2009 Mac Pro flashed with 2010 firmware, and a perhaps significantly less 'early' 2012 MacBook Air. I also have a 2009 MBP lying around somewhere...
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Looks really good, my 8 year old happened to walk past as I was browsing your post and said ”whooo…cool….he‘s rich….”
Are you going to keep the thinkpad low to the floor? Perhaps a small table on wheels could fit where that box is on the left, then you could put the Thinkpad on there and roll it out when needed.
Here’s my late 2006 17-inch iMac. I’ve used for years now as a daily driver (next to my iPad) after picking it up second hand for €50 (keyboard, mouse and everything else included)
It’s actually running Mavericks thanks to Parrotgeek’s patcher. I used to use Snow Leopard on it but the browser situation is not that great on there. Thankfully on Mavericks I can install the latest build of Chromium and use it to even watch fullscreen YouTube at 1080p@30 without stutters.
It also acts as my network file server to store all of my movies, series and music. It has served me very well over all these years and I’ll continue to use it until the GPU inevitably gives up lol.
Oh and yes, I still do graphics and document work on here:
No, not rich. I wish!
Just a matter of buying stuff off eBay over time. The table itself was only around $300 as it's MDF with a wood veneer. That acrylic Cinema Display was $150 in 2014. I've had it as my primary display for the last seven years. The 30" Cinema Display on the left was a craigslist score at $100.
Anyway, for now the Thinkpad (and the Mac Mini underneath it) will stay there until I can arrange something else. I just needed a place to put them at the time and that seemed the best. I would have had them on the table itself but they'd have blocked the monitor on the right.
Going to need the right kind of table. Low enough to allow the Thinkpad to have the screen up.
Just had to say, very cool avatar!
I don't know the phone you are showing, but I do recognize Sense UI. I have an HTC Touch Pro running that.
Thanks! It's the legendary HTC HD2, which stands proudly in-box in my bookshelf. The phone that could run everything from Winmo 6.5 tot Android 7 (or later?) I've used it for a couple of years mostly on Windows Phone 7.8, but I still love the Sense UI!
Oh and the Touch Pro was awesome, especially with that slide out keyboard 😀
EDIT: And I should say, that Thinkpad looks glorious. Which model is it? I used to daily drive a T61 next to my iMac until 2019.
It's an L420. I was on the hunt at the time for a T420 as recommended by a user here, but wasn't paying attention. I got three from the same vendor at once. My wife got one, my son and I got the other. That was about five years ago I think. They're great PCs, but this model seems to hate Windows 10.
The T420 is many people's ultimate dream Thinkpad it seems. I think it was one the last with the old style keyboards or something. I hope to find one someday myself! (for a decent price)
But I'm getting way off topic here 😆
Spent the morning figuring out how to edit .car files with Think Engine so that I could turn my system into 'Desert Leopard' 😆.
Can't take credit for original wallpaper, Luke Miani on Youtube did that.
Can't take credit for original wallpaper, Luke Miani on Youtube did that.
The problem with the T420 is - the standard 1366×768 screen is the biggest piece of crap I've ever seen. The absolute worst TN panel ever. A sad joke. A disgrace to the ThinkPad name.
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Thanks for the answer, I didn't know ... my mistake, now I want a 2.66 but in Spain is going to be difficult to find one in the used market. Apple should have added a socket, they had a lot of space for one.
Ugh, driving me nuts. 
Turns out that the Aluminum Cinema Displays have a slightly thinner top bezel than bottom bezel. This makes it kind of difficult to judge angle and placement of the displays because both vertical displays are turned in the same direction. That places one monitor with the thinner bezel next to a display and one monitor with a slightly thicker bezel next to a display throwing symmetry slightly off. But I give up now, because now it's all a matter of the way I'm sitting that's affecting my perception.
These final little tweaks always get me.
Turns out that the Aluminum Cinema Displays have a slightly thinner top bezel than bottom bezel. This makes it kind of difficult to judge angle and placement of the displays because both vertical displays are turned in the same direction. That places one monitor with the thinner bezel next to a display and one monitor with a slightly thicker bezel next to a display throwing symmetry slightly off. But I give up now, because now it's all a matter of the way I'm sitting that's affecting my perception.
These final little tweaks always get me.
Do you find yourself getting practical benefit from so many displays, or is more of a 'I do it because I can' sort of thing?Ugh, driving me nuts.
Turns out that the Aluminum Cinema Displays have a slightly thinner top bezel than bottom bezel. This makes it kind of difficult to judge angle and placement of the displays because both vertical displays are turned in the same direction. That places one monitor with the thinner bezel next to a display and one monitor with a slightly thicker bezel next to a display throwing symmetry slightly off. But I give up now, because now it's all a matter of the way I'm sitting that's affecting my perception.
These final little tweaks always get me.
It started out as 'my work Mac has three displays, so I want my home Mac to have six'. That was with my Quicksilver. It required three video cards. I kept that with my Quad G5, but am now with the MP that only needs two cards.
