2.5 GHz or 2.6 GHz MacBook Pro?
From Richard Mamary:
Hi Dan,
I am looking to buy a new Penryn MacBook Pro, today even. The only
thing holding me back is whether to get the standard 2.5 GHz, or
upgraded 2.6 GHz processor. The Apple Store salesman said the
difference is negligible. (So much for upselling training...)
I haven't been able to find any benchmarks comparing the two, but if
the 4% increase translates to speed, a 4 hour render would end up
saving me ten minutes. Might there be any other reasons to spend the
extra $250 for the faster CPU? Do you think the 4% would actually
translate that way to time saved?
In your opinion, is it worth it? Do you know of anyone out there who
has tested the two of them, against each other?
At this point, I do exclusively SD video editing with FCP, as well
as creating SD presentations in AE. HD, can't be too far down the road
for me as well, but my client list is still not asking for it yet. I
still work predominantly on an old dual Power Mac G5 tower and can't
afford to upgrade to the Mac Pro just yet.
So, I will settle for now with replacing my aging PowerBook G4
first.
Can you help guide me to making my decision?
Regards,
Richard Mamary
Richard,
I haven't yet seen a head-to-head benchmark comparing
the new 2.5 GHz MacBook Pro to the 2.6 GHz version. As the computers
are otherwise identical, and as the only difference between the 2.5 GHz
and 2.6 GHz CPUs is clock speed, the most difference you're going to
see is 4%.
If your MacBook Pro is working on heavy duty tasks 8
hours a day, 5 days a week, you'll save 1.6 hours per week - or have an
additional 1.6 hours of billable work you can do. That's 80 hours a
year, assuming the computer is almost always working hard.
If you're doing a lot of video work, that's likely to
be true, and if your time is worth more than $3 per hour, you can cost
justify the $250 for the upgrade the first year. I don't normally
recommend a 10% premium for a 4% speed gain, but it sounds like you're
doing the kind of work where the additional income generated will more
than cover the difference in price.
Dan
iBook Video Problem Fixed
From Guilherme Maranhão:
Dan,
I may be typing this too soon, but anyway, here it goes:
As I was browsing the Net on Sunday, my video on my iBook simply
went crazy. Lines, strange colours, you name it. That great picture
that someone took of their DIY fix for the famous iBook video problem
came to my mind. Flames!
I tried to turn the computer on on Monday, but nothing - boing and a
blank screen. I was able to use Target Mode to retrieve what I had in
the hard drive.
Today I decided to take it apart and check if pressure on the video
chip would make the video come back. Read some tutorials on how to
remove the bottom case and started that. To my surprise there was a
undone screw inside my laptop! It fell out as I removed the RF shield.
In fact, half (or more) of the screws inside the bottom case were very
loose. I found that strange and kept going. Even removed the foam on
top of the chip and powered the computer up.
Perfect video. With or without pressure on the chip, and pressing it
didn't make it even flicker. Got whatever I could get of the foam back
in its place. Checked a few screws on the top case too, and found some
loose as well, but didn't go further.
Reassembled the computer and I'm typing this now on it. Amazing!
I'll let you know if the situation changes.
- guilherme maranhão
Guilherme,
Thanks for writing. Screws coming loose inside
computers - that's a bad, bad thing, especially for notebooks, as they
get moved about quite a bit, giving the screws opportunity to roll
anywhere. And that can cause shorts, such as the video short you
experienced. Glad the fix was as easy as putting back the undone
screw.
Dan
Compact Flash vs. Solid State Drives vs. Hard
Drives
From John Muir:
Hi Dan
Perhaps you could pass along the link to my own experience with CF in the precise
same PowerBook to Cameron.
I was discussing my experiences with flash with Matthew, who also
recently wrote about his experiences in one of Charles' postbags. He
reports that he's had the best luck with professional grade UDMA cards
such as Lexar
UDMA 300x CF cards.
It is possible Cameron has a damaged card, which hopefully he can
deal with under warranty. I tested my own card in its IDE adapter
before going inside the PowerBook, and it seemed to be in fine fettle.
Unfortunately the hammering that a full OS X system gave it -
virtual memory especially I expect - did eventually prove too much. I
got just about a year out of it before I couldn't restore a working
drive image. Although my card was certainly lower end. Matthew reports
better experiences with CF himself.
