Category Archives: writing

Putting Together A New Mac Workstation

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I haven’t had a desk since we got our previous house ready to receive our son. Instead, I tried to do work anywhere I could, which usually involved sitting on the couch in front of the television. Let’s just say that situation was not conducive to production.

With the new house came a new office with a new desk and a blank canvas for a new computer workstation. In putting together my requirements for the new system, I had a few hard requirements. First, I knew I wanted a Mac. I use both at work, and find that the Mac lends itself better for my creative workflow. I also knew that I wanted a desktop. I have an older MacBook plus my iPad for portability, and I wanted the feel of a real desktop and a place I had to go to work.

Most of the work I do on the computer involves a few different categories: general home-office activities (e-mail, document management), photo and light video editing, and some software development. The biggest use of the system resources would likely be required by the photo and video editing, and I wanted to make sure that whichever system I went with would not be an immediate bottleneck to my workflow.

I gave up building computers from scratch 10 years ago, so I was not interested in a Hackintosh or any other form of assembling a computer from components; I was looking for an off the shelf-solution. That meant the iMac, a Mac Pro, or a Mac Mini.

I ruled out the Mac Pro both because of price and because it’s too much computer for what I do. That left the iMac and the Mac Mini, an option I actually didn’t consider until a coworker brought it up.  As I researched that option more, it became the preferred option. You can get practically the same machine in a Mini that you could as an iMac for much less. The configuration I looked at had an iMac priced more than $600 more than the configuration I chose, simply for the “cool” factor.

The new desk... 494x494 Putting Together A New Mac Workstation

In the end, I’m a week in but very happy with my system choice. Here are the details [affiliate links]:

Mac Mini (2.6 i7, 4 GB RAM, 1TB HDD) – The fastest i7 processor available in the Mini today with a respectable 1TB of disk space. With the iMac, there isn’t a clean way to upgrade the memory. With the Mini, however, upgrading the memory couldn’t be simpler, so I ordered the bare minimum RAM and saved $200 by doing the upgrade myself.

Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) RAM – This RAM was $99 compared to the $300 price tag of upgrading to 16GB via Apple, and it took 3 minutes to swap out.

2 x Dell S2340M LED-Lit Monitor – I was looking at both the 21″ and 27″ iMac. The 27″ was too big, but I like the real estate that 2 monitors offers. These Dell monitors were well rated and reasonably priced.

Logitech HD Webcam C310 – Relatively inexpensive, but very high quality webcam for FaceTime and some recording.

Logitech K810 Keyboard -  The beauty of this keyboard is that it allows me to sync with up to 3 devices, so I can pair with my computer, iPad, or iPhone, all from one keyboard. The layout is more Windows-centric, but it is fully functional in the Mac world.

Super Drive – This would have been necessary even with the iMac. Apparently, no one uses DVD drives anymore.

Magic Mouse – A mouse! And it’s magic!

Wacom tablet – This is an old, old Wacom tablet, but I still use it occasionally for precise touch-ups.

iPad 3 – I still plan on using my iPad as a portable extension of my desktop, and I’m continuing to explore new ways to do so.

Note: Amazon affiliate links used above.

 

Stuck Finding The Perfect Path Instead Of Starting The Journey

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What’s the best way to learn a language? How can I take my guitar playing to the next level? How can I live life more simply?

Google any of those phases, as I have, and you’ll get millions of results. There is no shortage of experts offering solutions. I’ve often thought that if only I could find the one solution that matches my situation exactly, that would be what I would need to get started.  Instead, I fall in to the trap of trying to find the perfect solution, and the result is that I do nothing at all. It’s safer to spend my time pursuing the impossibility of finding someone exactly like me than it is to take action.

In his post today, Seth Godin states:

If you wait for the perfect map before departing on your journey, you’ll never have to leave.

The flip side of the uniqueness argument is also true. If no one is exactly like me and no one has taken my exact journey, the implications are daunting. I am all alone. There is no path. My first step could be in to oblivion. That fear is just as paralyzing as its counterpart. So we tell ourselves that we’re still researching, or we tell ourselves that what we want is impossible to achieve. Either way, our natural tendency is to be safe and to stay put.

Reality lies somewhere in between. We are unique, so finding an exact path to take should not be the criteria for getting started. But there are many people that have gone before us and, while their journeys were unique, there is enough similarity to draw inspiration and courage from the steps they took . If not an exact path, those pioneers have given us a general direction to head, which is enough to take those first steps.