I started a new job with messaliberty (will post more about this later) and it is a mostly OSX shop.  So I upgraded my mac mini and brought it in to use.

Some things I’ve noted.  OSX works well at 1920×1200.  My previous experiences at 1024×768 (iBook) and 1280×1024 (on a 17″ monitor) felt cramped and annoying.  I’m sure 1600×1200 would be fine too but definitely the experience has become a lot more pleasant.

I upgraded the HDD to a 320GB/7200rpm one and upgraded ram to 2GB.  I’m running a one of the orignal core solo models and had planned to upgrade the cpu to a core2duo but couldn’t find a second-hand processor at the right price.  But even without the cpu upgrade, the mac mini feels much more snappy.  Less lags all round.  The upgrades weren’t really that difficult, took about an hour in total.  Hard drive migration was handled by the excellent SuperDuper. The cpu upgrade would have been a little more difficult and time consuming. The only thing that I am not comfortable with running are virtual machines.  Before the upgrades, it was painful.  Now it is bearable but not fun.

Most of my time I use QuickSilver to launch programs.  (I use Launchy on Windows)

Keynote is great, to knock up a presentation using Keynote is way faster than PowerPoint.  I still use Firefox rather than Safari, and I use Thunderbird instead of Mail.  Partly because of familiarity, partly because of plugins and partly because I still use Windows on my thinkpad and at home so I can use the same programs regardless.  OpenOffice is clunky but free. skEdit rules as a html editor, though Maruo/Hidemaru on Windows is possibily the best editor to handle Japanese encodings without breaking anything.

My monitor is big but only so-so in terms of image quality. It’s a Dell 24″ E248WFP.  Definitely not suitable for photographic work, but for web design/programming it does ok.  I can see colour shifts with only small head movements.

In summary life with OSX has gone from a D- to a B+. Hope to upgrade to Leopard in the future to use Time Machine and will report back from time to time.

Posted on November 13th, 2008 by Ian Cheung
Filed under: Mac