Blog - /Tech

My Mac Mini gave out early this week. It was working at an absurdly slow rate, even before loading the OS, and even when booting off of a Live CD. The warranty had expired, so I decided to just purchase a cheap desktop system rather than get it repaired, which would probably cost at least $200.

I wanted to get a real desktop rather than another Mini, due to some concerns with overheating. Also, since I'm not going to be needing to take it with me to various places, like PLUG presentations, weight was no longer a concern. I went with one of Dell's preloaded Ubuntu Linux systems, the Inspiron 530 N. After dropping the monitor, adding a DVD-writer, and adding an extra year of warranty (learning from my past mistake), it came to a reasonable $449. I also purchased a USB 2.5" SATA drive enclosure so that I could salvage contents off of the Mini's hard drive.

I keep backups on other machines, so I shouldn't lose any schoolwork. Because I use git do the backing up, I should even be able to do work on a local clone of the backed-up copy, and merge it back once the new system arrives.

Needless to say, this will cause delays in my contributions to just about every Free Software project that I am a part of.