Computers: January 2005 Archives

The Mac mini has an external power brick, unlike the iMac G5:

Still, not that big of a deal, considering how small the Mac mini is. It would be great if it used the same power supply as the PowerBook/iBook, but oh well.

-Andy.

I flipped one of the Mac mini's that Apple had display over, and got a picture that I haven't seen anywhere else yet:

The bottom appeared to be a solid chunk of metal, with the Apple logo etched into it. Sweet.

-Andy.

Apple has a wall that runs along the side of their booth, devoted to the iPod shuffle:

Apple has really nailed this product. Again.

-Andy.

The first law of buying a computer is that as soon as you buy it, there will be something {faster, sexier, smaller, cheaper} for purchase (choose your own attribute). Well, I just saw this on Gizmodo. And it certainly looks slicker than the xPC that I just bought. Rats!

-Andy.

After months of dithering, I finally bought the PC-of-my-media-center dreams:

This box is going to eventually house my TV capture card, and run Linux and MythTV, serving all of my personal video recorder needs. The hardware:

• Shuttle SN95G5 Case and Motherboard
• AMD Athlon64 3000+
• AOpen NVidia GeForce FX5200 128Mb AGP Video Card
• 1Gb of Corsair value RAM
• Seagate 200Gb Serial ATA HD
• Sony Dual-Layer DVD-/+RW CD/DVD Burner

I know that it is way more power than I need for a simple PVR, but I want it to be fast when I crunch video down to Mpeg4. I also want to rip DVDs with it. And run Seti@Home or something (since it has to be on all the time anyway). So, I splurged a bit.

For right now, I've got Windows XP on it, because there are a couple of games that I want to play, and I wanted to inaugurate this computer in style by killing the heck out of Kevin in Urban Terror. Also, I don't have time to mess with Linux right now (see the bit about Urban Terror). But when I get back from Germany, it is going to be on.

Once again, the gallery is here.
-Andy.