[geeks] Advice on buying a new Mac

[Andy Wallis]

On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 11:08:42AM -0500, Dave K wrote:
> Therefore, I'm looking at the "bigger" Mac Mini:
>     * 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo
>     * 512MB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x256
>     * 80GB Serial ATA drive
>     * SuperDrive 8x (DVD+R DL/DVD1RW/CD-RW)
>     * Mac OS X - U.S. English
>     * Intel GMA 950 graphics
>     * Accessory kit
> 
> I'm assuming I'll be able to use one of my Samsung 204B monitors, right?
Yes, as long as the monitor has a VGA or DVI output, all is good.
 
> Is 1 meg of RAM enough, or should I go for 2?

1 GB of RAM is fine for most applications. I would suggest 2 GB if you
plan on doing any heavy lifting with it.

> Is there any special benefit to adding a bigger disk internally,
If you plan on working with video editing or use the mini as a DVR, a bigger
disk would be very good thing. I have a 1.5 GHz PowerPC Mac-mini that I use
with an Elgato EyeTV for DVR. Given that an hour of DVD quality video(the
default setting) takes up 2GB, the more DASD, the merrier. I have an external
500 GB array that I archive the older stuff to. If you have 100 MB/s or better
Ethernet throughout, you could offload the space. Anything less that 100 MB/s
can get annoying with large files.

> Should I go with the Apple keyboard/mouse, or 3rd party?
I've found the Apple keyboards to be pretty good. If you don't mind remapping
your mind to have Alt=Option, a current USB keyboard would be fine. The Mighty
Mouse is OK, but you can't clean it easily. My one-button mouse or Cirque pad
works pretty well with it.

> What actually is iWork, and is it worth $79?
iWork is a word processor and presentation maker. Pages is a decent word
processor. If $WORK has a MS Select Software Assurance program in place, you
can get MS Office 2004 for $20. The next version may contain Numbers, which
would be their spreadsheet application. With those three applications, it would
be worth $80. I never make presentations, so Keynotes is useless for me. 

> And what about AppleCare?
AppleCare is only good for hardware failures or GUI applications. I dumbfounded
them with a rarpd question. The response was that they don't support the BSD
subsystem for end users. So far, that is only complaint with them. If yo
supply it, I should at least get something better than "check with open source
guys. They could help."
-Andy Wallis