My Next Mac And Work Setup
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Update: ooo, a hot top from Billy - looks like some dudes figured out how to upgrade the Mini's chip.
Backstory And Motivation
I'm using windoze at work and a super crappy ancient 500mhz powerbook at home. The first is inefficient and moderately capable, the second is completely unacceptable and was only intended as a backup computer for my old ibook, which was stolen in October.
I'd like to have a smooth setup like a coworker of mine: a single machine that I can tote around from home to work (like his powerbook) and that I can connect from home with. That last part is non-trivial because all of our firewalls and whatnot get in the way of remote desktopping with a Mac, so instead of getting a Wintel that can, I'd rather have a Mac powerful enough for Flash development so I could just vpn and suck down only the files I need. I've already had two sick days so far in the 3 months since I've started and what's killing me is that both were ones were I didn't feel up to going to work yet could have been productive from home.
I was in heat about the MacBook Pro but it's not worth it for me unless it's in a completely maxed-out configuration and that would be like 3-4k at least. Another option is to get a super cheap windows laptop just to remote in with and let the horsepower of the work machine do the heavy lifting, but that only solves the "working from home" problem, not the "having a cool home computer to do other fun stuff with" problem. Now that I'm pretty settled in at the new job, I'd like to get certain side projects underway. You know, the usual: cure for cancer, world domination, making the ultimate fembot, etc.
My Planned Solution
I'm thinking about getting a dual processor Mac Mini - it would be small enough to tote around like a laptop (especially with this custom Tom Bihn bag), powerful enough to do Flash and graphics processing stuff, cost about 1.4k with all the options and the best part, it would be a great future investment because it could be retired gracefully by being reborn as a home media center and connect to a (currently non-existent) tv in the (currently non-existent) living room.
So that's the plan. I'm anywhere between 1 to 2 months out from realizing it, since I've got to get a place in the city first and then schlep all the peripherals up from San Diego.
The Intel Macmini is perfect for HDTV
How to connect your PC to your HDTV
And he also cut and pasted an article from a source he couldn't find anymore, reprinted below. If anyone comes across a link to reference the original post, I'd appreciate it.
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Mac Mini Intel Core Duo and Samsung H-6168W
I got my hands on one of the new Mac Mini's today. The $799 Intel Core Duo model. I just wanted to report that it works hooked up to a Samsung H-6168W. You can hook it up through a DVI-VGA adapter into the VGA port on the Sammy. OR you can hook it up with a DVI-HDMI cable into the Sammy's HDMI port. Either way will work. There are 2 downsides
1. Through the VGA port, there is a slight overscan problem. A few pixels around the edges are cut off. This is most noticeable along the top as the top 1/4 of the menu bar is cut off. You can still read the menu items. As an example, for a capital T, the top horizontal line/bar is missing. That's about how much gets cut off.
2. Through the HDMI port, the Mac Mini lets you select 1920x1080i as the output resolution. However, for some reason, the Sammy will not utilize the entire monitor space to display the image. There is a 1/2 inch black bar all around the picture. The picture is noticeably sharper than through the VGA port, though.
So, if anyone is looking into using a Mac Mini as a media hub, I say go for it. Front Row looks great on the Sammy. Playing a DVD on the mini worked fine through Front Row.
The built in Airport is not fast enough to stream any kind of H.264 video. I have many videos encoded at 640x480 and 720x400 (16:9 widescreen) and they will not stream realiably through airport. Works great using the built-in ethernet though.
This is a stock Mac Mini. 512meg RAM, 80gb hard drive, etc. I just took it out of the box and plugged it in. Was online and computing on a 61" monitor in under 10 minutes (running the power cable took the longest time.)
I have a minijack Toslink-Toslink cable on order. Why can't Apple have just used a regular Toslink jack? Never even heard of a mini-toslink plug before this.
I'm not on this forum much, just wanted to let everyone know that this setup works. I'll try to check in on this thread from time to time to respond to any questions.
roundy
*** Update ***
Just tried streaming some trailers downloaded from Apple's trailers website. Both the 720p and the 1080p trailers play beautifully. Much better watching them on a 61" TV than a 20" monitor.
Now I can't wait for my audio cable to arrive. The picture is great, but I'm listening to the sound through the Mini's built-in speaker. :(
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