My macintosh

So, a MacDevCenter article last week highlighted Mac bloggers/developers and asked them what Macintosh they used — which is a great Macintosh blogosphere question. Now whether I’m part of the Macintosh blogosphere or not is debatable, but like I care. I’m answering the question for myself anyway.

(and it’s also a great PackMUG question too, which I think I’ll ask after I get done ego-pimping here).

Now, the best list of Macs that you can find anywhere is probably the one embedded in the MacTracker application. But the Apple Macintosh article at Wikipedia is pretty useful too.

My Macintosh at home is a Dual 1.25GHz Power Macintosh G4, “Mirrored Drive Doors” model with 2GB RAM, a 64MB ATI Radeon 9000 Pro, and a 115GB ATA66 Hard drive (36G Free). I have a 20in Apple Cinema Display (the DVI model). It’s 3 years old next month, and I’m still really happy with it (which is more than I can say for any Windows-based PC I ever owned for that long).

The semi-funny history of it is that in February 2003, I was completely fed up with my home-built PC and completely fed up with Windows XP. I had just watched my first MacWorld Keynote (I had a Macintosh Powerbook at work that I started using in November 2002) the month prior — and Apple had announced their FW800 Macintosh G4. I went to the Apple Store in Durham to buy it. Well, the Apple Store didn’t have the new PowerMacs in yet, but I wanted one, and wanted one RIGHT THEN — so I bought the discontinued model (the first PMG4/MDD went from August 2002 to January 2003). I didn’t really care about the bluetooth, the ATA/100 or the FW800, which was basically the only difference between it and the January 2003 announced PMG4.

I started with 1GB RAM and had it hooked up to a 19” CRT monitor until last summer. The only upgrades I’ve done to it are the upgrade to 2GB RAM, buying a second 120GB hard drive because the IBM Drive it came with was irritatingly loud, so I put it into a external Firewire enclosure. I put a Kensington bluetooth adapter on it, and I had an SiiG podunk PCI USB 2.0 card that I bought for an earlier PC, but it worked just fine in the Macintosh, so it has USB 2.0 also. I did the Apple Power Supply/Fan replacement so it’s not too loud at all. It’s seen upgrades from Jaguar to Panther to Tiger — and that’s about it.

My next home macintosh will be whatever “Power Macintosh” Intel-equivalent (the business line, not the iMac line) that they release this year. Just because. I had one of the first PowerMacintoshes (the 6100) years ago, so I figure I’ll take a jump on the 1st-Generation Intel desktops too. However, if Apple manages to release a tablet Macintosh — I’m all over that. Have credit, will buy computers I don’t need 🙂

My Macintosh at work is a Dual 2.0Ghz Power Mac G5 (Early 2005 model) with 2.0GB RAM, a 160GB SATA HDD, and a 256MB ATI Radeon 9650. I have a 20in Apple Cinema Display (DVI) at work too.

The funny work story is I had the chance to get a 23in Apple Cinema Display, but decided against it, because I really didn’t want to have monitor envy when I went home. (for real 🙂 )

Sometime soon I should recount all the home and work Macintoshes I’ve used (only on the desktop, the Xserves and supported Macs won’t count — okay except maybe for the Macintosh Portable I supported at GTE 😉 )

So inquiring minds want to know — what’s YOUR macintosh?