captain_tinker
Well-known member
I figured that since several of you have mentioned the Mac Mini that I would look into it a bit further. It seems that it is an IBM (Intel Based Mac - :haha1
. That sounds good, I could potentially run WinXP or even better, Linux on it. Or I suppose I could just stick with the Mac OS, as it is BSD Unix based as it is. It's just that I haven't used Mac OS since version 7, so I am rather unfamiliar with it. I remember that networking on the older versions was very difficult to say the least, has this changed at all? Also, I find the size of hard drives in the Mini rather small as well. Is it possible to swap out the drives to something larger, say like 500 gb? Is it a full size HDD, or a laptop size? It doesn't look like it could fit a full size HDD at only 6 and a half inches wide and deep. I've been looking at maybe building my own small box, using a micro-atx or mini-itx board. But so many of the cases for those are just so big! I can't get much smaller than the mini. I suppose that it uses USB ports for the mouse and keyboard? I would probably put it on my KVM switch and use my regular mouse and keyboard, so I wonder if it would be compatible with that? Like I said, it's been a long time since I was a Mac guy, and no real exposure to them for about 10 years now.
Maybe I could find a used one for a bit cheaper than the $800 that they want at apple.com. Heck I can build my own mini-itx for under $500 with a MUCH faster processor, bigger hdd, more ram and even HDMI outs and digital audio outs and svideo outs etc. So I could potentially use it for an HTPC someday as well. Though I figure the Mini may be a better fit for a small fileserver in the long run. At least I have a place to put it for now.
-capT
. That sounds good, I could potentially run WinXP or even better, Linux on it. Or I suppose I could just stick with the Mac OS, as it is BSD Unix based as it is. It's just that I haven't used Mac OS since version 7, so I am rather unfamiliar with it. I remember that networking on the older versions was very difficult to say the least, has this changed at all? Also, I find the size of hard drives in the Mini rather small as well. Is it possible to swap out the drives to something larger, say like 500 gb? Is it a full size HDD, or a laptop size? It doesn't look like it could fit a full size HDD at only 6 and a half inches wide and deep. I've been looking at maybe building my own small box, using a micro-atx or mini-itx board. But so many of the cases for those are just so big! I can't get much smaller than the mini. I suppose that it uses USB ports for the mouse and keyboard? I would probably put it on my KVM switch and use my regular mouse and keyboard, so I wonder if it would be compatible with that? Like I said, it's been a long time since I was a Mac guy, and no real exposure to them for about 10 years now. Maybe I could find a used one for a bit cheaper than the $800 that they want at apple.com. Heck I can build my own mini-itx for under $500 with a MUCH faster processor, bigger hdd, more ram and even HDMI outs and digital audio outs and svideo outs etc. So I could potentially use it for an HTPC someday as well. Though I figure the Mini may be a better fit for a small fileserver in the long run. At least I have a place to put it for now.
-capT
