Mac mini portable workstation

Here is the story of how the mini became more portable than a laptop.

With the new design introduced in 2010, it became even thinner, smoother and lighter.

That's not only more fabulous for striking the eye, it has gained a lot of portability.

Already several years it has improved the look of a desktop, made a performant media-viewing experience, made a great little server and was just plain easy and simple to use and convert windows users.

The latter also to it's entry level price and versatile use.

Now with the coming of external disks, portable external disks, non net powered external disks...

your system's setup was simple and relatively cheap to switch in seconds.

It brought more than a mega-hyped change in the field, everyone could take along almost everything they wanted, and it was affordable. You didn't even have to own a laptop.

There was a time laptop's weren't all that performant as we know them today, and hadn't adopted all those fancy connection ports. Later on a laptop became more of a computer, and more of a desktop replacer as it had everything packed in a 'tiny' workable box.

Again, Now, another trend is taking over as the manufacturers have seen a market in making actual tiny performant portable computers. (Yes, i'd like to skip the little netbook model for people who change their Facebook status on 10 minute basis).

Those ultrabooks as the scene is calling them today, are a great evolution. That much we know already, they're capable of more than we already can imagine.

But, as longs as there are people and certainly those with explicit demands, there's a need for other products, and for some that product is already on the market!

As an Apple fan, I like the macbook air. And if I'd own one, I'd Love it! that's for sure.

But why don't I own one?
Because didn't had the money at the time I wanted something, and especially, It doesn't allow many connected peripherals at the same time.
conclusion; wouldn't it be great to use the mac mini as a portable workstation? YES!

I like to have an ethernet connection for fast internet, connect multiple displays, firewire external disk, usb iPod cable/dock, ...
Prior to the mac mini, I had a 20" iMac, which worked great, but I wanter some newer more performant machine. And I found out those all in one piece of art desktop computers have a nice resell value.
So I sold my iMac and bought a mini with that exact money. The base model mac mini was twice as fast according to benchmark scores, and the mini is actually expendable in a easy and huge way. Also could I buy a screen that I liked and keep using it when I decide a newer computer is welcome.

The largest bottle neck in a setup is fairly common the memory and storage. Those are exchangeable without voiding the warranty by Apple. I upgraded to 8GB of DDR3 RAM memory for under 50 euros.
As for the SSD that's to revolutionize the user experience, I'm holding of till prices have dropped a little more.

I work as an video editor, so everywhere I go, there are more screen's that I can look at.
My girlfriend gave me a magic trackpad earlier, and last christmass a bluetooth keyboard.
So at the time of purchase I was immediately ready to start working anywhere I was.

My editing setup at work, the mini's first boot happened here.

After those monitors and peripherals I found a little space for the mini.

According to those benchmark scorers the mac mini was more performant than a 13" 4GBram macbook air. And that's without 8GB of RAM, or the SSD which the air already had from the assembly line.

The mini covered being portable on dimensions, versatile use, connect-ability, performance, ...
only working on the go was not an option. So no working on the train or café. But was this an issue to me? Not at all.

I wanted to have some kind of protection, so I bought a 3,5" external HDD cover. and with some minor tweaks it was perfect to take along my mini.
The case logic black medium hdd bag did the trick for me!

 I could even take along a spare set of batteries, the power cable for the mini, and the mini display port to DVI converter.
An old thinkpad diskette drive protection sleeve that I kept because I thought might come in handy one day, did actually make a perfect trackpad sleeve!


to be continued ...