Well it’s been a week….

… Since I got my Mac mini.

Yes, instantly I’ve sent some of you into a massive rage. How dare I buy myself anything Apple? Having been there myself many years ago, I  never ever thought I’d have lowered myself to purchasing a Mac. Until I did.

Background

It all started recently with the demise of my SSD – my homebuilt machine was getting annoying – stuff seemed to be failing or playing up left right and centre and I was fed up of taking the machine apart and sorting stuff out. I was toying with getting a new machine and I wanted something small but powerful. The demise and RMA of the SSD was the incident that pushed me over the edge and I started looking for a new machine. It was backed up by a telephone call to my dad who suggested I just buy a new one because my old machine was at least a year and a bit old.

Alas! Small and powerful? It would appear I couldn’t have this. All the small machines used Atoms processors. Don’t get me wrong, Atom’s are great little chips and for browsing and day to day office work they’re great. Until you hit the same problems I did when I ran one as a main desktop – compiling (even LaTeX which needs relatively less CPU power than say, compiling programs in C) and heavy day to day use (HD video, multitasking with lots of programs (talking IM, music, browsing, file copying etc at the same time) made it fall over and show it’s slow roots. So it looked like as small as I could go was a Shuttle. Shuttles are good but not quite as small as I wanted. They also happen to be reasonably more expensive than normal cases and computers and you’re only really paying for the small case. I also wanted pre built – I know I can get better deals by building myself but buying off the shelf means I get warranty and piece of mind it works. Shuttles generally didn’t have this option. Gaming seems to have taken a back seat these last couple of months, with only the LAN weekends with Loughborough Computer Soc providing the motivation to play.

So up from the deep, the Mac Mini reared it’s head again. I’d toyed with one in the past but was more taken by the Atoms. However, I seriously considered the Mini. Small machine, could keep all my current stuff (such as my logitech wave keyboard and logitech trackman and most importantly, my 26″ screen) and it was much more powerful than the Atoms. However, I was worreid about OS X but in the end decided it was worth the hassle of learning as it appeared to be a good cross between Linux and Windows – taking the linux roots and then allowing a wider range of commercial products to run on the Mac (such as Office, which I need for work). I took the plunge and pressed buy, spending a grand total of £551 (the education discount for doing a PhD at Lboro Uni was well worth taking advantage of).

Arrival and First Impressions

When this arrived I was blown away, the machine is tiny!

From Drop Box

The photo shows the mac compared against my Dell Streak (which is 5″) As you see, it’s not that much bigger. Installing and plugging in was simple.  Everything just plugged in and on turning on was detected. The correct screen resolution was set automatically, no faffing around. Mac OS X registered itself and off it went.

Initially, there were a list of problems I faced, such as the UK keyboard layout on the Mac not being the same as the PC (so ” and @ were swapped around) but with the help of Google and a few files, that was easily sorted and it’s working great now.

As for programs, I’m pretty happy with how it’s all gone – The Evernote Mac app is far nicer than the Windows one and Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac runs flawlessly. Part of the reason I thought moving to Mac would be fine was because most of the programs I’ve used over the last few years have been able to run on both Linux and Windows – most of these also run on OS X as well which made moving so much easier.

Only hassle I did have was getting gnuplot to work nicely – I had to compile that from source and thus had to install about 3GB of tools from the Mac OS X install disc. Otherwise it’s fine. As Time Machine is working, if I ever move to another Mac, all my programs and settings will be a doddle to copy on to the new one.

As for getting a new Mac, I might well have to as I’m blown away with how everything is so nicely integrated and works. No AV software to worry about and the whole system just feels polished.

For my first foray into the Mac world, this has been a great start.

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