Transition to the Mac side complete

For a long time I never thought I would ever get to this point, but it’s now official: I don’t use Microsoft Windows any more. I have decided to stop using my PC at home in favour of using my Mac Mini instead. This now means that my home computer, work computer and laptop are now all Macs. All the servers I am responsible for run Linux, save for just one virtual server which runs a couple of customer ASP sites under Windows 2003 Server. This means that, to all intents and purposes, Microsoft Windows is no longer part of my life after twelve years of use.

I thought long and hard about using the Mac Mini in preference to my PC. Its specification isn’t as good in that it only has a 1.5Ghz Intel Core Solo processor, versus the PC’s 3Ghz Pentium 4 processor, and until yesterday it only had 512Mb of RAM, which made it difficult to use. However, it now has 1.25Gb and the upgrade has made it perfectly usable. I do lose my multiple monitors though since the Mac Mini only has one DVI port and its limited upgrade path means that there is no way to add another. This I had to consider very carefully, so I gave it a go with just one 20″ 1600×1200 display for a couple of days and, you know what, it’s worth the sacrifice.

So the PC’s going in the loft along with one of my screens. Yeah, it’s nowhere near as fast as my fantastic computer in the office, but for the odd day in the week working from home it’s absolutely fine. I’ll be replacing it with a Mac Pro of my own in due course anyway, at which point I’ll be back to two monitors.

The memory upgrade in the Mac Mini, incidentally, was a right pain in the arse. If you’ve ever attempted to get inside a Mac Mini you’ll know exactly what I’m taking about what with the fucking putty knives and brute force required. Still, it’s done now, and for £30 for a 1Gb memory module from Crucial it was well worth it.

So yeah, now I’m a full time Mac Snob. Added to that, Chris got a Macbook Pro this weekend (from his parents, officially for work), so between us we now have an example of each model in the current Apple range (Mac Mini, iMac, Mac Pro, Macbook and Macbook Pro). How sad!