Over the weekend

We finally replaced Jane's 3-year-old iMac DV this past weekend - with a shiny new 17" widescreen iMac. My original inclination was to buy the less pricey eMac, but when she saw the iMac screen it was all over.

After a couple of days, I can safely say it's sweet. I haven't yet made any DVD's (the biggest reason we got it), but I've used it a little, and I'd say it's a hair snappier than my TiBook 667 (my TiBook has a faster system bus, but a slower processor, video card, and hard drive). The widescreen is spectacular to look at, and Jaguar takes good advantage of the GeForce 4MX video subsystem.

My only complaints are that the keyboard cable is just too darned short, and the AirPort reception isn't quite as good as on the old Kihei-series iMac it replaced - so I had to move the base station out of the cellar.

That's it for computers for a while, until David needs one someday. My next project is to try and get my e-smith server box moved over to run on my iOpener. I'll have to either wait until the next version or build my own kernel - the iOpener uses a USB Ethernet card that my friend Rob hacked onto the motherboard, and the 2.2 kernel doesn't really support USB network devices. But my ultimate goal is to run a low-power server that's silent, and the iOpener fits the bill even better than my Book PC.