Today we were driving around and found a closing sale at a “Good Guys” store. All of their stores are closing in California and folding into CompUSA.
The discounts were very deep – they were even getting rid of the furniture and fixtures. So as I was walking around I saw a floor model of a Mac Mini (1.25G4/256Mb/40Gb/CDRW+DVDROM) priced at $329. As Apple never discounts and eBayers have a way of getting things priced way higher than fair market, I couldn’t resist.
So now I’m typing this on a Mac. Not the first Mac in the house, mind you – there are another two, but they were both bought a couple of years after their peak. One is my wife’s “Lamp” iMac, the other one is a Fishtank (Indigo) that I got for free from a company trying to get rid of it. I expanded the memory and installed yellowdog and sitting wireless in the kitchen – great for running firefox. But I digress.
The mini feels like a pretty nice machine so far, but I’ve already discovered that it won’t hold all of my music. So I’m moving everything off a Maxtor 200Gb HD (darn thing is bigger than the Mini) and into the Solaris server. Once that’s done I can move iTunes off the PC and start using the Mini to sync the iPod instead. The next few days should be pretty fun.
Now I just have to find a way to upgrade the memory (and maybe the hard drive).
Update Jan 15th 2006: I found a video on how to open the case. The memory type to use is PC2700/DDR333 or better. Get the one with chips on both sides (2 512K banks).
Update Jan 16th 2006: I went ahead and bought a 1Gb stick (Patriot memory – $97 at Fry’s). Following the video above I was able to safely open the case and all is well. I’m typing this on a much faster 1Gb mini. Now it’s a real computer.