Tikkabik

I admit that I totally procrastinated on it, but I finally gave Robert his computer back. It was ready weeks, if not months ago, but I held off until the boy had straightened up his room to my satisfaction. And that took some doing. Having said that, this is the computer's last hurrah, I think.

Robert's Mac is an old Sawtooth-era Power Mac G4/400MHz system that I feel like I've had forever. Robert uses it to play some older games that are still a lot of fun for him, run emulators, and surf the Web (mainly to play the occasional Shockwave game or visit Web sites he uses). It runs well -- is rock-solid and incredibly reliable. I've found absolutely no fault with it ever since it came to our house many years ago.

Over the years I've bumped up that venerable machine with an AirPort card, Radeon 8500 graphics card, new Western Digital 40GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM running the latest update of Mac OS X v10.3.7. When the olde and crufty Panasonic 17-inch CRT that was connected to the Sawtooth finally gave up the ghost last year, I replaced it with a ProView 14-inch LCD panel I got at BestBuy.com for a hundred-something bucks. It's a little scrungy -- 1024 x 768 resolution and an HD-15 analog connector, so it's a bit fuzzy, but Robert's not complaining, and it looks rather nice on the desk in the boys' room -- takes up a lot less space than the behemoth Panasonic display did.

I had thought about dropping in a 1GHz processor upgrade and a DVD-R drive for a long time, as the Sawtooth getting a bit long in its sawteeth. But with Macworld Expo SF come and gone, I certainly don't see the sense of upgrading it any further, unless a CPU upgrade drops off a truck somewhere. For $700 I can replace the Sawtooth with a loaded Mac mini running more than three times as fast.

For a very long time it's been a crapshoot as to whether it's worth upgrading a Mac or just replacing it with Apple's latest and greatest machine. A lot of it has to do with whether you've got a system that can be reasonably upgraded, or whether it's just too much of a PITA and unreasonable expense to do in the first place. I've read and contemplated the argument that it's just cheaper to pick up a basic eMac than it is to do any of that -- you net a machine that will serve you well for a few years. This is why I always get Power Macs if I can help it, though -- you get the most mileage out of them, because they've got the most replaceable and upgradeable architecture.

This debate certainly hasn't stopped companies like ATI, Sonnet, NewerTech, PowerLogix, Giga Designs and others from offering upgrades for Power Macs in the past, and there's a ready stock of off-the-shelf parts like RAM DIMMs and ATA hard drives you can buy anywhere, to upgrade storage and memory capabilities. Likewise with broken keyboards and mice and so on. So upgrading Macs is definitely a viable cottage industry.

I've gone back and forth on the upgrade vs. replace debate a number of times over the years, and as demonstrated by what I've just told you the upgrades I've done, I usually fall into the camp that says it's worth applying some modest capital -- at least if the return on investment is worth it. But with the Mac mini now available, I can safely say this is the first time it's ever been a total no-brainer to just dump an old system or find a good home for it and move on to something better.

I'm not saying the Mac mini is without fault. For $500 as a base price, you're getting a Mac of modest means. Gamers complain that the Radeon 9200 graphics chip is kinda pokey and that the 32MB VRAM isn't enough. The stock RAM -- 256MB -- is definitely inadequate for day to day tasks. And you have to pay $100 to add wireless networking and peripheral support. Plus some more if you want to burn DVDs. If you max out the 1.25GHz Mac mini with Apple's parts, you're spending almost $1,100. That seems pretty exorbitant, if for no other reason than Apple's cost for storage and memory is really unreasonable -- even with a recent price-cut on RAM.

For me, a well-equipped Mac mini is closer to $675. That gets you a 1.25GHz system with 512MB RAM, wireless networking and Bluetooth, 40GB of internal storage and a CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo drive. That seems like a competent little desktop machine that would last quite a while in my home.