i hope the "reinstall everything" process isn't too much of a hassle.

now i want a PC equivalent to the Mac Mini :-)

[jeshyr]

I have to admit it's definitely super cute!

The reinstall has been a huge challenge so far but it's the sort of challenge I enjoy so it's not too much of a hassle :)

[acelightning]

the small-size PCs i see are usually "barebones" systems, and they may not have optical drives built in, which means you have to buy an external one and use up one of the USB ports to connect it. they seem to achieve small size by being made with components originally intended for laptops, like 2.5" hard drives and small, tightly packed motherboards; i'm not sure how durable they are.

imagine how much more room for more geek toys you'll have! :-D

[jeshyr]

This one is nicely specced (I got extra memory and 750gb drives). It doesn't have an optical drive but I only use one approximately every 4th blue moon so it won't be a problem to hook up the USB one then.

The bench space where i keep my computer looks very clear and spacious just now!!!

[indigojo]

I may be acquiring a Mac Mini in the next couple of months. At last they've given it a decent spec (160Gb hard drives are kind of like, a bit small, given the money you had to pay for them), and I'd like to publish software I'm developing (which is cross-platform) on the Mac. Rather than a PC version of the Mac Mini, I'd prefer a Mac version of a standard mini-tower case that you can expand, that didn't cost two grand as a starting price.

Congratulations on getting back online anyway.

[jeshyr]

Yeah, I'd been holding off computer upgrades for >12 months hoping for an upgraded Mac Mini so the new spec was great, and Streetwise upgraded the RAM and hard drives for me so it should do for several years more now.

[vass]

Yay for computers!

[jeshyr]

Word.

[amadi]

And ironically, once you get iPad fixed and sync it once with the new Mac, you can turn on wifi sync and never plug it in again. Funny how timing works.

[jeshyr]

Gods don't remind me .e.. when the docking connector died was less than 24h before the release of 5.0 and I was so pissed off with it!!!

[amadi]

Argh! That would be really frustrating!