Art and Me - Experiencing Mac Mini

	Mac Mini



As an art lover and a technical geek girl :) I had always been dreaming about Mac.. ye.. that was long time ago and I was a little naive girl too. And now I grew up and get the little, tiny mac, called Mac mini. My first impresion when I saw it on a commercial was WOW - good job Apple! It is realy looking amazing, tiny, silver, simple and ALL INCLUSIVE. I did some research and I looked for tech spects and people's comments. As a practical person I was always looking for practical and good looking stuff. There are couple of mac mini versions out there and I got a strog one with 2Ghz processor and 1GB RAM. I saw that they have now even stronger version of mac mini. It was funny when I found that there are things a litte bit difrent than PC systems. My first impresion of Mac OSX was wow! looks nice. And then the problems start :) first is that the system is a lot different from Windows Vista operating system. You can't just close the programs if you click the ' X' button on the top right side of the screen like you normaly do on Win systems, the program just goes down and if you want to close it, you must go to menu and chose 'close' option.. And there is more.. You can't just connect you external HDD because Mac OS doesn't support NTFS formated HDD!!! What Apple was thinking.. If you want to read your files you must BUY some additional software who can read NTFS :(. My bigest wories were about the mouse because apple mouse has only one button! That was a shock for me but I found that you can change this easily going into the system preferences and then you get it working like a normal PC mouse. I want to say a little bit more about the mouse.. I got one without wires and it is using bluetooth connection. Thats a realy nice looking and smooth mouse. The little ball on the top is for scrolling different positions: you can push it and will get a second desktop... its realy cool! You can put here all your widgets like calculator, weather, dictionary and notes... anything you want. Also the mouse has some kind of two buttons on both sides. When you press both of them, you can switch between the windows.. it's realy usefull. On PC systems, you normaly press ALT+TAB. Apple claimes that this mouse is a laser one. I don't know and I didn't check it :). I'm using this mouse for three months now and it looks like the batteries are still OK. I also got a tiny and cool remote control that realy makes mac unique. I was always looking for a computer who can be easily controled by a remote control and I have finaly found it. You can turn the computer to sleep and turn it on again. You can also control iTunes and play music when the monitor is off. There is some software called 'Front Row' which is an amaizing program.I'm using it most of the time. With 'Front Row' you can play your video, you can show pictures to your frends, you can play music, you can listen to podcasts and watch YouTube with one simple iterface. You don't need to use the mouse or the keyboard.. What can I say... fantastic features! Easy to use and all of my friends love it. I'm actualy using my mini most of the time like my cinema system because now I can just download the movies/music/podcasts/pictures and just use it on my 32" LCD TV! I've been looking for that for years! I tried a lot of media boxes, even a Xbox 360 but Mac mini is the best for that. Just look at that little shiny metalic keyboard! oh.. thats when my heartstarts beating... its realy tiny... REALY. Now I can just sit on my bed and chat with my friends and I can browse the internet and feel very comfortable in the same time... It's one of the things I would never get using the PC keyboards.. they are just TOO big. You should see this keyboard.. that's a real piece of modern art and design. And again the bluetooth. The keyboard keys are big and nice to push and I found that is realy easy to keep the keyboard clean because it has big gaps betveen the keys. As I read in some magazines the keyboards are more dirty than a closet so now I'm trying to keep my keyboards clean :). Ok I said a lot about the keyboard, the mouse and the remote but how about the software and working with mac? I will tell you a secret. I will not use mac mini for that. I have my super-duper Acer laptop that I use for these purposes :) The laptops give me the mobility I need and most of my softwares are based on PC so I use this little baby as my entertaiment and pleasure system =) it's so cute... mrr... and it is realy quiet and fits exacty next to my PLAYSTATION 3! I finaly have a perfect home cinema system. I feel sooo happy. UPDATES: Everything is still OK I have MAC Mini for one year now and only batteries on keyboard and mouse goes down every three months so I bought rechargeable ones they stay only for one month but you can just recharge them. Remote control needs battery change every 6 months.