SSD's (2.5" flash hard drives, no adapters required) are definitely
to be preferred. The problem right now though is that the only ones
with good performance are on the small end: SLC "single layer cells"
being mandatory for decent virtual memory handling, among those
available to us consumers. Prices are set to tumble with Intel's
announced push into the field. But those of us on IDE may be left in
the cold while all the action is SATA....
My old PowerBook is awaiting a 250 GB Western Digital drive, which
is currently shipping its way to me! Priorities change, and I need that
machine back in action for the road, with a lot of elbow room too.
Fortunately 2.5" hard drives are much more affordable now than the last
time I looked, and absolute silence is something I can forgo for
now.
I'm still attached to that old machine, but funds and Apple's will
permitting my next laptop will be flash powered. Five years plus is
more my time-frame for a good machine anyway!
John Muir
John,
Thanks for writing. Solid state drives have come a
long ways, but they have quite a ways to go before they really become
affordable. The only one I'm finding widely available is from
Transcend, which has a range from 64 MB at $10.41 to 8 GB at
$159.95 (from Amazon.com). The smaller, less expensive SSDs could be
great for older PowerBooks, but OS X (especially Leopard) is
pretty demanding of space. And a 250 GB hard drive costs less than
Transcend's 8 GB SSD!
Dan
Dan,
Exactly. Fellow LEM reader Matthew Atkinson (who is running a more
costly and unfortunately now unavailable Samsung SSD) answered my query
about the Transcend models just as I expected: steer clear!
Things should really speed up, size up, and come into affordability
in the next few years. Unfortunately, it coincides with SATA displacing
IDE as the overwhelming majority of the laptop drive market. I wouldn't
hold by breath for a handy 64 or 128 GB SSD in the right price range
for my IDE PowerBook ever coming out. Yet alone 256!
John
John,
Thanks for the feedback. I don't know a thing about
Transcend, but we'll be sure to share the warning. I'm sure SATA will
eventually displace IDE, but the PC side of the industry tends to be
slower in adopting new technologies than Apple, so we may see IDE SSDs
for the next couple years.
Dan
Dan,
Reportedly Transcend are cheap, but slow. They use MLC (multi layer
cell), which doesn't help, but the real problem is right there in their
performance spec: 8 megabytes per second is the fastest write speed
they can aspire to, which means your virtual memory will be a real
drain on the system, which has to wait through all that every time.
I'll be as keen as the next flash aficionado to see a well priced,
well sized, top performing IDE SSD. The problem is - and both Samsung
and Intel are doing this - SSD's are anything but mainstream or low end
and are being aggressively targeted at speed demons. Their thinking
seems to be going towards: anyone with an IDE based system need not
apply.
I can't say I entirely disagree with them. This is a breaking
technology, and the steep costs need to be recovered after all. I'm
expecting Apple to be the ones to put the next flash in my
computer.
John
Further Compact Flash Developments
From Cameron Reid:
Thanks Dan for forwarding John's message, and thanks John for the
link and the info.
Seems like UDMA is recommended. The latest bit of interest regarding
this situation is this:
I bought a bus-powered FireWire 2.5" IDE HDD case so that I could
transplant my current PowerBook's HDD into a portable storage drive for
larger files when needed. I finally got this in (backordered for
months) and, for fun, tried out the 'non-working' CF card with the IDE
connecter in the external case. I formatted it as HFS+, transferred
some very large files, formatted again with 5 partitions, transferred
some larger files again; it worked every time with great speeds, equal
for sure with that of my internal drive (where the files were being
transferred from). Anyway, trying to keep this short, as I'm sure
you're both busy, Kingston is replacing my card under warranty, but the
interesting thing about this situation is that the card is currently
working, even when with the same adapter connected internally, or
through a USB card reader externally, I was getting errors and
problems.
All in all, I'm hesitant to try using my replacement card internally
because of the same problem occurring, however I don't need the card
elsewhere, so I'd hate to waste the money.
I'll keep you posted on further developments.
Cameron,
UDMA isn't just recommended, it's required for
booting. You can use a CF card without UDMA for data storage.
It's good to know the card is working when used with a
FireWire-to-IDE adapter and IDE-to-Compact Flash adapter - and that
Kingston is standing behind its product. But unless is has UDMA
support, it's not going to work inside your PowerBook.
