Macbook Air

The Story of My Mac Mini M1

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I had been waiting for Apple to come out with a new Mac Mini that I can upgrade to for a long time. I even wrote about it as far back as 2016. By then it had been two years since Apple had released anything new in the Mac Mini models. I had the 2012 model at the time. They had came out with a 2014 model however by 2016 when I wanted a new computer it was not worth spending money on a two year old computer model that is only slightly better than the one I already own. The challenge was what I owned was four years old and really needing a replacement.

It would be another two years before the mini was refreshed in 2018. At that point I was prepared to buy a new one. I may have even had an order ready to go. However on reflection the differences between what I had that was six years old in the 2018 variant wasn’t hugely different and the amount of money was not insignificant. At the time I past on an upgrade and just used a laptop as my desktop. I also purchased A significantly cheaper Intel Nuc with better specifications that I put Linux on.

Even after coming up with an alternative plan I still really wanted a Mac Mini. I just couldn’t justify the price for what it was getting me. Flash forward to fall of 2020 and I was excited to pre-order a M1 Mac Mini. I did in fact have an order placed and it was on backorder for about six weeks. After a little while though I talked myself out of getting it and continue to use my old laptop. It was not until this winter then I finally decide the time was right to make a purchase. For the money the mini was a pretty nice computer with the M one chip in it. I also had a 12 inch iPad Pro that are used around the house and out and about like a laptop. It’s not a laptop replacement however someone said the perfect quote that it’s about 90% of our computer replacement. For when I’m not at my desk having the iPad Pro is perfectly fine. For when I sit at my desk having a desktop computer works better than a laptop docked to a monitor.

After literally over four years of waiting I finally got my new mini. Was it worth the wait, I won’t say that. It is a pretty nice computer though. my 2012 mini stop being functional as my main computer about three or four years ago. I used it for a while with Debian on it. At this point it is a paper weight.

I was so slow to write this post that a funny thing happened after a few months with my Mini. I started missing a personal laptop or the freedom that being undocked from a stationary position. Even if it was rare that i did it, the flexibility was nice. I went out and got the stock 8Gig M1 MacBook Air. I was worried that the base configuration was not going to be powerful enough. I was wrong. It has been perfectly fine. After having the MacBook Air a while i can say that i do not use it away from my desk often. When i do it is worth the flexibility. I do see the iPad Pro 12” getting flexible enough that i may change that decision over time.

As great as the Mini was, after about a year I had sold it on eBay in favour of the MacBook Air. I still miss a desktop now and again but the laptop is way more flexible.

Dragon Dictate 3 Upgrade

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Since I like writing, but typing at the end of the day after working at a computer all day is not the most fun thing to do I have been using dictation to write. It has been fantastic.

The issue is since I upgraded to mountain lion my dictation software on the Mac has not been working. I’ve actually been using the dictation on my iPhone 4S. I think I’ve written about that before. It’s actually quite good, but nowhere near as good as using the computer. As if to prove a point, the WordPress app on my iPhone 4S just crashed for the second time in a day. I lost about two paragraphs of this post and had to write it over. That sort of thing doesn’t happen on the Mac.

Today, Nuance the makers of Dragon Dictate released an upgrade for Dragon Dictate for the Mac that works with Mountain lion. Because of the limitations of the iPhone dictation I am pleased to be able to upgrade. But I’m not pleased about is the rather expensive price of the $149 to be able to upgrade. I don’t typically buy software is expensive. The only other software that comes anywhere close to this price is Microsoft office. Even that I got a rather steep discount through work the last upgrade. I just hope the price was worth it.

I am downloading it now, and I hope to have it working tonight. I’m wondering if I need to train it again. This software I like the mobile phone versions of the software requires you to train the software by reading. It does not take very long, but it does require some minor concentration to read to a computer. I will give my opinion in a later post.

Desk Reconfiguration

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At work I have had 5 monitors on my desk.  Let’s not argue the necessity of five monitors. It is a bit excessive. That is why I’ve been thinking about downsizing for a while.  At the time the setup made sense, and I had the equipment on hand so I figured why not.  Recently however my desk is been slightly cramped, and I found myself using my third computer significantly less.  This set up started when I got a new 27 inch display for my laptop.  It was a great needed addition since the extra real-estate is used and I blow text up a lot.  With that addition I had the two 19″ monitors I was using for my Macbook Air free to move to my Mac Mini that I use.  I have that machine mainly to sit on the guest wifi network to do Skype video chats with far flung staff.  I can use Skype on the internal network but it never seems the same.  The 15″ monitors (2 of them) I was using for the Min went towards a Dell desktop I have that I run a specific work app on.  I can run it in a VM but on my older Macbook Air the VM was starved for memory.  Now i may revisit the need for that machine but i like having a dedicated Windows machine around even if I dont use it often.

