Mac Mini in the Kitchen ... thoughts?
My girlfriend wants a TV in the kitchen, I said ok. I should be going to the store, buying an LCD TV and a mount and installing it, but no. I want to make it better. A DVD player (which we would have) is bigger than a mac mini, so I can't get yelled at about taking up too much space.
What do yall think about a 15" Samsung 710MP wallmount with a swinging arm connected to cable and a dual-core mac-mini? I could connect an external hard drive to it store movies/music on, we could have a nice little media center mac right in the kitchen.
Any suggestions? Or any "this is a terrible idea" 's?
What do yall think about a 15" Samsung 710MP wallmount with a swinging arm connected to cable and a dual-core mac-mini? I could connect an external hard drive to it store movies/music on, we could have a nice little media center mac right in the kitchen.
Any suggestions? Or any "this is a terrible idea" 's?
Comments
Originally posted by jpennington
My girlfriend wants a TV in the kitchen, I said ok. I should be going to the store, buying an LCD TV and a mount and installing it, but no. I want to make it better. A DVD player (which we would have) is bigger than a mac mini, so I can't get yelled at about taking up too much space.
What do yall think about a 15" Samsung 710MP wallmount with a swinging arm connected to cable and a dual-core mac-mini? I could connect an external hard drive to it store movies/music on, we could have a nice little media center mac right in the kitchen.
Any suggestions? Or any "this is a terrible idea" 's?
You could get an iMac G5 and wall mount it.
Originally posted by jpennington
I considered that, but the intel iMac with Frontrow cannot be wallmounted yet. Also, I planned on using the built in tv-tuner in the samsung monitor for TV. If I used the iMac I would have to eyetv or something to watch television.
I think using the mini and screen is a great idea. Let me know how it goes, and I may follow suit. I always have the TV, or tunes going when I'm cooking, and with Bonjour, it could make life very easy.
Originally posted by jpennington
I considered that, but the intel iMac with Frontrow cannot be wallmounted yet. Also, I planned on using the built in tv-tuner in the samsung monitor for TV. If I used the iMac I would have to eyetv or something to watch television.
HUH? I thought all these imacs supported standard VESA mounts.
Maybe that got dropped when they revamped the iMacs to include FrontRow (G5 or Core Duo)? Sneaky sneaky.
I don't spend too much time in the kitchen, but my girlfriend does. Also for music.
I was thinking mac mini so I could monitor the sites I run at night and watch stocks during the day. Obviously this is not needed and in my opinion is a waste of money. I consider a lot of things a waste of money though, nice cares, houses with guest rooms, etc., but I still buy them all, why not do this? Right?
And you'll probably want an iSkin for the mini's kb to keep it clean.
Dunno if there's a similar option for mouse/remote.
I mean, if money isn't an issue (which it is most of the the time, just not enough to stop me) why wouldn't I go with this?
I thought about the airport issue, not only the microwave but the fact that the way the walls are set up there is hardly any wireless signal in the room anyway, which sucks. I have an Airport Express set up in the same place I would be running the cable from, so I thought about just running a network cable from there too. Since I am already having the run the cable, I might as well just use a wired connection.
With that being said, back to the issue of no wireless in the kitchen. The line of site to one airport and blocked by two brick walls and the line of site to another airport is blocked by an air conditioner, water heater, and a wall of immense insulation to block out sounds, nothing getting through those walls. I could just running a cable into the kitchen and put another airport express. I was thinking though, since I would be putting a mac-mini in their I would just create an adhoc networking sharing the ethernet connection that was discussed earlier in this post. Now the question is, is there a way (probably via third party application) to create a secure network (wpa2) and make the ssid the same as my current network, thus extending roaming into the kitchen? I know I can create it and change the name to the current SSID, but to the best of my knowledge, I can't enable security. Anyone know how?
I wanted to go touch screen but it was too expensive.
Someone made a "portable mini" with a eight inch screen, trackpad and mini mini keyboard for a very small amount of green. Try to look up their site. I think there is a lot of clues there (and post the link here since I can´t find it again )
http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/09/t...mini-portable/
and
http://homepage.mac.com/peter_green/...ect/index.html
Can you use a touch screen with a mac mini? That would be awesome, if so, what brand/model?
It was actually easier than I thought. I live in a 1500sqft apartment (I'm a half student half full time worker), but for some reason wireless from my three airport WAPs doesn't get into my kitchen, so I had to run a network cable and a coax cable. I drilled holes at the bottom of one side of the wall and the top of the other and fished the lines through. They were both coming from my living room where I already have a coax amplifier splitter and a 100mbit switch. I used a signal selector and put one input direct cable and the other from the coax output of my tivo, so if my girlfriend wants to watch TV and no one is in the living room or she wants to watch the same thing, we can just flip the switch. We have a false ceiling in the kitchen, so I was able to run the power cable from the frig across the ceiling (along the metal beams) to the mini location. I set the mini up on top of some of the cabinets. It works great, you can't see it but you can still use the remote for FrontRow (it is the core duo mini).
I only ran into one problem, the distance on the built in bluetooth, it doesn't work the well from the keyboard/mouse to the bar. I have a logitech 530 keyboard/mouse combo on my powermac that I brought in and tried, it worked great. I will pick up another set tomorrow.
I will take pictures once I get the new keyboard/mouse in the morning.
All in all, the project took about 4 hours (including snacking and drinking ). It cost about (all pricing are approximations after tax)
Mac-Mini - $855
Monitor (with builit in TV-tuner and D-Sub input) - $270
LCD Arm - $100
New Keyboard/Mouse - $110
Misc. - $125
Total - Around $1460
MIsc. was just network cables, coax cable, more cable ties, VGA cable.
Originally posted by Xool
HUH? I thought all these imacs supported standard VESA mounts.
Maybe that got dropped when they revamped the iMacs to include FrontRow (G5 or Core Duo)? Sneaky sneaky.
IIRC, rev. A iMac G5 had an available VESA mount, you pop off the back plate and swap the stand for a VESA mount. That good idea was done away with rev, B and Core Duos, probably because it was too good of an idea. In the same way, the newer iMacs are a lot more inconvenient to upgrade and maintain too, which is a bummer.
The kitty kibble is good too in case you want a snack!
The real question is, where's the TiVo hiding?