row1.info

I have had a Shuttle ST20G5 for almost five years. Having a reasonable dual-core CPU and graphics card it is fast enough for my needs. Unfortunately while it survived the move to Singapore it is not coping with the high heat and humidity, the fans frequently fire up on basic tasks and when attempting something more difficult (e.g. encoding a video) the noise is just ludicrous. More and more frequently it will overheat and require sometime to cool down before turning on again.

So rather than wait for it to die and lose all my documents my wife (of all people) told me to get a new computer. I needed something small, cheap and reasonably powerful. All the small form factor Windows PCs I saw seemed to be Intel Atom powered which I already have and don't want again, so I decided to go with the 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo 4GB Ram Mac Mini. So far it seems ok, it is fast enough but after using Windows 7 for almost a year I am not sure how I will adjust to OS X and so far I don't particularly like it ... but I will give it time and worst comes to worst I can just install Windows 7 on it. Software wise most of the stuff I use is available either as a port or alternative, the only big exception seems to be TortoiseSVN and Beyond Compare.

As for my dying Shuttle, hopefully things will cool down if I take out the fan-less NVIDIA 8600GT graphics card and I can use it as a file, media and SVN (or maybe even git if I feel crazy) server.