Dan
G4 Dual? and a 7600 in the Workplace
From Geoff Phillips:
Hello Mr. Knight,
I'm a long time reader/first time writer. We had Macs at school
(University of Central Arkansas), but I've been a PC guy until a few
months ago. My office was clearing out some old G3s, so I'm the proud
owner of a Lombard and a
500 MHz iMac, my two first
Macs. At work I'm on an upgraded 733 G4 which runs CS2 on
Tiger very well. I've been shopping for a low-end G4 tower to
mirror my work machine at home. All I do is page layout and ad building
for a newspaper. To be honest, the 500 iMac (384 MB RAM) running
Panther is fast enough for most of what I do (running older versions of
InDesign, Photoshop, and illustrator), but I'd like more
upgradeability, storage, and bigger/multiple monitors.
Getting to the point . . . I've found a "Dual G4 450 Power Mac" on
eBay for a great buy it now price (please don't snipe it on
me). I'm not interested in a 450 Power Mac, as I don't think it'd run
too much faster than the 500 iMac I already have, but if it's actually
a dual processor, then it's coming home with me. This is a link to the
eBay picture showing the mobo . . . it seems to be missing a
heat sync but does appear to have more chips on the board than
the other G4 singles listed on eBay.
http://i16.ebayimg.com/06/i/000/de/ed/5233_1.JPG
Please help me figure out if this is a dual processor or not. The
seller states it has a 20 GB hard drive, which as I understand didn't
come in the DP 450, and with the missing heat sink I'm betting he
misidentified it, but if it is a DP it'd be a sweet machine for a
song.
The 2nd part of this email is to report a Power Mac 7300 alive and kicking
at the newspaper. It hosts our advertising dummy system and to my
knowledge hasn't been so much as restarted in several months. It's the
180 PC compatible model running 7.5.5 with (I think) 256 megs of RAM.
With a room full of G4s and G5s, it sure stands out. The screen is
burned in with the ad system window, but the computer has been in
service for more than a decade now without a hiccup that I'm aware of.
We are due for a tech upgrade in February of 2009, so it'll be there a
bit longer if you'd like me to sneak a picture of it sometime.
Thanks for a spectacular website . . . helped me get both the
Lombard and the iMac up with Panther, wireless, and more than I ever
thought possible out of 7-year-old computers. Any advice on the G4
would be much appreciated!
That's the eBay link [removed] but please don't publish it . . .
been looking for one of these for a while now!
Geoff Phillips
Photographer/Graphic Designer
Geoff,
Looking that the photo you linked to and comparing it
to the dual 450 MHz "Mystic" Power Mac G4 I own, I suspect it's not a
dual-processor machine - the heat sink is too small. Still, with 512 MB
of RAM, Tiger, and a 20 GB hard drive, it's worth the price.
When you get it, use About This Mac under the Apple
menu. That will tell you what it actually is. And if it is a
single-processor machine, you have lots of upgrade options - see our
Guide to Power Mac G4
Upgrades, which was recently updated. The 1 GHz PowerForce 55 sells
for $160 with a 2 MB L2 cache, which should make it faster than
your work machine for very little money. (Or really make it scream with
a 1.8 GHz upgrade, like the NewerTech one we
reviewed in February. Not cheap at $325, but boy is it fast!)
Dan
OCR Software for Leopard
From Bill Doty:
Hi Dan
I switched to an Intel MacBook Pro 15.4. It has Leopard 10.5.2 on
it.
My OmniPage Pro for OS X program crashed when I tried to run it. It
ran fine on the G4 Quicksilver. When I tried to reload the program, I
got an error message -61. I suspect the program will not run on an
Intel Mac. I checked the company website, and their system requirements
list Mac OS X 10.1. They say nothing about Intel Macs.
The Epson scanner programs also crashed, but I got updates from
Epson, and it seems fine.
Do you have a suggestion for an OCR program? I tried ReadIris a
couple years ago and was not impressed. Has that one gotten any better?
I also found a couple others: Simple OCR, (but I don't think this runs
on a Mac) and ABBY Fine reader.
Thanks
Bill Doty
Bill,
I have almost no experience with OCR software on the
Mac, but OmniPage Pro X is six years old, so I can understand why it
might break under Leopard or on an Intel-based Mac. (It even supports
Mac OS 9.x!) I wouldn't expect Nuance to update it after leaving it
alone for so long.
About.com only
lists four OCR programs for Mac OS X: OmniPage Pro X, ReadIris Pro,
ABBYY Fine Reader Pro, and MacTiger. I found even less options on
MacUpdate, and VersionTracker is hopeless when searching for "ocr".
The most recent article I can find on Mac OCR software was published here on Low End
Mac in 2001, so it's pretty dated. Sorry I can't be more helpful.
