Mac Mini
My UCI student bro-in-law was trolling through the UCI bookstore the other day and called to tell me that they were having a 25% off sale on all Macs! Having wanted to play with a Mac Mini for some time he picked one up for me for $359 (normally $499 or $479 with the student discount).
Physically, it’s very simple and elegant. Technically, it’s a laptop without an LCD nor a keyboard. It’s very quiet (more quiet than most laptops) and the is powered via an AC adapter/brick you usually see with laptops. At 1.25 GHz it’s not a screamer but it’s sufficient for my non-video file crunching, lightweight development and productivity needs. And I’ve already created a shopping list of peripherals I want to attach to it.
- iDrum to use with Garageband and MIDI-connect my Korg
- eyeTV to kill my TiVo once and for all
I was able to get Java and Eclipse up and running rather quickly. Got some of my favorite PHP/MySQL apps up and running on Apache as well. Having a UNIX core provides some level of comfort and familiarity.
