So I get home after a rather frustrating day and decide I just want to veg out and surf the 'net for a while. About 30 minutes into it my computer monitor goes black and the power light changes from green to red. Along comes that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach...
It's dead, Jim.
Argh! I just lost my TV three weeks ago, and now my computer monitor goes belly up. The timing sucks! I really shouldn't complain, though, as the thing has been with me for almost 15 years—a ViewSonic PT813, which was a top-o-the-line 21" CRT that cost about $1,800 back in the day. It's survived over half a dozen moves and still has (had!) fantastic picture quality. In fact, I had recently bought ColorVision's Spyder2 to give it a tune-up. So much for that idea!
It looks like a good 24" LCD (Apple or Dell) runs $800 to $1,000. That's a heck of a bargain compared to what I paid for my old monitor when you take into account 15 years of inflation, but I'm not ready to splash out for a new monitor right now.
Lucky for me my new TV has a VGA port, so I've moved my Mac mini into my entertainment center. It's kinda interesting to see my desktop blown up from 21" to 50" (same resolution, though). Text is fairly readable, but not perfectly sharp, and there's a slight bit of overscan on the right-hand side of the screen that cuts off the last letter or two of icon names on the right-hand side. I might futz with resolutions and refresh rates later, but it's good enough for now.
All I needed was a wireless keyboard to go with the wireless mouse I already owned. A quick trip to the Apple store and $60 later I was good to go.
I also took the opportunity to hook up the audio out from the mini to my stereo. This is something I've been wanting to do since I got my new stereo, but I'd been busy with other things and hadn't gotten around to it yet. So now I can play my entire music library (except for the SACDs and DVD-As, of course) via iTunes on my main stereo. Yea!
Now all I need to do is sell my G4-based mini and get an Intel-based one instead so that I get optical audio out and FrontRow. Heck, I could even rip all my DVDs and build a movie library to compliment my music library. Hmmm... Christmas isn't too far away...
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