First impressions
Posted by admin, Fri Feb 25 09:12:39 UTC 2005
I was hoping that my first impressions of the Mac Mini would be all good. Unfortunately I hit a snag, right near the start, that kind of soured things.
I got the Mini hooked up via my Belkin KVM+audio switch. I had a few bad moments when it seemed that the video was not working, but it was a false alarm. It’s currently hooked up to the second input on my second LCD screen (NEC Multisync 1880SX), so the “V” part of the KVM isn’t really being used. Initially, it came up with a much smaller resolution than is supported by the screen. It was easy to find and fix this in the System Preferences. Very pretty.
Next, get the network stuff going. We have a Linux-based box serving as primary domain controller on our network. A few clicks around through the network, and I’m all set, able to access all my network files, including my downloads share. Perfect. Futzed a little on the server to enable AppleTalk. Works. Do a little bit of reading, and discover that Samba sharing is better, so the AppleTalk server support is now disabled again.
On to the next thing. I am left handed, so I need to swap the mouse buttons. No dice in the system preferences. Ok. I get it. The Mac is so oriented towards the single button mouse, that this doesn’t come standard with the OS.
Grumble. Grumble. I have a Logitech wireless optical mouse, so I trundle off to the Logitech web site and download a Mac driver. Install the whole package. No dice. Because I’m hooked up via the KVM, the Logitech software insists that I don’t have any Logitech devices installed :-p Fine. Uninstall the software.
Google for answers. I see. Nice little utility called uControl (open source, gotta love it) handles mouse button swapping and much, much more. Great. Download and install it. Reboot to get it working… still not working… Back to Google. Oh. I see. It only works with Mac OSX 10.3.8 if you installed it on a previous version of the OS and then upgraded. :-p Fine. Uninstall the software.
Continue to plink around for a while, exploring the Aqua interface. Frustration with the mouse buttons mounts, until I give up.
Thus ended my first evening on the Mini.