Dan
WWDC '06 Leopard on a Blue & White G3
From Jeff Koenig:
Hi Dan,
Wanted to send in a report of some mild success I had installing
Leopard on my B&W
G3. The possibility of "future-proofing" the B&W just a little
bit longer is a very exciting prospect for me and one that I hope
people won't give up on.
- What unsupported Mac have you installed it on? G3 B&W
(Rev2)
- How much RAM? Maxed out at 1 GB
- How fast a CPU, and what brand, if it's an upgrade? Originally a
400 MHz G3, just recently maxed it out with a 1 GHz G4 Sonnet
Encore ZIF
- What video card does your Mac have? PCI Nvidia GeForce FX 5200
(flashed with a Mac ROM - so I can have Core Image & Quartz
Extreme)
- Which installation method did you use, a modified installer or
installing from a supported Mac? The one that I got to work was the
original WWDC '06 build (9a241). I used a modified install file, but
only to get around the G3 check, since technically I meet the minimum
spec requirements already. I used Disk Utility to restore the Leopard
DMG to a just-large-enough partition on one of my internal hard drives
and then selected that partition in the Startup Disk control panel. At
first, startup just skipped right over it and then booted back into
10.4.11. Then I got to thinking - I still had 9.2.2 installed on
another partition because I had to boot into it to do the ROM update
for the G4 upgrade. On an experimental hunch, I booted into 9.2.2 and
selected the Leopard Install partition in the 9.2.2 Startup Disk
control panel, and a few minutes later I was at the install screen. I
did an Archive & Install, came back later, and it had completed
installation and restarted, but it was hanging at the grey Apple logo
with the spinning progress indicator. I hit the reset button and tried
holding Shift to boot with extensions off. It took a few minutes, but I
got in. Then I tried rebooting in verbose mode, and again it took a few
minutes, but I got in a second time. Feeling fairly confident, I did a
plain restart and got all the way to the desktop in a normal amount of
time.
- What doesn't work? Especially check out Time Machine (which
requires a second hard drive at least as big as your main one), DVD
Player, Front Row, and VLC. Well, there's not much there to begin
with, given that it's the earliest dev version. It's more like Tiger
with a few new Dashboard Widgets, Time Machine, Spaces, and the new
Safari.
The main problem is that it doesn't recognize the G3's built in
Ethernet jack for connecting to the Internet. It sees it in System
profiler, but I'm unable to work with the connection at all in the
Network settings. I haven't experimented with Time Machine just yet,
since it would require me to format a drive, and while I do have an
external USB drive attached, I don't have anywhere to put the stuff on
that drive temporarily just to be able to test Time Machine. Maybe I'll
try putting my old 4G Click Wheel iPod into disk mode, give that a
whirl, and get back to you.
- How does performance compare with Tiger subjectively and
objectively? More testing TBD, but just navigating around, visiting
each of the Control Panels, playing with Dashboard Widgets, etc.,
performance was fine. Not as fast as 10.4.11, but it's acceptable in my
opinion - certainly a lot better than I expected.
- Have you made any changes to your Mac since installing Leopard -
more RAM, a better video card, a faster hard drive? How has that
improved things? No, I wanted to make sure I had everything maxed
out before I started the Leopard project. The only other thing I
may try later, is to install a PCI Gigabit Ethernet card that has Mac
drivers already built in so I can connect to the Internet in Leopard. I
found one on Newegg
for about $10, and it's on the way. Of note, I also have a PCI USB
2.0 card installed, and I replaced the original DVD drive with a
SuperDrive from OWC, and then I put the DVD drive into an
external FireWire enclosure from an old LaCie CD burner I had whose
laser had gone defunct.
I should mention, too, that I wasn't the first person to do this. I
found some old threads on Insanely Mac from when the Leopard
dev version first came out, where another guy with a B&W with a 650
MHz G4 upgrade had success with this. He also had the problem with the
built-in Ethernet jack. I learned so much from reading those old
threads, and from your article on Installing to Unsupported Macs here
on Low End Mac and on Mac Rumors.
As of this weekend, 9a241 is as far as I got. The ideal (and my
goal) is to get to 10.5.2 (and so forth with future releases). It will
take a lot of help from people much smarter than I, and I'm not sure if
10.5.2 is even within the realm of possibility just yet, but this is at
least a step in the right direction.
Thanks,
Jeff Koenig
Jeff,
Congratulations. This should apply to people with the
Yikes Power Mac G4 as
well, as it uses essentially the same motherboard at the Blue &
White. Keep us posted!
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
