I always wonder what other people’s desk looks like, so I figured.. meh, *maybe* someone is curious what my little geek center looks like. Before I get into things, know that I have always been a Windows user. Even after buying a Mac Mini and adding 4 gigs of ram to it, I was still using bootcamp with Windows XP Pro 95% of the time.

There are advantages to both operating systems, I just got tired of having to deal with drivers and the hassle of XP not seeing more then 2 gigs of ram etc (that’s right kids, if you run Windows XP Pro and it’s not the 64 bit version, your system can’t use more then 2 gigs of ram. MS claims it can, but many benchmark tests prove otherwise). If you want to run something, you have to click start, go to programs, funnel through a bunch of shit to find it and what if you have more then one version of a piece of software? Then it’s a pain as well.. things conflicting, drivers not working right, the list goes on and on.

With Apple, to be blunt and sound like a commercial… things just work. Don’t get me wrong, Apple has it’s shit moments too, every OS does… but OS-X is based on Unix. It’s rock solid, it’s 99% virus free, it’s fast as fuck as well. I found it weird that if someone loads up XP or Vista and then runs it in bootcamp via Mac OS-X…. the benchmarks scores are faster then if you ran the same benchmark from a PC with the same specs. If you google, you’ll see I’m right. It sucks, I know.. but it’s true. Mac Pros, Macbook Pros etc, run Vista faster then PC’s do. Weird hey?

So I figured fuck it, I see all these people flipping to mac because they got tired of their PC being a piece of shit, filled with bloatware, spyware, viruses, the list goes on. I run a tighter box then that so mine wasn’t that bad.. but still… I wanted something faster, something cool.

I moved from a Pentium 4 2.8 with a gig of ram to a manly Mac Mini 2.0 with 4 gigs of ram. Some people might think.. old system was a 2.8, new system is a 2.0. Old system will be faster. Nope, not even remotely close.

So, I went from Pentium 4 2.8 with 1 gig of ram to Mac Min 2.0 with 4 gigs of ram, then a year later.. Mac Pro 2.8 (x2) with 10 gigs of ram. If you’re curious how fast your system is, head over to geekbench.ca and download the free software.

Here’s a snap of my profile showing all my geekbench scores. Click for larger.

Here’s a picture of things as it sits right this second..

System on left:

Apple Mac Min 2.0 with 4 gigs ram.
120 gig internal hard drive
8X superdrive (dvd/cd R/RW)
Samsung 24” 244T LCD Monitor
Seagate 750 gig external drive
Seagate 500 gig external drive
Maxtor 300 gig external drive.
Apple keyboard, Logitech roller ball mouse.
OS: Windows XP Pro (32 bit) via bootcamp

System on right (main system)

Apple Mac Pro (3.1) 8 Core 2.8GHz Xeon (x 2) with 10 gigs of ram
320 gig internal hard drive
16X super drive (dvd/cd R/RW)
Apple 30” Cinema Display
Seagate 7200.11 1 terabyte drive (x2)
Apple keyboard, logitech mouse
Logitech 9000 webcam
OS: Mac OS-X 10.5 (64 bit)

All is sitting on a desk from Ikea… but I am getting a new desk shortly. Ikea is great but their stuff is cheaper. The desk gives me splinters on the edges where my wrists/arms are. I want a biomorph desk, those are fucking insane… but also, fucking pricey.

I think after the desk, next investment in my office is an Arthur Miller Aeron chair.

I am going to streamline soon, moving the Mini to the living room to run the Plasma, my buddy is taking the Samsung off my hands. The 244T was/is easily the best screen I had ever used but the new mac cinema display… wow. Unreal.