> Sure you can stack external firewire/USB device off the mini, but isn't > it nicer to bee able to stuff up to 3 extra PCI cards, depending on > controller state up to 5 HDs, ZIP, and what ever optical drive you like > inside and have more than 2 RAM slots to play with?
One RAM slot, actually. Absolutely. And while the mini is cheap for a Mac it's not really a cheap computer. But it *is* cheap for a Mac. If I could afford a G5 or a recent G4 Powermac I wouldn't have considered the mini for a second, but there's nothing I can put in a G3 that would have brought it up to the performance level of the mini, and since one of the reasons I bought it for was so my daughter could use Garageband, I really did need that performance... you can wait for a radial blur in Photoshop, but you can't wait for your computer to catch up with your keyboard. Any comparably priced G4 would have been money thrown away since I'd immediately have had to upgrade it. > You've also got that migration path from one machine to the other - I > know when I switched from G3'd 9600 running 10.2.8 to a REV A G5 1.8 I > was forever going backwards and forwards between each machine to get > stuff/tweaks/ etc to new machine. This is now sumewhat moot as tiger > includes a "migration" app for much of this pain to go away. This is actually a pretty minor problem on the Mac, if you plan ahead. It's a much bigger problem on Windows or UNIX, where most applications force you to install them in a certain place... and sometimes in multiple places. When I switched to the Mac, I quickly realised that I had an opportunity to get away from the whole installation treadmill and I grabbed for that opportunity with both hands. Unless an application has an installer that forces me to put it in /Applications, I install everything to /Local/Applications. If an application DOES install into the system, or it's a driver, then the installer goes into /Local/Service. Any other shared files go into /Local as well, with a couple of symlinks to connect /usr/local and /Developer to /Local/Darwin and /Local/Developer. Then, I just synced /Local from one machine to another. When I upgraded, I just backed up /Users and /Local and restore to the freshly installed disk. I'm surprised everyone doesn't do this, really, but when I've worked on other people's Macs they've had all kinds of junk floating around in their /Applications directory. Even Microsoft Office is happy to install under /Local, and just works... I was pleasantly surprised to discover this: I guess the reality distortion field has assimilated part of Redmond. -- Unsupported OS X is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Unsupported OS X list info <http://lowendmac.com/lists/unsupported.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[email protected]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive <http://www.mail-archive.com/unsupportedosx%40mail.maclaunch.com/> iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