That said, I've used dual displays at work since 2003 so I justify it. This particular setup works for me because I am treating the two 30" monitors as ONE display and the two vertical monitors as displays for palettes and other app windows I want close by.
The acrylic monitor is for three specific finder windows I want open all the time as well as for my hard drives and desktop junk. The HDTV I use to play back video mainly, because - hi def!
So, yeah, it's kind of both. Quite honestly though I believe this is as far as I will go in quantity. I can only use so many displays before they just become picture frames.
Yeah, looks good.You need this sucker (not my image)
Except I don't have the cash for that, LOL!
PS. It's a two slot card…
(not my image) There you go - but I have no idea whether it works in macOS LOL (it's a cut down 7770 so... it might).
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I have a fine collection of older Intel Macs, most of which have been opened up and upgraded at some point.
I know this forum counts "older Intel" as Core2Duo and earlier, but I'm going to count my 2011 iMac and 2012 MacBook Pro. They've got i5 processors, but they've got the older designs that still have replaceable RAM and hard drives, and they're running older versions of OS X. They're still "golden era of Intel Macs" material to me.
iMacs
Here's the three almost-identical MacBooks. I use them as DJ machines because they're good enough to run the software and they're easy enough to replace if someone spills a drink over them. They're running Sierra in this pic, but they run Mountain Lion now.
Here's the iMac collection in my home office. The 2006 model isn't pictured - it's on the floor. 2009 on the left, 2011 in the middle, 2015 4K on the right.
I know this forum counts "older Intel" as Core2Duo and earlier, but I'm going to count my 2011 iMac and 2012 MacBook Pro. They've got i5 processors, but they've got the older designs that still have replaceable RAM and hard drives, and they're running older versions of OS X. They're still "golden era of Intel Macs" material to me.
iMacs
- 2006 Core Duo, 20", 2GB, 1TB HDD, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
- 2009 Core2Duo, 21", 16GB, 500GB SSD, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
- 2011 Quad Core i5, 21", 16GB, 500GB SSD, OS X 10.9 Mavericks
- 2009 Core2Duo, 13", 16GB, 250GB SDD, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
- 2012 Dual Core i5, 13", 16GB, 500GB SSD, OS X 10.9 Mavericks
- 2006 Core Duo, 13", 2GB, 120GB HDD, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (the infamous 'cracked palmrest' model of MacBook)
- 2009 Core2Duo, 13", 8GB, 250GB SSD, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
- 2009 Core2Duo, 13", 8GB, 250GB SSD, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
- 2010 Core2Duo, 13", 8GB, 250GB SSD, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
- 2009 Core2Duo, 8GB, 500GB SSD, OS X 10.9 Mavericks
Here's the three almost-identical MacBooks. I use them as DJ machines because they're good enough to run the software and they're easy enough to replace if someone spills a drink over them. They're running Sierra in this pic, but they run Mountain Lion now.
Here's the iMac collection in my home office. The 2006 model isn't pictured - it's on the floor. 2009 on the left, 2011 in the middle, 2015 4K on the right.
That's just lovely
What are you running on the 2015 4K? Mine used to run El Capitan but Mojave's Dark Mode eventually managed to pull me over...
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The 2015 runs Mojave. It ran Catalina until a few weeks ago, but I downgraded it.
I won't be upgrading it to Big Sur. When Apple release a major redesign of Mac OS, I buy new Macs to run it and keep the older Macs on the "design" of Mac OS they originally came with.
I'll buy new M1 Macs to run Big Sur and beyond.
If a Mac originally came with Yosemite or beyond, I'll upgrade it as far as Mojave.
If a Mac originally came with Snow Leopard or beyond, I'll upgrade it as far as Mavericks.
If it came with Tiger or beyond, I'll take it to Leopard (PPC) or Snow Leopard (Intel).
Someone will probably comment "it's not save to keep old machines that aren't updated", but I use new supported machines for any important online work. The older Macs aren't day-to-day computers - they're just display items in my collection. Except the DJ laptops, but they're never connected to the internet. MP3s get copied to them on USB sticks.
I won't be upgrading it to Big Sur. When Apple release a major redesign of Mac OS, I buy new Macs to run it and keep the older Macs on the "design" of Mac OS they originally came with.
I'll buy new M1 Macs to run Big Sur and beyond.
If a Mac originally came with Yosemite or beyond, I'll upgrade it as far as Mojave.
If a Mac originally came with Snow Leopard or beyond, I'll upgrade it as far as Mavericks.
If it came with Tiger or beyond, I'll take it to Leopard (PPC) or Snow Leopard (Intel).
Someone will probably comment "it's not save to keep old machines that aren't updated", but I use new supported machines for any important online work. The older Macs aren't day-to-day computers - they're just display items in my collection. Except the DJ laptops, but they're never connected to the internet. MP3s get copied to them on USB sticks.
Whenever that happens, I always remind them of the existence and effectiveness of hardware firewalls which only require an old PC with two NICs and open source software like IPFire and which can be configured within 30 minutes.