Mini-Mac

This’ll be a quickie, because I really am trying hard to go to bed early. It seems impossible, though! I’ve got a pile of stuff I should have done today but didn’t get around to. ~sigh~

Anyway, one of the things I did do was rectify a potentially bad situation. The last few days the hard drive on my Linux box has been making a very disturbing clacking noise, and yesterday it refused to boot at first. A reboot got it working, but I obviously didn’t feel completely safe using the computer from that point on.

By this morning I’d made up my mind, and so I went to the bookstore after work today and bought a Mac Mini. It’s the cheapest Mac out there, and it’s under warranty so I’m covered. And it’s so nice! So smooth, so beautiful, so quiet! (My Linux box was noisy, I didn’t realize how much until I turned on the Mini and heard nothing at all.) The Linux stint was nice, but I’m realizing now that I really do need to stick with Mac. No more Linux for me, at least not on my primary box.

I was kind of worried a few minutes ago when I tried to play a DVD and got a lot of random noise instead (on fades). But then I installed all the updates and it fixed it. Life is good. Tomorrow I’ll install Creative Suite 2 (which apparently won’t be ideal, since it’s PPC, but it’ll do until I save up the money for CS3) and get my tablet software installed. And then I can make books (on Friday nights and all others ;)) to my heart’s content!

And now I really need to go to bed.

Ah, the Mac Mini. Should I ever buy a desktop, that wonderful little gem will be the one.

I rather like it. The only problems I’m running into are (1) I need more RAM (512mb isn’t cutting it for what I need to do) and (2) I really, really, really need to buck up and buy CS3, because CS2 is sluggish on the Intel processor. Not unusably sluggish, but it’s slow enough that I’m groaning. (I’m sure that part of it has to do with the limited RAM, though.)

Other than that, it’s great. :)