Last Updated on July 4, 2025 by stlplace
I have a Mac Mini, and I owned it for quite a few years now. I bought it at Costco St. Peters store, at around Christmas 2021. I used to use it to get to Citrix via Citrix Workspace, the remote desktop software that I used for work. The main reason I prefer this over the company provided IGEL product is I like the keyboard and touchPad for my Mac Mini better than the IGEL’s. I no longer uses Citrix as my employer switched to another software for remote work, also they provided a company laptop for work.
But I still have the Mac Mini, and sometimes I like to see my kids use the Mac Mini, instead of the laptop. Because the Mac Mini (the desktop) is in a public location, and I know what they are doing there. My older daughter (15) has the MacBook Air too: and not surprisingly she would goof around much more – aka doing TikTok etc. compared to do real things at the desktop.
Other benefits of a desktop computer is a larger display or screen, and family members can work on something together, if/when applicable. This is similar to the good old days, when we work in office, we have desktop or large screen, we can do pair programming or debugging together.
If you have limited budget, and don’t have extra money for Mac Mini or something similar, I fully understand. And if you have an extra display, you can still connect the laptop to the external display, to take advantage of the real estate. In fact, I think I have one or two extra external displays, if you are in STL area and are interested, shoot me an email at minjie dot xu at gmail dot com, and you can pick it up at my home at Olivette (aka 橄榄村)。
Also, you may be interested in the computers I used for work.
Separately, I just bought a new iPad for myself. I hope to use iPad more often (instead of iPhone). This has been my goal, but previous effort (a Samsung Android tablet) has been fallen short.