2 Robots

For the past few years, I’ve been using a Mac Mini as my main HTPC. This has worked out really great, as the Mini is a small, quiet piece of hardware, and generally Apple’s iTunes/Frontrow is simple, intuitive, and impressive as a content management system.
As my collection of media grew, I started to run out […]

Hard drive technology is fundamentally broken.
The main problem with hard drives are that they haven’t been able to keep up with Moore’s Law. While computers have gotten faster and faster, hard drives seem to have topped out some time ago. At the same time, the total storage capacity of drives has continued to increase. What […]

When it comes to my personal computer, I believe in making as many copies of my data as I can, as often as I can.

Mozy is a little program that runs in the background and backs up your files every now and then to their servers. If you need to restore a file, you can do it through their web site or else through the program you download. However, not is all rosy with Mozy.

Read on.

There are lots of people out there who have been collecting music for some time. Personally, for example, I have had a collection of LP’s (There’s nothing like The Who in vinyl!), cassette tapes, and probably hundreds of CD’s. In the past few years, I’ve also built up a respectable amount of MP3’s and AAC music.

While having plenty of music is great, the problem starts to become that I can only listen to CD’s on my cdplayer, LP’s on my record player, and MP3’s on my IPod. If this sounds familiar, then Roxio’s “Record Now Music Lab” is targeted just for you.

Something too prevalent in the marketplace today is the complete lack of innovation which seems to plague some companies. On the one hand, you have companies like Apple and Nintendo which truly bring something new to the table; from product packaging to human-electronic interfaces. On the other hand, you have companies like Dell and Sony who just keep pushing out more of the same. Yet, the latter seem more likely to hold big press events and tout their “next big thing.” It seems as if they don’t even know that their products are “me too’s” instead of market leaders.

I’ve been running the Mac Mini for more than 6 months now. Its time to check in for a 6-month review of all the quirks and perks.

Read on for a full account of what its like to use a Mac Mini as your Media PC for 6 months!