Someone has written in the Apple Discussions about accidently purchasing a song that they already have. They think it’s hard to keep track of which songs they already own in their library of 3,000 songs when they browse through the iTunes Music Store.

I have a library of around 13,400 tracks, plus my LPs and the now infamous box of CDs in my garage. I can’t tell you what I’ve got, but I do know that when I browse through an on-line store or a physical store, I can recall what music I already have. This means I never buy duplicate albums or singles.

But I guess this is down to the importance music plays one’s life. It’s critical to me and this is why I don’t have a problem recalling what I’ve purchased.

Whilst I’m still waiting for my Mac mini to ship (and yes I’m miffed that people that ordered with expected ship dates mid-February have already got theirs), here’s a couple of quotes I found on the Apple Discussions:

• “I was concerned by remarks on lack of ram and a slow laptop HD – but don’t be discouraged, this machine is very fast even with 256mb ram! It devours 125mb photoshop files like nothing I have ever used before. I was very close to buying a dell about 3 weeks ago. And put my plans on pause when I heard about the 500 dollar mac… There is nothing more suprising than opening ps7 with the mini and crunching a 12×12 500dpi cmyk file with no hesitation and no disk chatter at all. I can’t stress this point enough. I was floored by its power.”

• “Okay, sold my 1500 euro’s worth PC to buy a Mini Mac 1.42Ghz/512mb RAM/80gb hdd/No bt or air modules w/apple Keyboard+Mouse & Eizo L568 high-end monitor. I got to say, i have never seen a computer that is usable straight off the box, with only a few questions. I installed all my pre-bought programs such as Photoshop CS/Illustrator/Maya/Final Cut Pro/Adobe Acrobat 7 Pro/iWork/iLife05.
  
  I installed them ALL in a ROW!!! just in about 1 hour, with my PC the same operation would of taken more than 3 hours for sure, i am also amazed by the speed the programs open. Its amazing.
  
  Photoshop CS performance: The program itself opens up 5-10secs faster than in my XP 3000+/512mb PC configuration.
  
  All under 20mb files open and work flawlessly, over that value i would recommend a fast FireWire HDD as a scratch disk for photoshop due the slowness of Mini’s HD is seen in only heavy files. The GUI and windows appear and work faster than i have “EVER” seen, but then again this is the first mac i have seen yet.
  
  Maya: Works great, even Mini has the bare minimum frame buffer 32mb, its alot faster than 3DS MAX in a fast PC. Render times are amazingly fast, makes me think im on a cluster.”

I’ve written before about the Sonos system and how I eventually decided that I didn’t need one to distribute music around the house now that I’ve ordered a Mac mini. The Sonos system is rather expensive, despite some additional features, notably supporting multiple synchronised audio streams. It’s just started shipping in the US.

The Sonos Introductory Bundle costs $1199 comprising two ZonePlayers and a remote control. So here is what’s required to build a similar system based around a Mac mini. Prices are in US$ since this is the only pricing available for the Sonos at present.

• Base Mac mini, with Bluetooth and Airport, Keyboard and Mouse (although you don’t need last two items), $697
• 1 Airport Express, for the second ‘zone’, $129
• 1 Palm Zire 72 (includes Bluetooth), $299
• Sailing Clicker, $20
• 2 sets of active speakers, say $200 each including cables

Total cost is $1545

But now let’s see what you still need to add to the Sonos system in order to store and hear music:

• One thing that the Sonos requires is a computer to hold the music. This isn’t included in the costs, so in some respects the Mac mini component should be removed from the comparative costs too.
• The ZonePlayers are only receivers and amplifiers – you still need active speakers. So we can also remove the active speaker costs.

Correspondingly, removing the cost of the Mac mini (we still need the wireless connectivity at about $120) and the active speakers gives a total comparable cost of $568.

Of course, with the Sonos system you do get high quality amplifiers, and arguably you’ll get much better sound than from the Mac mini or Airport Express. But with the Mac mini you get a general purpose home entertainment system.

So shame on you if you didn’t send me a birthday card (and knew my address and birthday of course!).

Got my iPod shuffle today too which was nice. No problems to report although there is a substantial pause (perhaps 1.5s) between consecutive tracks – more than the other iPods. Currently called Domino, but I think may change to Solitaire, because in shuffle mode, only she knows the future.

This is just so bizarre..

Ceefax.tv

You can click on the numbers too!