I have a server at home that handles a variety of tasks, such as DNS hosting/caching, media serving, home automation, printer/scanner sharing, and security camera control. I’ve been running everything on an old P3-733 Linux Box [spockpowerusage, spockserverspecs] for over 8 years. This summer, in the interest of making a major upgrade as well as preparing for an eventual hardware failure, I decided to upgrade the hardware. Instead of building a new Linux box, I replaced the server with a Mac mini ![[B001U0OFKU]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
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The Mac mini is incredibly powerful, small, quiet, and energy efficient. Check out the size difference between the mini and my old Linux server. These pictures barely do justice to the monstrous size of the Linux rack.
I bought the “low end” Mac mini and replaced the hard drive and added more RAM. The process was simple. There’s even a handy video on YouTube that illustrates each step.
Thanks to macports.org and Apple’s inclusion of the GNU tools, getting my server daemons up and running on the Mac was only a minor pain. I also installed the latest version of VMWare Fusion , where I’m running a Linux server on the Mac in a virtual machine. The mini is a great host for VMs. In retrospect, I wish I had set up the Linux VM first and kept my server daemons on Linux instead of going through the hassle of getting them to run native, but in the end, I like the resulting flexibility.
Some tips:
. It’s the only one that really works. Believe me, I tried a bunch of them. It’s hard to imagine a better piece of hardware for a home server than a Mac mini.
Finally! Microsoft just released a beta update for Entourage 2008 (the Mac Office email client). Entourage already works fairly well with Exchange Server, but the update adds some critically missing features. Here’s a list from Microsoft:
Tasks, Notes, and Categories now sync with the Exchange Server Resolving names against the Global Address List now works via EWS/HTTP. This means you no longer need to be connected to your corporate network via VPN to resolve names when addressing an e-mail or meeting invitation Improved Autodiscover. In Entourage for Exchange Web Services Beta, the Autodiscover service keeps user account settings up-to-date after the account setup.
• It runs in the background every time that you start Entourage.
• It also runs at a server-defined interval, typically every hour, to make sure that the Exchange Server settings are always kept up-to-date
For me, category support is the big win, as I use categories to sync Exchange calendars with Google Calendar. I just need to make sure our corporate Exchange Server has the right rollup patches, and I’ll give the beta a spin.
Mac Mojo: The Office for Mac Team Blog
I've been using the MacBook Air [macbookair, macbookair, usingthemacbookair] for about a month now. I haven't used a Mac since they ran System 7, and I've been an avid ThinkPad X-series [thinkpadx40issues, thinkpadlenovoupdates, thinkpadreference, thinkpadx40] user for the past 5 or 6 years. Before then, I was a fan of Sony Vaio laptops. I'm a PC guy. I've been using PCs since MS-DOS 3, Windows since Windows 3.0, and Linux since kernel 2.0.
The MacBook Air is undoubtedly the best laptop I've ever used.
The MacBook Air is rock solid. It is small. It is light. It is fast. It is stable. It runs cool. It is compatible. It does want I want it to do, when I want it to do it. The success of the Air is clearly a combination of a great operating system running on great hardware.
On the hardware side, the build quality is amazing. It makes every other laptop look ancient. The LED-lit LCD screen looks gorgeous. The keyboard is easy to use. And the multi-touch pad is the first laptop input device that truly supplants the desire for an external mouse. In particular, the three-finger forward and back swipe is pure genius, along with double-taps and two-finger taps. The included video camera is a nice touch. Power management is superb, with long battery life and automatic power saving modes. I never turn the Air off. I just close the lid.
The Mac OS X operating system is a joy to use. As a Windows and Linux user, I had no trouble adapting to the OS at all. The integration is thoughtful everywhere in the system, with noticeable efforts to remove complexity and excessive options. Within minutes of unboxing the system, I was up and running on the network. The closed OS/Hardware ecosystem completely removed the usual hassle with hardware driver installs and crapware removal. System updates are painless, as is installing software from the net. The whole downloadable software packaging, installation method(s), directory structure, and security enforcement is a very nicely thought out process. And finally, after all these years, Mac OS has keyboard shortcuts for everything (unlike the System 7 days). Alas, as a Windows user, I'm still fumbling with the Control, Option, and Command keys, and I'm not sure all apps are using the same editor keyboard shortcuts. I suppose I just need some practice.
As a Linux user, installing XCode is a must. I was thrilled to see that I could compile and run Midnight Commander and other Linux apps with minimal fuss, and can safely dump new stuff in /usr/local without screwing up the main system config. OS X is unix! ssh works great, as well as every other basic unix command. And the default shell is Bash. Nice. X Windows also runs fine, and I'm happy that I can use The GIMP. ImageMagick works great too, as does connecting to printers served from Linux hosts.
As a Windows user on a corporate network, Microsoft Office is absolutely mandatory for any computer (note my longing for a Linux version [thinkpadx40issues, thinkpadx40]). MS Office 2008 for the Mac is very nice, and compatible with files from Office for Windows. Entourage isn't Outlook, but in many ways that's a good thing. It is a pleasure to use, and of critical importance, is perfectly compatible with Exchange Server. Oddly, Outlook 2003 on my Thinkpad X40 loads much faster than Entourage 2008 on the Air. And alas, Excel without VBA is just a spreadsheet, not the power tool that I need. Fortunately, it looks like Microsoft is bringing VBA back in the next version. Microsoft also provides a Remote Desktop client that works very well in allowing me to remotely control my Windows workstation. The combo of Remote Desktop and Mac Spaces is nice - I switch from Mac to Windows with a simple hotkey combo. And the Cisco VPN client, along with the very nice Shimo interface, gets me on and off the corporate VPN with ease.
Finally, about the concern with the lack of peripheral ports on the Air. I haven't used a single peripheral port once in my daily operation of the laptop. I ordered the USB Ethernet adapter, tried it out to make sure it worked, and haven't used it since.
My experience with the MacBook Air has been total computing bliss. If only Windows machines were this elegant.
I've been using MC (Midnight Commander) for years on *nix systems, and was happy to get it running in the Terminal on the Mac.
But where the heck is the Insert key on a Macbook Air [macbookair, macbookair, usingthemacbookair]? You need the Insert key to select files in MC!
Thankfully, a helpful blogger pointed out that MC also uses the command "Ctrl-T" to "tag" files. Nice tip!
More tips for MC can be found here: http://linuxgazette.net/issue23/wkndmech_dec97/mc_article.html
This week, I received my new company-issued laptop.
My company was wise enough to see that the price/performance/reliability debate is won handily by Apple these days, so after years of using ThinkPads [thinkpadx40issues, thinkpadlenovoupdates, thinkpadreference, thinkpadx40], I'm now using the hard drive version of the MacBook Air.
I haven't used a Mac since the System 7 days, so I'm still getting familiar with the machine and system. I'm trying to "go native" with OS/X, and not dual-boot Windows. However, we're a Windows shop at work (see notes about Linux on the ThinkPad [thinkpadx40issues, thinkpadx40], so I'm using Remote Desktop a lot. I also plan to install Parallels VM. We'll see how it goes.
So far, I'm really impressed.
