New Puter…

So this week I finally got my Mac-mini delivered. As I had mentioned in the previous post , my ibook laptop which I had been using for my audio production had finally broken down. After debating weather to go back to a Windows PC or a Mac, I decided on a refurbished Mac-mini.

I’ve got to admit that I was a bit hesitant about purchasing a refurbished machine, but Gainsaver.com did a very good job in sending me a machine which didn’t even have a scratch on it. I did have to run out to BestBuy and purchase an adapter to use with my recently purchased Acer monitor, but that was no biggie. I was very surprised to see that they included a Mac keyboard and mouse, which their website didn’t mention anything about. Also since they didn’t have the 1.25 GHZ model in stock they upgraded me to a 1.4GHZ machine. I did have to pay a little more but it was worth it.

New Puter on the Way

Last week I wrote about how my ibook G4 has slowly been crash diving, and how I was thinking of different replacements for it. Well I finally decided to go with a refurbished Mac mini. Here’s how it worked out.

Since I haven’t been recording much lately, I took the time last week to revisit my old Pentium 4 PC and see if I could hook up my Mbox 2 and run some of the applications that came with it (i.e.; Protools, Abelton Live). The problem was that my old LCD screen had burned out, so I went to Wal-Mart and picked up a new cheap 15” Acer flat screen LCD. I figured that if the PC didn’t work I would probably have to buy a new computer so buying a screen now is one less headache to deal with.

The Day My Mac Died

So it’s finally happened. My beloved G4 iBook which so courageously took over my Windows PC as my main recording rig 3 years ago has died (almost). I can still do some recording on it but it’s limited in many ways and getting it fix might cost more than just picking up a refurbished Mac with even more power and memory.

The problem actually started about a year ago when I foolishly allowed the rest of the household to use my ibook as the “do-all” computer for the house. Everyone was using it. My wife used it to organize pictures while my youngest daughter used it to chat with friends and spend hours on her MySpace page. It seemed that anytime I wasn’t using it for recording, someone else was. Last year my wife accidentally bumped it against something and the CD/DVD combo drive began to act up. Eventually it stop working all together.