The new Mac Mini I bought last Christmas is finally hooked up and added to the network. I waited because I wanted to use it in a shared dual monitor configuration with my custom built Windows system. I will be leveraging the quad core i7 Mac Mini with 16gb of ram more in the coming weeks. Because while I am more than capable of building and maintaining a Windows/Linux DIY desktop, I don’t want to spend time dealing with conflicting dll files, viruses, and system corruptions when I should be building something creative. So now I have been using the Mac Mini over the past few days and the only thought going through my mind is why in the hell did I wait so long to hook it up.
The Mac Mini can’t play games for crap because of the under powered graphics card, but everything else is great. The system is seamless in function and design. I can move easily between my desktop, laptop and tablet with files and applications. The small footprint and quiet fan design is amazing for a little machine with this much power. I have to admit that since my migration back to Windows a few years back I had forgotten how nice the Apple ecosystem can be when everything is running smoothly. Now I don’t feel bad about buying my wife a MacBook Air for Christmas. She loves it and I was able to set it up for her in less than an hour. And that includes transferring all of her files and settings from her old Mac to the new MacBook Air. The cost wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be as well. As a result my next project is going to be swapping out the drives in my two older MacBook Pros for a SSD drives to improve performance and get another year or two of use outta the machines. I came up with the notion to add SSDs after I upgraded my MacBook Pro and Mac Mini to 10.9 Mavericks this weekend and they both went off without a hitch. No need for a clean install. I upgraded both right over the older OS and it was a piece of cake. I have even noticed speed and benchmark improvements. I even thinking I should stop by the Apple store today to take a look at that new Mac Pro.