Ernie Smith recently embarked on quite the nerd adventure:
Last week, I sent a piece extolling the joys of the Hackintosh, a concept that is very much a response to the demise of “the good old days” of Apple. But as I was working out the details on that piece, I had a not-so-secret hobby that was taking up quite a bit of my time. I was trying to figure out if I could revive a Genuine Apple Product™ that had seen better days. My acquisition of this product was a total impulse buy: After reading up on the Mac Mini G4 and remembering that it was the first computer I ever owned that I had not purchased refurbished or used (though not my first Mac), I decided to relive those days by buying a new one. I gave myself some parameters, however: It had to be as cheap as possible, and if it was broken, I had to fix it. After some research and some careful bidding on eBay, I bought a damaged one—for $10, plus shipping. And I got it to work.