The Mac Mini is an interesting device between a laptop and an immobile desktop. It has wireless and built-in speakers and with it tiny form factor, it is very portable. On the other hand, Mac OS X itself has not blown me away yet. Using Ubuntu 9.10 at work, and mainly Windows 7 at home, these OSes have set a high standard.
- External NTFS-formatted disks - by default, Snow Leopard has Mac Fuse which by itself is able to READ NTFS-formatted disks, I have an older drive in an enclosure and connect it to our Mac via USB. However, to write to this disk, we need NTFS-3G for Mac OS X; this web site can be a bit confusing. As of the time of writing, look to download "NTFS-3G for Mac OS X 2010.1.16". There are links for "Tuxera NTFS" which is the high performance, non-free version. The correct file is ntfs-3g-2010-.1.16-macosx.dmg and of size 19.6 MB.
- Since we are using a Microsoft (i.e. Windows) keyboard, the modifier keys differ compared to an Apple keyboard. Mac 101: Using your Windows keyboard provides some tips of how to cope with this. Currently, I've mapped the physical Ctrl key to a virtual Command key, and the (non-existent) Command key to a virtual Ctrl key. This makes most of the Mac keyboard short-cuts familiar to Windows users.
- Using Mac OS X, what I find most frustrating so far is not knowing the keyboard short-cuts or finding that a particular key combination does something different from what I expect. Here's a comprehensive list for a few OSes: Keyboard Shortcuts. Keep in mind, the physical Alt key on a Windows keyboard is mapped to the virtual Option key by default so most short-cuts can be achieved.
