The Mac Mini that the kids use is showing its age. With the new hardware and their demands for school and video and such, it seemed like a good time to get updated.

I admit I'm a little intrigued and hesitant at the same time. First generation of stuff, and all that. Apple's pretty good, at least recently, with new stuff. Still, a system-on-a-chip first-gen CPU is kind of major.

After seeing some online reviews, and realizing that it can't be worse than the early Intel I5 that we have now, I broke down and got one. So far, all I've done with it is sign in and finish the out-of-box setup, and then open a browser to create this link. And, so far, so good.

Also, so far, the other one is still in use. I've not connected this to the 27-inch Thunderbolt Display (originally purchased to go with my now legacy 17-inch MacBook Pro). It should work just fine, but we'll see what happens after kid school finishes.

Inasmuch as web browsing to a blog editor, and grabbing a little screenshot, shouldn't stretch any machine, this one is clearly not stretched. It took longer to crawl under my desk, dig out the power strip on the floor, and plug it in, than the rest of the set-up took.

Fingers crossed it only gets better!