Well it’s now been a week since my new Mac Mini arrived and I thought I’d share a few things about the whole experience with y’all.
Dang that Mac is Small!
The very first thing Gorgeous and I couldn’t help but notice is that the stinking thing is small. I mean really small. We’re talking about a highly concentrated processing-power-to-volume ratio.
I’ve got hardcover books on my shelf that are bigger than this thing. Gorgeous asked if that little box could really do everything the HP tower that I was using did.
“No Honey. It does a whole lot more.”
I call it the Return of the True Desktop. Right now the Mini is parked on the corner of my desk behind my phone. It’s in a spot that previously held general clutter.
The Mini is much better looking than the clutter was.
The Big Part
I opted for the big screen. 23 inches of wide screen HC goodness. I can have my browser window open in the middle and various chats, my calander, email, and misc. other stuff all open on either side, watching while I’m working.
Way cool.
One down side is that I haven’t yet mastered dragging things across that big old screen. I keep running out of mouse pad.
I’m used to working with a track ball on the other machine. Might have to go that route if I can’t get a grip there.
But the picture! Oh yeah!
I put one of my Band of Brothers DVD’s in and Wow! Amazing picture quality.
Glad I got the big screen.
Out of the Box
One thing that surprised me was that the Mac had to update a whole bunch of software when it fired up the first time. I’ve got DSL but some of the files it downloaded to update things were huge. It took about 45 minutes for the all the downloads to come through. Then another 15 minutes-ish to install everything and re-boot the computer.
Not a problem. Just unexpected.
They aren’t kidding about things just working. Right now I have 11 different programs running. 8 different windows open.
Everything is clipping along without so much as a pause.
And there wasn’t all that mess with gobs of other programs to “try” that I had no interest in. No overwhelming attempts to up-sell me a bunch of junk I don’t need.
That was a refreshing change.
Biggest Challenge So Far
So far the biggest challenge I’ve had is getting the Mac and XP machines to play nice where the printer is concerned.
I had it almost worked out with the printer on the Mac.
But I couldn’t get the XP’s to print multiple copies. And that’s a big issue from Gorgeous’ perspective. There are times when she’s got to print bunches of things. Having to do it one at a time is a pain.
So at the moment I put the printer back onto our XP tower. But now the Mac doesn’t seem to want to print to it. I haven’t had time to work on it much. But the Mac sees the printer, says it’s printing to it.
The only problem is nothing comes out of the printer.
I’ll figure it out eventually. When I have a moment to mess with it. But the two systems don’t seem to want to play nice on that one for now.
Here’s a little Mac vs. PC fun for your Friday. Enjoy!
Used to have a Mac and really loved it, but found so many businesses used PC that I had to make a switch, with great regrets. In my mind Mac is much more user friendly and the graphics are great!
Heya Robyn! Compatibility is definitely a concern. Fortunately I have two things going for me.
First, most of my work is online so I don’t need MS Office as much as others might.
Second, Macs have come a long ways in compatibility with MS Office. There is now even a Mac version of MS Office, and you get get parallel Windows OS to run on your Mac if you need it.
Oh, and I’ve still got the two XP machines in the house if I need them. I guess that’s three things in my favor.
Chris – glad to hear you and your Mac are instant friends! What made you choose the Mac Mini over the iMac G5 or similar. I have the iMac G5 and the whole CPU is built into the monitor. It is amazing.
My Mac has the whole MS Office suite on it and I have had almost no issues switching back and forth between systems.
A Mini-Mac huh? Gosh Chris, I’m afraid as a PC user I may not be allowed to talk to you anymore.
(Just joking)
Char, I looked at the iMac but went with the Mini. I couldn’t budgetarily justify the extra horsepower that the iMac has when I felt the Mini would meet my current needs.
It is such a big step up from where I was that I’ll do just fine for quite a while with it.
I know there are a couple different ways to get MS Office on your Mac. Which one are you using?
I thought long and hard about buying MS Office for Mac when I purchased the Mini but decided it would be better to find some folks who were using it and get their take on it first before I spent that money. I figured it would be easy enough to add on later.
Margaret, We can still talk. Just don’t ask me to say nice things about your PC.