At home, we have a computer in the lounge. It gets used for reading news, looking up stuff on teh intarweb, playing games, watching TV, and some development work.

The box is tucked away neatly down the side of the sofa, so it’s out of sight. The keyboard and mouse are wireless. The monitor sits on a coffee table.

This works quite well, but there are a couple of problems:

  1. It’s noisy. Apparently I’m the only one who notices this and cares, but it does annoy me. Even with the minimum number of fans to stop it overheating (PSU, gfx card, 2 CPU, 2 case), all turned down to their lowest speeds, it’s too loud for me.
  2. It runs Windows. It used to run Linux, but this caused me frustration as I fought to get stuff to work. I have enough frustration trying to get things to work in my job - I don’t need it when I get home. I like videos to play and games to run.

Now that Macs can dual boot Windows, I’m attracted by the idea of trying to run OS X. If it doesn’t Just Work™, however, we can go back to running Windows instead.

So what’s the best choice for a lounge machine? An iMac. Except for the price. We already have a nice monitor, so it’s a bit silly paying for another one. A Mac Mini would be great, then, if not for the lack of graphics ability and the slow hard drive.

I’m now hoping that Apple bring out something like a ‘Mac Medium’ - a Mac Mini, except bigger, with a proper hard drive and having some ability to handle 3D. It should also be GBP 800 when configured with 2G RAM.

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