On Thu, Sep 05, 2013 at 03:07:10PM -0400, Stan Halpin wrote: > I'll be interested to hear how your new system works out for you. > For the last six months I've grown more and more frustrated with my Late 2006 > 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac. Which only has 2 GB memory installed which is > part of my issue. So I have been considering three options. The first is > pretty much the package you've assembled built around a Mac mini. The 27" > iMac also looks attractive, at about the same price with comparable > processor, memory, and drive options. Since it can function as an external > monitor, down the road I could get a mini or a Mac Pro and keep the iMac as a > monitor, scavenge the memory and drive to repurpose. My third option is to > wait for the new Mac Pro and hope the price isn't too far out of line. An > advantage I see to the iMac and especially the Mac Pro would be the number of > T'bolt and USB ports to connect my unwieldy "farm" of external drives. At the > moment I am holding off on a decision until the Mac Pro finally arrives. > (People waiting for a new upgraded Mac Pro are in much the same boat as those > waiting for a FF Pentax - long periods of limbo with no credible rumors to help shape decisions about current and future purchase plans.)
The mac-mini seems to have a couple of major advantages over the iMac or laptops: 1) more ports, and a wider range of ports. USB, firewire, thunderbolt, video and gigabit ethernet 2) When the CPU is obsolete, you don't need to throw away the monitor. 3) Even the single disk minis can be upgraded to dual disk. Upgrading the drive on an iMac is a bit of a pain. If my iMac proves to be unrecoverable, I may have 6GB of memory for sale very cheap. I do expect that it is just a bad drive. I'm also hoping that I can pull the superdrive out of a dead macbook to repair the dead drive in the iMac. > > stan > > On Sep 5, 2013, at 3:31 AM, Larry Colen wrote: > > > On Wed, Sep 04, 2013 at 08:37:26PM -0400, Bruce Walker wrote: > >> Have you inspected /var/log/system.log afterward? I'd look > >> particularly for disk errors. > > > > That was plan A, however, it will no longer boot at all. > > > > Fortunately, a kind list member offered me one of his Friends and Family > > apple discounts. I'm also planning on replacing the 4G of apple memory > > with 16G of OWC memory. So, by the time the dust settles, I'll have > > a quad core 2.3GHz I7 mac mini, with 16GB of ram, a 1TB fusion drive, > > a 27" thunderbolt monitor, apple care for the cpu, keyboard and magic > > track pad for about $2100. > > > > In contrast, circa 1985, I bought a 10 MHz 286 AT clone, with a 20MB (IIRC) > > hard drive, and 1 MB of 0 waitstate memory, and black and white monitor for > > about $1700. > > > > It's funny how a mid range home/office computer has stayed at around > > $2,000. > > > > It looks like the display was 720x350 pixels, so I've got 12 times the > > resolution, before adding a second monitor. 1000 times the cpu clocks > > per second, not counting instruction efficiency, and supplemental > > processors, > > 16,000 times the memory, about 50,000 times the disk space, at I don't > > know how many times the through put. > > > > And that's not even comparing with the Osborne 1, that my father bought > > for about the same amount of money a few years previously. > > > > It looks like 1980-1984 gas was about $1.20/gallon, > > http://www.randomuseless.info/gasprice/gasprice.html > > So the Osborne 1 and the AT clone were about 1400 gallons of gas. > > The mac mini system is about 525 gallons of gas or a bit more than > > a third as much in terms of gas. I think it was Peter Egan that would > > measure the cost of cars, and parts in units of a Pizza and a pitcher > > of beer. I'm afraid I don't remember prices of those well enough from > > back then to compare. > > > > Meanwhile, when I get the chance, probably a few weeks from now, I'll > > pull the iMac apart, and swap in a different drive to test it. > > > > Fortunately, I didn't have much of import on the internal drive, the > > only thing really important was my lightroom catalog, that just last > > week I had copied over to my rejuvenated laptop. The raw files are > > elsewhere, so I only lost the edits on a couple of not terribly important > > sets of photos, and that's only if I don't recover the drive, so > > I pretty much dodged a bullet on that one. > > > > > > -- > > Larry Colen l...@red4est.com http://red4est.com/lrc > > > > > > -- > > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > > PDML@pdml.net > > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > > follow the directions. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- Larry Colen l...@red4est.com http://red4est.com/lrc -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
