Back on a Mac
At my last job I had quite a setup to work with. I had a MacPro with a 20″ widescreen and a PC with dual 20’s. It took a while, but I started to really like that mac. Fastforward to my new job and I had the option of using mac or a PC. The only mac choice was a Mac Mini, which I thought was just silly, so I opted for the dual screen PC.
I started to not like that PC as those dual screens were only 17″ and that is just pathetic. The mac guys in the group, of which most were on macs, had either a 20″ or a 22″ screen. So I took the plunge and switched out to a Mac Mini and joined the fan club. I have to admit, this is a nice little computer for dev work!
I got lucky and got a 22″ screen and while I gave up some pixels width wise I like it as much windows can be bigger without having to span across the monitors. Setting up the box was next to nothing to do. I’m still experimenting with the mac keyboard, which is really just a detached laptop keyboard and the other keyboard I had which was an ergonomic style. I would probably pick the ergo one, but the Apple key and Windows Keys are in different positions for each. The Windows key is in between the control and alt keys and on the mac the Apple key (which is what the Windows key is mapped to) is next to the space bar. Given that the key bindings for a mac using the apple key instead of a control key on windows, the Apple keyboard has a better feel.
I actually like this little mac so much that I’m contemplating getting one for home as a dev box. I would really like to have a Macbook Pro that I could hook up an external monitor to when I wanted, but the macbooks are a little pricey. The one real downside to the Mac Mini is that it doesn’t natively support dual outputs. There is a matrox adapter (if I recall correctly), but the resolution supported isn’t much better than a single 22″ or 24″ LCD. I would REALLY love to have dual 22 or 24s…
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[...] a few weeks of moving back to a Mac, I can honestly say that I am far more productive that I ever was on a PC. The really ironic thing? [...]