I can stop holding my breath.
One month on the nose (OK, OK, 2 days more than a month) after my iBook went to the shop with a defective motherboard (logicboard in Apple talk) I got it back. Hurra!
And I also have it’s little brother, the Mac Mini I ordered a few weeks ago.
I was notified yesterday that the Mac Mini had arrived and was waiting for me, and I decided that once I was there anyway I should ask about the iBook (after all I was informed it would take an abnormal 2-3 weeks at this time of the year, not that I believed it anyway, of course).
Well lo and behold, to my amazement they just handed it over and said they finished up assembling it last evening and were going to call me today to let me know. What perfect timing! Of course it was a good think I did ask for it, otherwise I’d have probably just arrive in the office from getting the Mac Mini only to receive a call saying I could go and collect the iBook… :-)
Since my bandwidth at home is rather limited I unpacked the Mini here at the office in order to get it all updated and synchronized. The first thing that comes to mind after these initial 30 minutes with it is (unusually, I suspect) quiet! Indeed, I want this box to replace an oldish Intel tower I have at home acting as my home server, not because of the size of it but more because of the damned noise it makes! The Mini I couldn’t even hear it in the office at lunch time. Now I know it does make some noise and it will be apparent in the silence of my home office, but the current server feels more like a plane taking off than anything else, so this will be a nice improvement to the home environment!
I’ll transfer my home sites into the little Mini, I’ll make it fetch my podcasts and vlogs all day long and I’ll probably run my bit torrent clients there. This way I can shut the iMac down when I’m not actually using it. Also having another Mac in the home network is great for playing around with the Xgrid. I don’t have much use for it right this moment, but I suspect Final Cut will make it worthwhile soon enough.