Well, to be fair, I was never gone, but my "daily driver" for the past 3 years (during the early days of COVID) has been an aging Dell Optiplex 9010, which was a hand-me-down. When my work-issued Surface Pro 3 died an untimely death in 2017 (and wasn't replaced), I refurbished the Optiplex which I had saved in our equipment closet for just such an emergency occasion. The original use case was that I would be using this machine just on Fridays. Back then my WFH day was Fridays, so I didn't need the latest and greatest. I just needed to get paperwork done. During COVID, when I couldn't go into the office to use my Mac, the Optiplex did it's job.  That said...it's been super slow!!!  With no replacement in sight, I ended up going with my original plan and buying my own Mac Mini for work and entertainment.

I bought the last of the Intel-based Mac Minis, despite the availability and cheaper price of the M1-based Macs, because I really wanted to be able to use Bootcamp for x86 Windows. This turned out to be a wise choice because there are some things that are a bit gnawing on the Mac side when you're working with multiple HDMI monitors, and with software that's not supported any longer...

The first big issue was that my desktop scanner, a ScanSnap s1300i no longer provides software updates, which means that with the switch to 64bit applications, I can't use the scanning software on the Mac 🙄. Cue in Windows (which still works) through BootCamp and Parallels... The second annoying this is that while the Mac Mini can drive 3 HD monitors, MacOS doesn't support the MST (multistream transport), so the Anker 575 hub I got just gives me 3 monitors with the same image 😂. I guess I didn't read the fine print on that. It's fine, two monitors is what I've been using these past 4 years, so I'll stick to that on the Mac side.  Most annoyingly though, on the Mac, when you plug in an HDMI monitor you lose all control over the system volume.  The only way to increase and decrease the volume is through a monitor remote - or lacking the remote through the monitor settings, if they are easily accessible.  In Windows I have both choices....arg! I guess I'll be bootcamping into Windows while I get back to regular, pro-upgrade, productivity, and jump into MacOS periodically to setup my work setup on that side of the hard disk...

The one other thing I need to get is a USB-C to USB-A hub. I have too many USB-A peripherals and no plugs to plug them into!