Buying a mini pc to install Delphi

[Anders Melander 1780]

I can't really recommend anything with regard to KVM switches as I haven't used one in ages. But don't buy cables that are longer than what you need 🙂 Make a mockup of the whole setup and then measure the required lengths. Cables that are too long can make a mess of even the best designed system.

 

My own system consists of a desktop PC, a laptop (connected to a docking station via Thunderbolt 4), two monitors and a single wired keyboard and Bluetooth mouse.

I mostly just use the docking station for charging the laptop and then use remote desktop to connect to it from my desktop system.

 

Both monitors have multiple inputs so I have them both connected to both the desktop and the docking station and if I want to I can then switch the active input on the monitors between the two systems. The keyboard and mouse I have to switch manually. All in all a bit cumbersome so I rarely do it this way.

[Rollo62 534]

You could check 

https://symless.com/synergy

Works like a charm for me, at fair costs 

[Alberto Paganini 3]

23 minutes ago, Rollo62 said:

You could check 

https://symless.com/synergy

Works like a charm for me, at fair costs 

But don’t you need any hardware to connect all the hardware?

 

I want to make clear I want to use one computer at the time I don’t want to keep both machines on at the same time.

 

Many thanks

Alberto

[dummzeuch 1505]

1 hour ago, Rollo62 said:

You could check 

https://symless.com/synergy

Works like a charm for me, at fair costs 

There is also Mouse Without Borders, now part of Windows Power Toys, which has a similar functionality, but is Windows only.

But as Alberto just clarified: He needs a different functionality, so this won't help.

 

Regarding KVM switches: I found them a bit too pricey for just a convenience so I do the same as Anders and use the multiple input ports of my monitor(s) to connect my computers and switch between them using the monitor's on screen menu. My keyboard has two USB ports so I connect the mouse to the keyboard and just need to plug in the keyboard's USB cable into the computer I am currently using. (A separate USB hub would offer the same "convenience" at much less cost than a KVM switch). Also, I can have one of my monitors show the display of one computer and the other the display of the second one, if I need that. I don't know whether KVM switches allow that nowadays.

 

Of course that always depends on the use case: If you want to switch frequently, a KVM switch may be worthwhile. But then maybe Remote Desktop or Synergy / Mouse Without Borders could be a better solution.

[Rollo62 534]

1 hour ago, dummzeuch said:

but is Windows only.

This sorts it out for me

[Rollo62 534]

5 hours ago, Alberto Paganini said:

But don’t you need any hardware to connect all the hardware?

It controls the mouse and you can transparently switch mouse and keyboard from one PC to the other, just by moving the mouse into the right viewport.

That means you need 1x mouse and keyboard, but 2x display, one for each PC.

 

That way you operate both machines at the same time, at least it feels like this.

 

[David Schwartz 426]

On 10/31/2024 at 6:56 AM, Lars Fosdal said:

These days I avoid shopping at Amazon. The new MacMinis look amazing - but yeah, the Apple Tax is brutal. 

"the Apple Tax"?

 

I've got a 2014 Mac Mini and a 2018 Mac Mini, as well as a 2014 MacBook Pro. They all still run just fine. I use the Mac Minis pretty much every single day. I have yet to own a Windows PC that lasts more than 3-4 years.

 

My suggestion is to buy an Intel-based Mac Mini with an i7, 256GB or more of SSD. These devices let you upgrade the RAM, so you could get one with just 8GB and put in a couple of 16GB DRAMs. 

 

Also, you can get more SSD, but it's cheaper to get a Samsung T5, T7, or T9 external SSD (USB 3.2) rather than pay the cost of adding more SSD to the base machine. A 512 GB SSD + a 2TB T7 may be an optimal choice.

 

Set it up with a VM and load Delphi into that. I use VirtualBox, but I just read where VMWare just announced that Workstation and Fusion are now FREE. Be sure to back them up; mine take up 100GB or so, which only takes a few minutes to copy to a T5 and less on the faster ones.

 

As far as connecting to whatever you get, I access my 2014 Mac Mini via the 2018 one using an RDP connection (shared desktop). That would work as well for Windows as Macs.

 

I'm looking at getting a new Mac Mini with the M4 chip ... does anybody know how well VMs running Windows work on Apples Mx series chips? Does the Intel CPU emulation layer slow things down very much?

Edited Friday at 11:02 PM by David Schwartz

[Rollo62 534]

12 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

"the Apple Tax"?

 

I've got a 2014 Mac Mini and a 2018 Mac Mini, as well as a 2014 MacBook Pro. They all still run just fine.

Yes they do, but I can not use my older MacBook for current development any more.
For text editzors and web-Browsing it will be fine.

 

12 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

My suggestion is to buy an Intel-based Mac Mini with an i7, 256GB or more of SSD. These devices let you upgrade the RAM, so you could get one with just 8GB and put in a couple of 16GB DRAMs.

I would recomment to use the latest, affordable Mac Mini with M2/3/4, since clearly this Apple Silicon is Apples future.

No one knows, how long Intel will still be supported by Apple at all, I'm afraid my next major update will stuck on the old OS on Intel.

 

They like to hard-cut and freeze older OS, even after a few years after purchase, which brings us back to the "Apple TAX".

Not only their products have an extreme Price-Tag for the performance, they also enforce tp use the whole "ecosystem" and rebuy such maching after a few years.

Now Windows is doing similar, after decades of backwards compatibilty, with Win10 to Win11, and the world complains massively.

But Apple TAX is maybe the wrong expression, under these considerations, Apple MAFIA would hit it better

 

It all depends on what you are using it for, if for development I would be careful.

 

Edited yesterday at 11:55 AM by Rollo62

[Patrick PREMARTIN 68]

On 10/30/2024 at 3:33 PM, Anders Melander said:

It's a very nice system but the refurbished ones I have been able to find are a bit expensive for what you get. I couldn't find any with more than 8Gb RAM although the max is 16Gb.

It's the Mac mini M1 I use. I bought it after the GTK to check if I could work on it with Windows VMs and never changed. The only thing that really annoys me is the SSD, which I also took to be too small and supplemented by external disks around the case.

 

Buying an Intel Mac is a bad idea. Buy a "real" PC instead of that. The Intel based models can't soon use latests macOS releases and you won't be able to code for macOS or iOS. The M1 should still have 2 or 3 years before being deprecated.

Edited 12 hours ago by Patrick PREMARTIN

[Alberto Paganini 3]

Hello again

On 11/12/2024 at 9:09 AM, dummzeuch said:

I do the same as Anders and use the multiple input ports of my monitor(s) to connect my computers and switch between them using the monitor's on screen menu. M

Thanks for this advice, my monitor had 1 VGA and 1 DVI. I took this onboard and connected one PC to one monitor port and the other PC to another.

Then purchased a USB hub and plugged the keyboard and the mouse (and I still have two more USB ports available). All I have to do is to switch one USB cable and I can control one of the two PCs

 

Thank you

Alberto

 

 

[Lars Fosdal 1790]

On 11/15/2024 at 11:59 PM, David Schwartz said:

My suggestion is to buy an Intel-based Mac Mini with an i7, 256GB or more of SSD.

Intel Macs are going the way of the Dodo. It is all about ARM for Apple now.

 

The Apple Tax refers to the premium you pay if upgrading from the base spec of an Mx based device. The cost is ridiculous. You could buy a second device for the price of the upgrades.

 

Edit: ...and your average consumer cannot upgrade the device by themselves.

Edited 40 minutes ago by Lars Fosdal
Added no upgrade