For those who are wondering, this is my current desktop setup. As you can see, I am not a huge fan of apple peripherals. I like the styling and feel of the current crop of logitech accessories and I have used them pretty much exclusively in my setup. The nice part about avoiding an all-in-one solution like the iMac is that you can acquire components of your rig in a piecemeal fashion. This option worked for me because I am, for the most part, very patient with consumer purchases, and I like to get the most value for every penny spent (some call that cheap, but I prefer frugal). As I’m sure you all know, Mac’s are definitely in the premium category so prices tend to be on the high end. The Mac Mini is by far the most affordable option even though it isn’t the best value by any stretch. Basically, If you MUST have a Mac and you are short on cash the Mini is the Mac for you.
Michael's Rig
I put this rig together over the course of two years for a total investment of 1080$ (plus tax). Here’s the breakdown:
- Top Mac: 2007 RFB MB138LL/A MAC MINI 1.83/2X512/80/CO ($430 refurb)
- Bottom Mac: 2009 RFB MB463LL/MAC MINI 2.0/1X1G/120/SD/AP/BT- (430$ refurb)
- Logitech Dinovo Keyboard – Mac Edition (30$ after rebate)
- Logitech MX mouse (10$ after rebate)
- Logitech Quickcam 9000 (free from AMEX rewards
) - 20-inch Samsung T200HD (180$ after discount and rebate)
I also made 200 dollars worth of upgrades to the newer Mac Mini by purchasing 4GB of memory and replacing the 120GB HD with a 500GB HD. Since I already had the tools out I also moved the 120GB HD to the older Mac Mini to replace the 80GB HD. This gave me more than enough room for an Ubuntu partition which currently boots by default and is connected with the other Mac Mini through a synergy setup so I can share the keyboard and mouse.
One reason I went with the Samsung monitor is the plethora of ports and built in speakers and tv tuner. It has the following ports available:
- Screen size: 20 inches
- Resolution: 1680 x 1050 pixels
- Brightness: 300 cd/m² (candela per square meter
- Response time: 5 milliseconds (ms)
- Viewing angle: 170 degrees horizontal, 150 degrees vertical
- HDMI audio/video input: 2 (1 on back, 1 on side)
- DVI video input: 1
- VGA video input: 1
- Component video input: 1 set
- Antenna input: 1 RF
- Audio input: 1 left/right analog
- Audio output: 1 SPDIF digital audio
This gives me a lot of options and allows me to plug both macs as well as my work laptop (Win XP Thinkpad X61).