Posted on 07/30/2015 11:45:36 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Snag a 2012 Mini if you can.
These allow you to upgrade the RAM, which takes all of about 30 seconds. Remove the plastic cover, and there they are.
I have had mine for many years, and the amazing thing about these is the unique size and what they have inside. They are FAST for the price, and loaded with features. When these are too slow for your primary server- their small size, low power and incredable reliability make them amazing network or movie servers. Stick them in a closet with some hard drives attached - then forget them. They will serve your home for years, holding movies, storing photos- recording TV shows.
Meanwhile, the new replacement Mac Mini can handle your current computing needs. This is really a neat concept, and many Apple users have been doing this for years. I don’t know how many old PC’s I have tossed in the garbage over the years - but with a MAC, this simply isn’t the case.
Absolutely worked for me. I bought a used Mac Mini Server from someone upgrading to the latest and greatest, and got it at a great discount, maxed memory and loaded with software (including Win 7). The Mac Mini works with your keyboard, monitor, and mouse; although I prefer my bluetooth trackpad. For me, Samsung monitors and sound bar are a perfect match. I had tried some other non-Apple monitors which were difficult but Samsung monitors work out of the box.
Sometimes it’s change for change’s sake. Any UI look and feel that’s been around for 10 years looks old (because it is), so you change it and now it’s new. And yeah the new look might not be as aesthetically pleasing, but it doesn’t look old and that’s good enough, and it too will be gone in a few years.
The Linux issue is behind me. One was a LINUX MINT edition, UBUNTU and I cannot remember the third. Each was painstakingly researched tailored to the device, ISO’s downloaded and checked for error before installation. System lock-up and failure to function were the results. Enough of that. That I tried three times is evidence of both insanity and dogged determination to find a workable, I repeat, workable, replacement for MS. I dealt with alterations to AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS with Windows to make things run. My days of playing that game are over. An operating system should install and run as expected with peripheral support built in. Something both MS and APPLE have managed to accomplish overall. The purpose of computing is to accomplish getting the work done not tweaking the system to accommodate basic function(s). For the average user that is the core of the issue.
Thank you for the input. This thread has been bookmarked for reference when the change occurs and rest assured it will occur.
For me, a Unix user, the new look de jour is like the minimalism of the Bauhaus movement of the 1920s in architecture and reminds me of the old Athena X11 widget set of the 1980s and a return to the "twm" window manager.
Now I know a new word. Guess I’m done for the day.
I feel your pain. . . it's one of the reasons I hate working on Windows computers any more. I used to enjoy it. No longer.
Didn't forget it because I didn't write the article. (Grin). I agree because I use a Mac mini as the server for the dental office I manage providing support for 20 Macs. It's a great solution.
That highlighted snippet appears to be a chunk of valid Perl code. JAPH. :)
With all respect, I will defer on this one. It's a provocative MacWorld article that makes no pretense to objectivity, it's months old (according to itself), and it's comparing a Win10 Tech Preview (not the final release) to a released Yosemite. While I personally happen to agree with much of the commentary, I think it's asking for a nasty food fight to ask Windows-centric folks to read this because they're gonna justifiably hit back hard:
On the basis of this tech preview there’s previous [sic - was apparently meant to be "precious"] little in Windows 10 to get excited about. Yosemite trumps it in almost every regard. Even better, Yosemite is already here while Windows 10 is still months away. Microsoft needs to significantly up its game before Windows 10 is released but all the signs are the features are mostly set in stone, aside from a handful of adjustments."Even better"? No bias here... :-) Really, MacWorld, that's a bit over the top.Ultimately, Windows 10 feels like an apology for Windows 8. When the best you can say about a new operating system is that it isn’t as bad as its predecessor, there’s clearly something wrong...
If a reasonable (e.g. less breathless, more objective) third-party comparison appears, reviewing the Win10 release against Yosemite, I certainly think that would be Windows-ping-worthy. But with no offense intended whatsoever, I think this one is better off as just a Mac list ping.
Yeah. The N.S.A. is probably working on it as we speak. :)
The main difference is the i5 is. 2 core CPU and the i7 is. 4 core CPU, also the i7 has USB 3, whole the i5 has USB 2,
If you can snag an I model I would, it's the only Mini that has the i7.
Well, they DID claim it was updated, LOL!
Their editor needs to be more careful, then! LOL
As one who uses Mavericks, Win7, and CentOS Linux for typically 12 hours every day, who has avoided Win8.x as much as possible, and who has used the Tech Previews of Win10 enough to gain an impression and draw some conclusions... I personally think that while Win10 is perhaps not an "apology" for Win8 (after all, the underlying OS is quite good), it is at best an attempt to correct some of the more egregious faults in the godforsaken Win8 Metro UI.
We must be fair and admit that Win7 was just such an attempt with regard to the egregious mistakes of Vista, and it worked extremely well. Win7 is deservedly very popular (it's my all-time favorite Windows). But Win10 has a tougher row to hoe. Win8 was an abortion, in many senses.
But on the Apple side... Personally I'm not at all fond of the "flat look" of Yosemite, which is why I intend to leave my personal machines at Mavericks as long as possible (and my oldest machines are still at Snow Leopard; I might take them up to Lion but it's kind of who-cares at this point).
I'm kind of pissed off at Apple for dropping the beautiful look of the pre-Yosemite Mac UI. It pleases me every time I log in. I really don't like this reversion to the Win3.1 look, on the part of both Apple and Microsoft. I understand its usefulness in a handheld device, of course, but WHY on a desktop or laptop where there's plenty of horsepower and battery available???
I expect stupid decisions from Microsoft. I don't expect them from Apple.
Oh, well, it's Mavericks and Win7 (and CentOS) for me until they're no longer supported. I'll live without the extra features.
As to a head-to-head comparison between Win10 and Yosemite, personally I am pretty ho-hum, but an objective technical face-off would make a useful article to ping for both lists.
From Mac System 1/Windows 1 until a couple of years ago, icons just sort of evolved without any particular plan. Meanwhile, people became accustomed enough to graphical interfaces that they didn’t need the visual cues of mimicking real-world objects. All the drop shadows and skeuomorhism just became clutter.
There’s certainly some trendiness involved, but there are also practical benefits to having a common visual language. Kind of like how floppy disks and tractor-feed printers survive in icon form, easily recognized by kids who’ve never seen the real thing.
My 2007 Mac Mini was reassigned to set-top box duty when I got my iMac. Its a great machine for that purpose, especially since I upgraded the processor from a Core Duo to a Core2 (which I wouldn’t recommend as a DIY project unless you know what you’re doing well enough to ignore my recommendation). Most of the time it runs headless, and I control it via screen sharing from the iMac or an iOS app.
I'm in the same boat as you. I like buttons that look like buttons and that act like buttons. I want it to react enough to show that i've pushed it when I click on it. I like skeumorphistic representations. Perhaps I'm a luddite that way, but I like things that represent what they are in the real world. It give one a sense of connectedness to reality, what it is, and hints on how to use it.
I'm getting used to the flat look. An operating system should be unobtrusive, a background on which everything else operates, not something that intrudes itself and screams "here I am." In that way, I can appreciate an OS that is subtle, not glaring and in your face.
I right there with ya, Sword. I don't think it's Luddism, I think it's appreciation of style. Apple has always led the industry in style and good industrial design.
Apple has drifted away from their focus at times, e.g. Pepsi-man, recent social politics, etc. but they get it back eventually. I believe this "flat" look is a temporary aberration and they'll get back on track reasonably soon.
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