I was lucky in that I purchased my (Apple refurbished) M4 Mac Mini Pro shortly before prices started rising. A 1TB/64GB model appeared in the list at a very attractive price and it was too tempting to resist.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I agree with that - 15GB is nothing nowadays. But the problem is that Apple still sell new computers with only 256GB storage. That is woefully inadequate nowadays. Even the 1TB of my Mac mini would be pushing it a bit if it weren't for the ease of adding fast external storage. That, as has been said, is not such a convenient prospect on a laptop.

Apple should not be selling a laptop nowadays with only 256GB storage. It's like selling a computer with 4GB RAM and no prospect of upgrading it.

That is the problem, for a lot of people 256GB will be fine, but if a load of it is taken up by something that they don't want, then that is an issue.
512 should be the minimum now, but that puts the prices up, certainly at the moment.
The reason why I went for the Mini M2 pro instead of the standard M2 was because it worked out cheaper because it had more storage space, I did not have to add any, plus ram.

In reply to a post by billford:

I was ripping video DVDs, not audio, into m4v format for iTunes and Apple TV. Handbrake used to work fine on its own but later versions won't look at DVDs with copyright protection. After a bit of hunting around I found MakeMKV, which will and does what it says, but the aforementioned apps won't read mkv files (and anyway they're HUGE!) so I still used Handbrake for the m4v conversion.

I haven't ripped any audio CDs for years, not since the days of iTunes, but from memory I just imported them direct. Time wasn't really an issue- if it looked like being a long job I'd just start it off last thing at night and go to bed .

Legality is still marginal of course, but it's for personal use only so more or less OK.

Oh yes, I missed something reading the post
Still, i want to rip some DVDs, so the info is still useful, thanks. Oh yes this is for my own use, stick them on the NAS. i also go a couple of blu-rays, i need to find something to do them

Thanks for that

According to their website (here), MakeMKV will handle Blu-Rays, but I haven't tried it on those so can't comment.

In reply to a post by billford:

A good sysadmin always knows how to cover his tracks

Why most security teams are ahead of you... better to own up and document!!

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i also go a couple of blu-rays, i need to find something to do them

I've got some Blu-rays that I wouldn't mind ripping but my Superdrive will only do DVDs and CDs, what do you use?

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by billford:

A good sysadmin always knows how to cover his tracks

Why most security teams are ahead of you... better to own up and document!!

In my case it was over 3 decades ago and we had no connection to the Internet. It was also the unix workstation I personally used for development and support so whilst annoying it was relatively low impact.

In reply to a post by ian72:

In my case it was over 3 decades ago and we had no connection to the Internet. It was also the unix workstation I personally used for development and support so whilst annoying it was relatively low impact.

My experience was 25 years ago, and also no internet connection, we did have remote syslog. I also was entrusted with root, and backups, so quickly went to the fire safe.

Making errors and fixing them is a great way of learning, and also makes you think.... 😊

In reply to a post by billford:

According to their website (here), MakeMKV will handle Blu-Rays, but I haven't tried it on those so can't comment.

I tried it with a starwars Blu-ray and it comes up with Error 'Scsi error - NOT READY:MEDIUM NOT PRESENT

Not sure why, I will have a muck around tomorrow again.

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i also go a couple of blu-rays, i need to find something to do them

I've got some Blu-rays that I wouldn't mind ripping but my Superdrive will only do DVDs and CDs, what do you use?

i have a Asus SBW-06D5H-U, it seems a bit cheap looking as tyhey all are these days, but works, apart from ripping blu-ray, tried using MakeMKV to rip a blu-ray disk and got Scsi error - NOT READY:MEDIUM NOT PRESENT, which is strange.

Maybe i should use the PC.