New Era

Switched to a Mac

As I see this blog has not been updated in 13 years, and it is so out of date I was thinking of simply starting a new blog. But since I am testing Ulysses, I will just publish this one post.

So, I finally decided to jump ship, and use a Mac. I know it’s not exactly linux, but then again it’s not a Microsoft Windows OS either. I, much, prefer macOS to Windows.

The operating system is just clean, and doesn’t feel so cluttered like windows. I also like the tight integration with my iPhone, iPad and iWatch. I have fully switched to the Apple ecosystem.

Furthermore, I tried multiple solutions with Linux and Android phone, but the integration was flaky at best. An update would break the link, and then I would have to uninstall and re-install the app on both the phone and my linux machine. And then another update breaks it again. Not that it was so difficult to fix, but rather annoying. When the phone rings, and I wonder why my music didn’t stop on my desktop, Oh, the integration broke again.

So, I have a Mac Mini now. It’s a nice little computer. Sits quiet at my desk and just does its thing. While it has a built-in speaker, I can’t really call it a speaker, it’s a necessity if there is no other option. If you just want to watch a quick YouTube video, but not good enough for any kind of music, in my opinion. For that, I have an external bluetooth speaker from Ikea, the Eneby20 Gen. 2 works great.

So, since this is a test post, let’s see how it will look

Home IT department

I finally got around and uploaded all my files from my external drive to the network drive.  Did not do test the upload speeds, but will do some tests in the near future, I will post those as well.  This is the setup of my little home IT department.

Simple diagram of my home setup

And this is the actual equipment:

Actual equipment

Before purchasing this little Linksys unit, which is a USB Network storage link.  I read many reviews.  Most of them mentioned speed as being a problem.  My network as you can see is wired 10/100 and wireless G 54Mbps, so it actually fits in nicely.  And I don’t need to upgrade my router, or any of my NIC cards in my computers.  Wirelessly, it doesn’t make a difference how fast it can server up the files, from my tests, I can listen to music from the NAS.  Now the real test will be listening to music, and from another computer watching a video.  I did a brief test between the laptop, and my desktop. Over the wireless network, theser are the results:

[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  25.6 MBytes  21.5 Mbits/sec
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  26.1 MBytes  21.9 Mbits/sec
[  3]  0.0-100.0 sec    253 MBytes  21.2 Mbits/sec
[  3]  0.0-2027.8 sec  5.16 GBytes  21.9 Mbits/sec

Will be doing more test, and and indepth info will be posted.