In November 2008, I purchased a basic Mac Mini for whatever the price was — I think it was $599.  I had decided to make the leap from Windows XP to Mac OS.  I was leery, but many of friends had been using Macs for years and swore by them for ease of use and reliability.  I had the 17″ MacBookPro picked out.  Fully tricked out — heck even pretty basic — they run $3000.  What if I made the leap and didn’t like it?  That made me nervous.  But the Mac Mini was a fully functioning Mac for the price of a Windows machine.  I had a great 17″ Samsung monitor.  I had keyboards and mice (but, to be honest, I bought a snazzy new Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and sleek Logitech mouse – my mice have to be sleek, I mouse with my left hand).  For a minimal investment, I’d know if I could tolerate Mac.  You know what they say, “Once you go Mac, you never look back.”  Oh, that’s not quite how it goes?  Shrug.  Works that way for me.

I have embraced my Mini, but last summer I ran up against the poor little critter just not having enough memory.  iFixit has a great website that walks you through the process of opening your Mac Mini (you need a putty knife).  The new once have an easily removed bottom cover to facilitate memory and hard drive replacement.  Mine was one model before that, so I need a putty knife.  The step by step instructions are great, and this long ago electronics tech had no trouble making the upgrade.  The Mini has been doing well with 2.5G RAM.  The poor Mini came with only an 80G hard drive.  This summer, I’m up against a hard drive space issue.  At the moment, if I keep my trash emptied, I have 7G of open space on the hard drive.  That’s not enough.  I have a 1TB external drive that I run Time Machine on as well as keep my music and pictures, but I need a longer term solution.

If you’re Facebook Friends with me, you know I’ve mentioned getting a new iMac and probably getting a new Mini when it comes out.  You already know I sprang for the 11″ MacBook Air last fall, and I love it.  But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if maybe a new hard drive might be all my Mini needs to keep me purring along.  This months Macworld has a Do It Yourself feature with instructions to “Make A New Boot Drive.”  I can clone my current boot drive and remove and replace the 80G drive with, oh, say, 500G for under $100.  ($60 for the drive, $20-40 for the drive dock to clone to, and maybe some cloning software — I may not even need that if I restore from Time Machine).  That’s looking like a better solution that buying another machine.

What do you guys think?