Last weekend I bought some extra memory for my Mac Mini. Apple really runs a scam: They charge 4x the price for memory than you can get almost anywhere else. However, if you open the computer yourself and try to install it, Apple will no longer honor your warranty.

Well, screw that. So, of course, I opened my Mac Mini and installed some additional RAM. Unfortunately, I also uninstalled the sound card. This wouldn’t be so bad on a PC, but in the Mac Mini the sound card is soldered onto the PCI Riser card. The “Genius Bar” at the apple store in SoHo wouldn’t honor my warranty. They wanted to charge me $800 to fix it! The computer only cost $700 new!

Luckily, they did recommended me to go to TekServe, which fixed it for under $200. Still a ton of cash, but worth it to have a working computer (barely). The mac serves as my media center pc, and is what I use to watch TV, movies, etc, so sound is sort of important.

Of course, now the remote control isn’t working with it…