Macintosh - Mac Mini aficionados please help

Just rechecked this thread... Its been awhile. Not sure if it works with Tivo, but the Mac firewire port can apparently allow the Mac to be used as a virtual HD-VHS deck. In other words, if your CATV box has a firewire out, you can dump content to the Mac drive or a network drive. Might also want to look at the EyeTV 500, which connects via firewire and allows the Mac to act as a PVR for OTA HD or, for that matter, any content from an unencrypted digital cable system that is in clear QAM...

Edesilva, I'd love it if my Tivo had Firewire out, then I'd be able to avoid using my Canopus AVDC100 altogether, but all in all it's a great piece of equipment.

For my work and doing fun stuff on my Mac at home, Firewire has been a real blessing. Great transfer rates and much more reliable than USB.

Dean,

The Mini arrived on Wednesday. Apple shipped it overnight (2 day) from China at their expense. Within a couple of hours I had the machine configured and the wireless network, printer sharing (on a winXP PC) and file sharing setup. And, I did all of this without ever cracking a manual! Gamerival and pooljam work just fine. In a few weeks when I get to know the Mini better I will start a new thread comparing Mac to WinXP. I ordered a few books on Ilife and OSX but they have yet to arrive (slow shipping at Amazon). Thanks for all your help and advice.

Later,

Prpixel,

That's pretty damn impressive and good news to boot. I guess with your prior knowledge, set up was a snap. For a non-networking retouchers like myself, setting something like that up takes a lot of trial and error and manual page flipping. Were you able to find everything you needed by accessing the Networking module in the System Preference pane?

For someone new to Macs, I think getting used to and learning to like OSX might be another matter altogether. I'll be interested to hear what you think. I stay so focused on my small section of Mac-userability that I'll just wait for you to figure everything out and report it to us, heheh.

Thanks and have fun!

Dean,

I can tell you that Apple has the worst customer service; ranks right up there with UPS claims processing department.

I'll give you an update on my impressions of the mini in a few weeks.

later,