Butch Clydesdale

Wow, so far 2010 is off to a great start for me!

I left my employer, Park&Co, in late-January to pursue other opportunities. It was a little scary due to the economy and all, but risks are necessary to grow. And I was tired of feeling like I was not growing or going anywhere.

I am working on several freelance projects right now and also starting a new job next week. I will be working there part-time for two months, then moving to full-time in the beginning of April.

I did plan all this, but let’s face it, plans never seem to work out exactly how you thought. But so far, they have for me. I feel very fortunate.

Dell Mini 9 with OS X

My Dell mini has survived the road test at work. I have used it almost exclusively for about 2 weeks straight. I only had to fire up my MBP to open some proposals in Word (did not want to install MS Office on my mini). I am so impressed this $300 machine can satisfy my work requirement. Mind you I am a coder so, my requirements are pretty low.

For a short time, I worked with the stock version of Ubuntu installed when I opened the box. I was impressed with the speed of the machine early on. I guess I expected it to be sluggish at times and I am pleasantly surprised it has not been at all. The only disappointment I had that was the deal breaker was the lack of dual-monitor support. I quickly learned I could not plug my 22″ Dell monitor and run the native 1680 x 1050 resolution on the second monitor.

I found some articles for installing OS X on the machine and thought I’d give it a try. After purchasing a retail copy of OS X, I followed the instructions and within an hour had a functioning $300 Mac. I had a few hiccups, but overall it went very smooth. I installed my needed programs like Firefox, Chrome, BBEdit and an FTP client — and was up and running! I purchased the computer with a 16GB SSD drive so after the install I had about 5GB left. Obviously I will not be putting my music collection on this computer or storing tons of files, which is good. It will force me to maintain a lean installation and store all other files on the network. Besides I mostly listed to Last.fm or Pandora while at work.

I think it’s a keeper! Now I can leave my MBP at home.

Dell Mini 9

I ordered a Dell Mini 9 this week. It was $199 as the base price and a little over $300 with some upgrades and sales tax. I am very curious how this machine will perform. My plan is using this as my work computer and leave my MBP at home. My computing requirement is so low to perform my job — basic internet programs (email client & browser), text editor (for code), FTP client and I’m set!  This machine should work nice. I think it’s ability to mutitask effectively will be the true measure if it will work for me.

The screen and keyboard are small, but I plan on connecting and external keyboard and screen anyways. I will post update when it arrives.