Since I wasn’t using the windows machine a lot I gave away the 15″ monitors and just have the Dell desktop plugged into one of the Mini’s 19″ monitors.  They take DVI & VGI so I created  poor mans switcher for the monitor.  Longer term i will probably just RDP to that machine.  Surprisingly 3 monitors is not uncommon at work.  Some people even have 4 but i was a bit out there with the 5.

Now I have space on my desk that you can actually see my wedding & engagement photos.  Now isn’t that whats important?

Next Gen MacBook Air

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After much pondering I broke down and put an order in for a new MacBook air 13 inch. I bought a 2011 model last August and I’ve been very happy with it, except for a few drawbacks. The new model seems to correct all the drawbacks I’ve experienced. The only thing I had to do to get it was spent a lot more money for it. I think it’ll be worth it in the long run. I have been generally upgrading laptops every year so, and in the near future I don’t think that’s going to happen with a baby on the way so I want to get the upgrade out-of-the-way and be happy with additional capacity now.

This new MacBook air is sporting eight gigs of RAM and a 512 gig SSD drive. The old model didn’t have enough memory for what I was using it for, especially running a virtual machine. I also maxed out the 256 gigs on the old one SSD, so going for the 512 gig SSD was a must. But that upgrade broke the bank. I contemplated going for a MacBook Pro 13 inch with the regular hard drive but the cost difference and the performance difference really didn’t make it worthwhile for me. I’ve been spoiled with the SSDs in the Air’s for the past two years so going back to a 5400 RPM hard drive wasn’t really something I wanted to do. Other notable improvements is the USB three, but I really don’t have any use for it at this moment. Also the Core i7 dual core processor is slightly faster than what I’ve been used to all my old air.

It doesn’t come with Mountain Lion, but I get a free upgrade when it comes out in a few weeks.  I will probably buy the upgrade anyway since I have other computers I want to upgrade anyway, and the free upgrade is only for this laptop.

So far I’ve been extremely pleased with the upgrade. Now all I have to do is eBay my old laptop.

The New MacBook Air

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This week turned out to be a two laptop week.  I was already thinking about selling my existing 2010 Macbook Air and upgrade to the new i5 2011 Air’s that just came out in July  when I convinced M to order a new Macbook Pro but I finally pulled the trigger on the new Air today.

I was waffling for a while since the 2010 model is still perfectly good.  The big drawback for me was the processor wasn’t anywhere near a desktop or even a bigger laptop’s speed.  That changed when the new i5 Air’s came out.  After figuring how much i could sell my old Air for i decided to make the jump and upgrade.

I have bought lots of stuff at the 5th ave Apple store but today was actually the worst experience i have ever had there.  It was super crowded and it took forever to find someone to help me, only to have them tell me oh you need to find a free computer and tell the ipad sitting next to it you need assistance and then you will go into queue to get help.  Problem there is everyone is on these laptops for hours surfing Facebook and two no one tells you that is the process.  I have bought more than one computer from this store and this is the first time i have ever had to do that.

Drama aside i was able to get the model I wanted and headed home.  Well after more minor train drama i was able to get home but that is another story.

I had already taken a backup of my old Air using Carbon Copy Cloner so setting up this computer was as simple as plugging in the backup hard drive and saying yes restore from an external hard drive.  For that function alone i have to love Apple!

 

 

Trying Outlook 2011

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Busy day at work today. I took a call at 8AM at home and then ran to the office after that. Full day of calls later I am pretty tired.

I did eak out some time to try using Apple Mail with exchange. I couldn’t really do it well before getting migrated to Exchange 2007. Now that I am moved over I gave it a try. i did so also a few weeks ago briefly but played with the settings a bit more today. Short summary for me is i like the ability to see threaded conversations in all folders in one view like in Outlook 2010, but otherwise not very happy. I will continue to use Outlook 2011 when running on my Macbook Air or Outlook 2010 in a VM.