Apple Mac Mini – Introduction
Mon 12 Feb 2007Filed Under: Apple Computers
Welcome to my new review BLOG on the Apple Mac Mini.
Yes, I am aware of the new Intel based Apple Mac’s but lets face it complete upgrades hardware architecture always result in a period of adjustment. I’m not going to wait another 2 years before Apple gets it together again.
The reason why I got one was because I was tired of the viruses, spam, adware, ever increasing costs of anti-virus subscriptions and now firewalls, increasing CPU usage and site management problems with the Windows based computers. I figured there must be a easier why to maintain a website and stuff like that. So the Mac Mini is to test out Apple stuff in general. – Hmm Long Term Window user. So here’s my Apple Mac Mini review.
I mean the config required when my main internet development machine fails for what ever reason or I need to reinstall – it takes days to get it right again. So we’ll see if a full migration to the Mac is worth all the hassle and cost !
The event that prompted the acquisition was the failure of the Norton Internet Security program. This program was supposed to safe guard my work machine a decent ASUS V6V notebook, which I must add has performed without any problems what so ever since purchase earlier this year. Anyway over the new year an update of their software caused the firewall side of things to fail. I didn’t realise this until I got back from holidays and tried to use my email program which is Eudora 6.2. I use Eudora as my main email program because its easy to use and has never been buggy or had security issues. I use Palm desktop for the calendar etc.. because it works perfectly with my Palm TX. (Yes I had a MS based PDA but it was a forgettable experience)
So when I tried to get mail things started playing up. I thought it was just a temp bug 9when you’ve used windows for years that’s the sort of thinking you get into) but realised that this machine doesn’t play up for no reason. I thought back to how sluggish the shut down process was before the new year and a mysterious Norton error – but the message only appeared once so I ignored it. Anyway I spent at least a day trying to work out what was going on as the Eudora appeared to the problem. So virus checked the whole machine – nothing. Ran the MS – virus checker – Nothing. Checked Eudora versions etc.. – nothing. Then checked the firewall – Yes. Searched the web and came up with only one article about the problem.
To cut the story short I had to erase the firewall rules and reset the thing. I no longer trust Symantec or Norton products and will probably not ‘upgrade’ it this year. Speaking of which I let Norton subscription lapse after the trial period (it came with the V6V) to see whether it was cripple-ware and worked out that it wasn’t working properly – it stopped removing viruses (yes a 1 year old one that will remain nameless for testing purposes). What a joke ! I updated the subscription this year to verify that this was the case and what do you know – confirmed my assessment. Hmm…I might try again this year and report my findings.
Anyway back to the Mac Mini review – Why did I put up the review page ? I’m not exactly attached to Apple products. (This is the first in 20 years Shock Horror – I don’t even have a iPod.) but I couldn’t find what I wanted with internet searches so I decided to add one more site.
So what’s the spec of my Mac Mini ? It’s a 2006 model – Apple Mac Mini
1.42GHz PowerPC G4
1GB RAM
32MB ATI Radeon 9200
80GB HD
SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth
Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.4
iLife ’06
I didn’t purchase any additional software apart from what came in the box for the Apple Mac’s so it will be interesting to see what I’ll havee to get. Hope you can hang around.