Almost a year ago to the day I wrote about my faithful ViewSonic PT813 giving up the ghost. Since then I've had my Mac mini plugged into my HDTV, so anytime I've wanted to use the mini it's been via a wireless keyboard and mouse from the "comfort" of my sofa. (I say "comfort" because it's a 15 year-old futon whose padding has been compressed to nearly nothing.) This wasn't too bad of an arrangement, but it did keep me from surfing and watching TV at the same time. I think it also drove Michelle nuts since she can never remember which buttons to press on the remotes to get the TV and the receiver into the right modes.
So time goes on, and a few months ago I started having trouble pulling images off of my digital camera's memory card. I thought it was my card reader getting flaky and didn't think too much more about it. Then a few weeks ago I started having trouble syncing my iPhone, and it dawned on me that both the card reader and my iPhone dock were plugged into the same Belkin Mac mini FireWire/USB hub. I pulled the hub, plugged the devices directly into the mini, et voilà, everything worked again. It's weird for a completely solid-state device like a hub to die, especially since it doesn't even generate any noticeable heat.
Now, for the past week I've been working on some massive spreadsheets for work that require a lot of cutting, pasting, and comparing between different files. It's been a real pain on the 14" laptop screen and really became the last straw. I needed more screen real estate to get this spreadsheets whipped into shape without flagellating myself to death flipping back and forth between windows, I needed more USB and FireWire ports on the mini, and it was about time to replace that monitor that died over a year ago.
So here I sit in front of my new 23" Apple Cinema HD display, which conveniently includes some additional USB and FireWire ports. Two spreadsheets side-by-side is such a huge productivity boost! The mini is now back at my desk and the only drawback is that it isn't plugged into my receiver any longer. I have all my music ripped to it, so it was pretty nice to have my entire music library ready to play over the "big speakers" at a moment's notice.
This, of course, leads to "stage two": Another mini for the living room to act as a media center! My G4 mini doesn't include Front Row, so a new mini with Front Row and the improved DVD playback of Leopard would let me rip my DVDs into an online library just like my music as well. So many ideas, so little money…
I Feel your pain. I finally had to give up on my Ikegami tube this year but soothed the pain with an HP LP3065 that's almost too big. I'd have gone with an ACD, but they have let their 30" molder without a panel upgrade for too long.
Posted by: Eponymous Ben | 2008.01.14 at 03:11 PM