I kicked around on the new mac mini all day today, getting much more work done than yesterday. It only took me an hour or so to hack together a printer solution using Gutenprint and a mismatched PPD–at least it prints now.

Some stuff I’m starting to like: Spotlight was useful in a case or two, I’m getting used to hitting the [Windows] key instead of control, and the F9 reflex is starting to set in. I got some networked folders to show up every time I boot (something that’s more involved than it is on a PC), used Terminal for the first time, and and installed FireFox. I also hit the menu button on the remote, and that’s pretty dang slick. Of course, I have no media on that beast to use it with, but it’s a pretty slick implementation nonetheless.

I still had trouble on the following:

• Safari froze up multiple times. (I guess 512MB of RAM and a dual-core proc isn’t enough for 5 apps at a time in OS X after all)
• Fireworks 8 is slow as crud if I try to use it with anything else running
• I still keep sacrificing system resources to apps that continue running even after I’ve closed all the windows
• Mail bogs down horribly every time I try to read an email with big images attached
• I realized that my “60GB” Hard drive already had 20GB of space used up. (Even Vista, with its gobs of legacy code, uses only about 12)
• All the anti-aliasing doesn’t look so great on my LCD, and gives me a headache. (yes, I tried adjusting it in Sys Prefs) Switching to my windows box is like a breath of fresh, crisp, clean, air.

Other than all that, OS X does have a very polished, schnazzy feel to it, for lack of a better word. I’ll at least take it out of the negative for the relatively painless day I had with it today.

Score:
PC: 3
Mac: 0