Up's and down's with the new Mac mini
John Surtees As with all Apple kit, as soon as you open the box there is a feel of quality about it. And this is only the Mini. What must it be like to open the box on a Mac Pro?
The first thing I did was partition the drive. I then used Migration Assistant to bring over all my stuff from the G4 tower. Never having used Migration Assistant before, it came as a nice surprise to find there is the option to import from an external hard drive.
Thanks to SuperDuper, I had a mirror image of my G4 on the external hard drive; but it was only then that I was reminded, that my hard drive was firewire 400 and the Mac mini only has 800. I then spent a couple of hours searching local and online stores for 400 to 800 conversion adapters or cables. While they are available, I thought there must be an easier way.
Luckily, I remembered that I had another drive tucked away in a cupboard, that I use for backing up another system. It has both 400 and 800 on it. So I was able to use it as a conversion device. Out of the mini via 800 and into the spare drive, then 400 out and into the drive with the system on. At this point, you can imagine what my desktop looked like. A Mac mini, two hard drives, three power bricks, monitor and two keyboards, plus all the relevant cables.
On restarting, it was just like looking at the desktop of my G4. BUT…
Some of my software would not work without re-entering passwords. 'Default Folder' and 'Spell Catcher' sensed that they were not on the G4 and needed to be purchased again. Quark also senses that it is on another machine, but it is only a button press to get it 'blessed'. My early CS versions of Adobe programs opened with no problem.
However, whatever I did, I could not get Mail to recognise my accounts. After searching the web, it seems this can be a major problem with Leopard. I finally re-installed the system using 'Archive & Install'. This enabled me to receive mail, but at the moment, it still will not send.
Worst of all, is the problem of printing. While my 'Brother MFC' works well, my 'Lexmark C522' colour laser, outputs OK, but it actually runs slower. The download is fine, but the speed of the paper coming out is under half the speed. I also use a 'Xante Filmmaker 4' A3 laserprinter. This is a machine that on Tiger, has a whole range of facilities for calibration, gamma control etc. Non of which is available when used in Leopard.
After years of working to the background sound of a Mac cooling fan, the mini is wonderfully quiet, and I'd love to retire the G4. But until the e-mail and printing problems are overcome, it looks like the G4 with Tiger will still have work to do.