• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

I bought my mother a little Mac Mini

Lionheart

SOH-CM-2014
Hey all,

As you know, with the advent of forced vista-ization upon people, and the iPod/iTouch/iPhone phenomenon, I have become a Mac (Apple) freak.

I have been wanting to get my mother one as she is suffering with a very old Media Center with XP that is now up to perhaps 25 min's from bootup to where she can go online to pay her bills and all. I have done what I could for it and it really needs to be reformatted and have her data (backed up) and put back on it, but man.. What a mess. This thing is so old, it has a 3.5 inch floppy drive in the front. When the came out, they were state of the art, but not anymore, lol..


Well, I was at the Mac store, standing in line for the new Snow Leopard release (Mac OSX 64), and after getting my CD, I parused around. They have some used units in the shop and low and behold, a Mac Mini, used, with Intel dual core. I told them to wrap it up. I added the flat aluminum keyboard and a Apple mouse as well. We have a couple of monitors that it can work with.

Got home and hooked it up and dang if that thing isnt the coolest. As you know, the OS is pretty fast, so it boots up lightning fast. It is no gaming computer, but it will go online for her bills, play DVD's, music, sync her iPhone, etc. Thats all she will use it for. (I have tried and tried to get her into FS, but there's no way... And shes an ex pilot...! )

So, another Mac in the house...

There was a problem with it. The wireless system was having problems with range. I took it in and they found the electric antennae was fritzed, so they replaced it free of charge. In the mean time, I got to see how it comes apart. I was really puzzled how you could fit an entire computer into such a small cube structure. It basically has laptop parts, which are arrayed in a sqare stack instead of a pancake layout. What you have is this small little box that has the entire computer in it. (I am a technology freak, so this has really been getting to my curiosity). So seeing it apart was very cool. Well.... awesome I think is the word.


Some might say, why be into a computer that looks like a toy? Well, like I said, I am into technology. Usually everyone is making things huge. This thing is like a mix between a G5 tower and a Swiss watch. (Even has a tiny barrel fan in it).


Just thought I would share the adventure. Definately not for gaming. Fun little thing.


EDIT: So, how do they come apart? Without any guessing, does anyone have any idea? They have no screws, no visible trick click spots to release the casing. How do you think they come apart? On my 24inch Alum. UniBody, the glass is the removeable cover, magnetically held in place (pretty powerfully), which also had me going as it too had no screws or locks or any sign of entry...


Bill
 
AWESOME!

Your Mom is so blessed to have a son like you, man!

Is the Mini upgradable? .... to Snow Leopard?

-Eli
 
AWESOME!

Your Mom is so blessed to have a son like you, man!

Is the Mini upgradable? .... to Snow Leopard?

-Eli



Hey ChaCha,

Many thanks. I was a bad kid. Making up for the past. ;) Poor mom.


Yes, upgradeable. Its only got a 80Gig HD in it. I might upgrade it to a 500Gig High RPM HD instead. Get that thing cooking. Then add an XP on Bootcamp and install her own FS2004 on it.

This thing even has upgradeable RAM laptop mini sticks, lol.. But, I'll bet its graphics card is the smallest ever.. arrgh. Might not handle FS9.

From giant towers sporting automotive radiator cooling fans all about, to small, alien like, Al-You-Minium structures that are like small cigar boxes....

The future!


:d
 
Looks sort of like the eee-box... probably just 4 times its price. :icon_lol:

I still wonder if/when apple will release a netbook. The rumored tablet thing is totally stupid.
 
The mini-macs are great. I have one here at the ranch that I use for 24 hour slide shows. Does the trick.

I think everyone knows that computers do not run on any rules of physics. They run by magic so if you open the box you would probably have to sacrifice a pidgeon or something to get it to work again...lol

Bob
 
Back
Top