Because Apple absolutely screwed the mini with the 2014 update. It's now dual core only. I'm running a quad i7 (it does more than merely plex) So if you're running a heavy transcoding media server, you might want the additional 2 cores a pre 2014 mini offers. If you're merely running plex server/client with predone videos and serving as a surveillance hub, you will probably want a couple of externals for storage (NAS or direct) but a 2014+ dual core will probably do fine. The 2014s do have better GPUs, FYI, but the late 2012 (previous model) GPUs are perfectly adequate for 1080P hardware decoding. All my 1080P processing is done on a different much beefier machine. Although my mini would be perfectly capable of handling it, my current configuration makes using it for that purpose more troublesome than my current workflow.

I agree - the Dell's are not cheap, but what the real issue was, for me, was the fact that even these not cheap Dell's didn't last for crap. The cheaper sub $1000 laptops do not have enough power for me, and I don't expect them to last any longer either. I did entertain a lower end macbook, and the portability of the new roughly 2 pound one certainly is intriguing if I didn't have certain types of work requirements. To be fair, there's a Compaq (8 years old and still working, but used maybe once a month) and a Toshiba (3 years old and used maybe weekly) that are in the mix, but they're not used 5-7 days a week, 8+ hours a day, both on and off power, so I don't count those. The life of a development laptop is hard, most fail quickly.

Get a pre 2014 mac mini and run plex on it for a full media server. Attach 1 or 2 externals to it for library storage, or set them up elsewhere. I know, windows... why? But the same rough box specs can be had from various vendors, and you should be able to do the same things with it. You can mount said box anywhere around or behind the TV, along with the appropriate drives, if desired. And it can be cheap.

Geez, here's some anecdotal bits, personally, IBM Thinkpad lasted 1.5 years, a couple of Toshibas 1 year or less each, 1 Dell 6 months, a three other Dells in 3 years, not a single battery survived. OTOH, a Powerbook lasted 5 years and was sold in perfect condition with a free new battery, a first gen (2006) MBP is still running, with a SSD now and a replaced fan, a 2009 MBP's sata controller became unreliable after 5 years and caused the machine to be recycled, and 2 retina MBPs, one had to be returned because it wasn't mine so I bought my current one.

I've lost several 2.5" laptop drives, but the batches in the last 4 years seem pretty solid. SSDs are awesome, provided you buy quality. 3.5" drives have never failed me while in their normal use period with 1 notable brand exception - Seagate drives larger than 1TB have been pretty unreliable, with several 1.5s and 2s failing within 2-5 months of buying them. I still have a couple, but they'll be leaving shortly for the donation pile, provided they still register and can be wiped.

It might be, the last 3 times I looked, an equivalent Dell was $100s more for as close to the same hardware specs as you could get. Price what you want first, then decide.

Yep, until you hide your header system stamp, there's no point.

I'll nod to you then :). The cameras and documentation with the TV I saw stated the camera could be used with 3rd party apps like Skype. The implication was it was fully under user control. We know now for a fact that is false thanks to the Samsung debacle. Not that I needed any further warning that such a thing was a "bad idea", yeah, let's put a TV with a camera in the living room, the bedroom, heck, the kids bedrooms, and the bathrooms too!!!! No problems there, right? Somethings just shouldn't have cameras. TVs, thanks to Orwell's foreshadowing, are in that group.

Mexico?

There was a minor difference between understood concepts in that TLA, camera connects to 3rd party service, e.g. "Skype", and being able to spy on you. It was offered for one purpose, then used for another, albeit similar in functionality, purpose. The fact that they were sending out information without the consumers knowledge or authorization is pretty much, hmmm, what would you call it?

Yep, this case raised a major legal stink, and should probably have gotten the operators in more than a little hot water, considering the spied upon subjects were minors in their bedrooms....

I disagree. It's precisely in the heterogeneous systems that a very patterned procedural approach is the only thing that works in the long term, something understood by database vendors for decades now. Based on your next statement, I believe you've confused the architecture with the actual code.

I believe we agree here, it's the clever things you do with code, the code itself is generally not clever. That is where the art lies. Coding itself is pretty much putting blocks together to build a bridge. The blocks are mostly uninteresting, but the full bridge can certainly be a work of art, or not.

part of the 99%?

You know, tinfoil hattery went out of style around the time of Snowden's releases, which proved that no one was paranoid when it comes to gov intrusion into your privacy.

Well, considering Samsung's cameras on TVs pretty much give Orwellian access to anyone stupid enough to hook their TV to the internet, along with several other pieces of info about cameras, such as on phones or computers being used without their users' awareness, I'd say you're lacking a level head if you didn't think "conspiracy" the moment you see a camera in an unexpected place.

programming is almost 0 art unless you're working in C or some other language that deals with direct memory access. Then you can get artsy. Java, C#, PHP, Go, Dart, JavaScript etc, they're all pretty much putting pieces together. If you don't understand that, then you probably don't have a good enough understanding of your field, or you're trying to be clever. In general, business plans don't succeed on clever code. Even game engines don't seem to really need that anymore as they get commoditized.