old mac new life.

So an idea from a post on the totally über-Apple-centric tech blog Unplggd inspired granting an extended life to Julian's now old eMac that Santa gave him when he was six and that he used diligently and dare I say quite expertly - maxing out it's capabilities with Photoshop and GarageBand and thereby earning himself a much peppier and newer iMac. I've bothered myself setting it up (doing a clean install of 10.4.11 to get rid of all Julian's old stuff etc.) and getting an Airport card (didn't do my homework first to discover it is only 401b - not g - so fairly useless but I was only out fifteen bucks) followed by USB bluetooth and 401b/g wi-fi adaptors. And putting to good use the first pair of Apple bluetooth mouse and keyboard since I splurged and upgraded to the newer versions for the Mini setup in the living room -

I've bothered myself with all of that but I'm not convinced how long that 700MHz eMac will sit there (since it's a CRT the screen garbles when the microwave kicks in and it's kind of slow and clunky) - but if we get used to having a handy Mac in the kitchen to stream our iTunes, look up recipes, have our to-do and lists for the store and the constant NOAA forecast and widget games like Sudoku and the NASA image of the day I may have to hook us up with a newer 17" G5 iMac or built-in Mac Mini ... we'll see.

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And just FYI the online article from Ready Made magazine talks about what it takes to make that Mac Mini built-in.