Mac Mini Now Worth It?

I made a fool of myself this afternoon in an e-mail to a colleague in which I lambasted Apple for shipping the Mac mini with only 256MB of RAM. If I'd checked the Mac news this morning, then I would have known that I stood corrected.

I've been working this week on my new-to-me PowerBook G4 12-inch 1Ghz model and enjoying the process. (I got it because I needed a cheap portable with a SuperDrive; it's also got an 80GB hard drive which is handy.) The eBay description said 768MB of RAM, which is one reason I jumped on it... when I got the machine, however, it only had 256MB. Grr. Nothing sucks like feeling ripped off on eBay.

My seller has what sounds like a good excuse -- CompUSA had done some AppleCare work on the PowerBook and might have left the RAM out -- so I'm trying to be patient.

Meanwhile, however, I'm in 256MB purgatory, a place that many a Mac mini owner is probably, too. Running Tiger and, say, one or two other applications works OK...any real, regular computing, though, and I get some...pregnant...pauses...when I switch around or even sometimes when I don't.

It's not pleasant, and it makes my PowerBook G4/500 feel like a workhorse by comparison. I need my RAM.

As would a Mac mini owner. I just did this upgrade for a consulting client of mine the other day -- he got a Mac mini and a 20-inch Apple LCD, the lucky guy -- and upgrading that Mac mini is no small feat. I had to wrench it apart with thin putty knives, then pull the 256MB and drop in his 1GB stick. Now he's got a relatively useless 256MB module that I would imagine eBay is flooded with these day.

So I'm happy to see that Apple has not only upgraded to 512MB, but also offers a BTO option for a clean gig of RAM. Good move. Now the Mac mini is enticing enough that I'm starting to wonder if there wouldn't be another machine in our newspaper office that deserves a little upgrade...

Another Widget

I'm using DashBlog right now (on my used-but-new-to-me PowerBook G4 12-inch, I'll have you know) to tell you about The Backpack widget by Chipt. If you haven't yet experienced Backpack, you might want to try it.

Backpack is sort of a riff on the idea of a wiki, but with a number of specialized tools. You can create pages in your Web browser, then add to them using various forms, notes and checklists. You can selectively share your page with others or use it for display to the public. (My book page, clickable at the left, is a Backpack page.) Backpack also has special Reminders that work in a number of ways -- head to the special Reminders page and enter a reminder; you can then have that reminder e-mailed to you, you can subscribe to an iCal calendar file that includes the remind and so on.



Well, with the Backpack Widget, you can also access those reminders right from within Dashboard, and you can add new ones. You can also work with your personal lists and notes from within the widget interface. You can exactly edit full pages but, then again, that would pretty much make Backpack totally redundant.

If you're not using Backpack, check it out. If you are using it, check out the Backpack Widget. This is fun stuff.

CompUSA...Sucks

I went to our local CompUSA to pick up two things for a very high-end video editing Power Macintosh G5 setup that I've been privileged to be working on recently, and found it woefully lacking in some amazing basics. I wanted two things -- something to translate from a FireWire 800 to FireWire 400 connection (ideally a cable) and a FireWire hub. Well, CompUSA had *none* of the former, even in the Mac section, and only one single FireWire hub; a small Belkin model they were willing to let go of for just shy of $50. In other words, not a great deal, and no selection to speak of.

Most frustrating is how little "computer stuff" seems to be left in CompUSA -- maybe I'm more of a Radio Shack guy or something, but our CompUSA offers three aisles of wireless cards and routers, two aisles of iPod stuff, four or so aisles of DVD movies, but only one Firewire hub and no 400-to-800 translation cables. At all.