First ever Mac purchase!

- image from www.apple.com

We just bought our first ever Macintosh computer! Sure, I've had Macs before but that was back when I was in school (Let's all celebrate in '88) and I didn't buy them, they were Mum and Dad's Macs. We didn't have OS X back in those days but we did have a pair of Macintosh II's that made all the computers my mates had look rather unimpressive. How things haven't changed! The modern Mac still makes a PC look beige.

- image from www.apple.com

We ordered a Mac Mini with the following specs.

Intel Core2 Duo 2.0 GHz
2 GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM
160 GB Hard Disk 5400rpm
Intel GMA 950 Graphics Chip with shared memory
Superdrive - DVD±R/RW
10/100/1000 BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet
54Mb 802.11 g Wireless Network
Bluetooth 2.0
Firewire 400 port
4x USB 2.0 ports

And it comes with...

Mac OS X 10.5 - Leopard - which includes...

• lots of cool features!

and iLife '08 - which includes...

• iTunes
• iPhoto
• iMovie
• iDVD
• iWeb
• GarageBand

and an Apple Remote and Front Row

Because I customized the system - upgraded the RAM from 1GB to 2 GB and upgraded the hard disk from 120GB to 160GB - it's going to take a few days for them to put the order through and build me a shiny new Mac. It will prolly be sometime late next week by the time I get all Appled up.

- image from www.apple.com

I got a few things to go with it.

• A TOSLINK cable that comes with an adapter so it can connect from the 3.5mm jack on the Mac Mini Optical out to the standard S/PDIF input on my 5.1 reciever.
  
• A Elgato EyeTV Hybrid USB stick which lets us watch both analogue and digital television and also allows us to plug the ageing VHS VCR so we can record our old home moves from our video tape collection and burn them to DVD.
• An Apple Universal Dock for the iPod nano. I could've got a dock specific to the iPod nano for a bit less money but then some of our friends and family have all sorts of different versions of iPods and if we ever aquired an iPhone... the Universal Dock makes sense.

As far as I can make out, both the dock and the computer come with Apple Remotes so we may end up having two of them...-image from Wikipedia

Next Week!

We begin our adventure through the looking glass and begin exploring the world of OS X!