n()_cHIEFs Drivel

Yes, when I wrote my entry last night, I had just installed my new 1GB of RAM (PC5300 667GHz DDR2) and I was still used to the delays of the original 512 that came with my system. I do have a suggestion for Apple (I doubt they will listen but here goes anyway) put at LEAST 1GB of memory in your base MacBooks, at least until you have all Universal software available. Right now, if you only have 512 and you’re running only a few Universal apps, there’s no problem. If you add in even ONE app that’s using Rosetta you are going to suffer through a really slow startup, and a completely unusable system until that startup is complete. Don’t get me wrong, with universal apps, it was running OK, at least as well as I was expecting. And yes, I am spoiled, I don’t even remember the time where I’ve used less than 1GB of memory in my Mac PB. I remember a good performance increase when I added the extra 512 to my old PB, but it was way more useable than my MB was with the default memory, and it should be quite a bit faster with a higher clock speed processor with dual cores as well as having a 667MHz FSB as opposed to 100MHz and RAM that runs at that speed as well. It really doesn’t make much sense to me, but I couldn’t see the 4x (actually more than that because that’s based on the 1.67GHz PowerPC chip) increase in speed, for the most part. Ok, well now that I’m done with my suggestions I will say this: DAMN this thing is fast now that I have 1.5GB on board. It’s a blazing machine, even while running apps under Rosetta (right now, I’m installing Windows XP in Parallels Workstation, Safari is open, Mail.app is open, iChat, a Terminal window, and of course I’m writing this story in Ecto running via Rosetta) and I can switch between all the apps with no delay, there are no delays in Finder like I was seeing before (while moving icons), or an unusable Dock. Everything is working just fine. So I guess my advice to anyone out there getting ready to move to Mactel, make sure you have a Gig at least, so go for the higher end (2, 2.13GHz) MacBooks that come with 1GB or as I did, save your money and order a chip from a 3rd party vendor, yes, I was able to pick up my chip for $80 (it uses Samsung memory, who knows what brand) and it works great! Heck of a lot cheaper than Apple’s memory, all though theirs is guaranteed to work. Enough for now, I need to go play

Well, it came a lot quicker than I thought it would, but I now have my MacBook Pro. I opted for the lower price and slightly slower 1.86GHz model, I had to upgrade the amount of RAM to 1.5GB but left the HDD at the 80GB 5400 rpm drive. This is the most powerful (not the fastest, I have a 2.4GHz P4) computer I own, and all in all I’m really impressed. I will say that before I upgraded the RAM the performance was good, with the exception of large scale multi-tasking, compiling code (DarwinPorts or Fink), or virtualization (Running/Installing WinXP in Parallels), or when a Rosetta app is starting up. During these operations, the performance could get painfully slow, at times quite a bit slower than my PowerBook G4 which would always be responsive in one way or another while doing almost anything. And there are still times when you have to wait, but I’m hopeful that the performance will increase as they get more apps re-compiled as Universal binaries so they natively support the Core Duo processors. As far as the straight OS X performance, and all the native apps, it’s a blazingly fast machine. The performance while running Safari is almost amazing when compared with my old PowerBook, as is iMovie HD, iDVD and all the other iApps. All in all I’m pretty happy on the performance front. On the design front, this laptop is leaps and bounds ahead of the Titanium PB that I used to have. The backlit keyboard is awesome, as is the light sensing technology built into the speaker grilles. The light sensors keep the display at a level thats comfortable to read when it’s dark or extremely well lit in the room, as well as adjusting the keyboard backlighting to a higher level in slightly higher light. I also like the design of the case, it’s much more well thought out than the TiBook design, but all you Aluminum PowerBook owners have known that for a while. It’s nice to know that I won’t be breaking any hinges as these are place in a way that really eliminates the possibility unless you do something really stupid. The built in iSight camera is pretty cool, it’s something that I always wanted before but never really saw the need to purchase. Now that it comes with my computer I’m sure I’ll use it (already have quite a bit and I’ve only had the thing for a few days). I’m also looking forward to hooking up the digital optical out and DVI to a nice bigscreen TV and using FrontRow (of course I’ll probably purchase a Mini for that later, but at least I’ll know whether or not I really want to by trying it out with my laptop) As for things that I can’t wait for? Something besides Parallels (or at least a full non-beta version) for running WinXP (Yes I still need windows unfortunately), I’ll post more on my experiences there later. So I guess this is my first impressions.

I was really not sure if I should go ahead and get the new Mac Book Pro, or wait until the second generation of Mactel laptops, but with this weeks release of BootCamp (Apple’s Windows multi-booting software) which allows you to re-partition your drive, and install Windows XP as well as allowing you to boot to Windows from the Apple Control panel and including drivers for all the Apple hardware, it’s pretty much a sure thing that I’m going to upgrade my old and tired PowerBook G4 Titanium. I’ve been wanting to upgrade for a while, really since the faster Aluminum G4′s came out, but it just wasn’t feasible a year ago. And with the release of the new Intel Macs I wasn’t sure if I should go with the first generation or wait until all the bugs are worked out and all or most of the software I use is released in the Universal format. If you take into account that my PowerBook is still a good machine and I can get some good money for it on E-bay or elsewhere, there’s one compelling reason to upgrade. Add in the ability to use Windows so I can do most of the things at work that require a windows machine (Visual Studio for Development, Blackboard’s Envision for system administration) and I’m pretty much sold. I have known for a while that XP was bootable on the machines but Apple has now made it something that doesn’t take hours and a lot of hacking to accomplish. Now if I just new that the rumors of Leopard (is that right?) having virtualization built into the OS, that would make my decision even that much easier. Why run XP completely when I would much rather run XP in a window inside OS X, if not have the ability to run Windows programs inside OS X natively, now wouldn’t that be something? No more Windows machines ever!

Well if you don’t know, I’m a Tool fanatic, and that would be putting it lightly so it’s not a surprise that I’m excited to hear that their latest album (5 years almost to the day in the making) will be released on May 2nd. I am eagerly awaiting the first single which is due out sometime this month, but I’m guessing that I won’t be able to hear it, at least not all of it until the album comes out as it’s 9 minutes in length. That’s one thing I love about Tool, if you’re not able to sit and listen you won’t enjoy their music, most of their songs are 6+ which is almost twice the average radio friendly songs length. I haven’t heard anything from the album yet, but I have seen the artwork and it is in the tradition of their last 4 albums, extremely interesting an definitely symbolic of something, what I do not know. I am hoping to have time to research the albums art before it comes out, but I haven’t had that time yet. I’m sure that the album will not disappoint as on early review put it, “I went through periods of Joy and extreme pleasure while listening to the album, enough that I wanted to cry!” I don’t know if I will want to cry, but I’m sure that it will be a fantastic album as all the others have been. Come on May 2.

In the guise of pulling closer to one another, or pulling together in a virtual way, we are separating ourselves in a physical way. It really begs the question; what are our children going to be like? Growing up in virtual worlds, like MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) where you can create yourself as you see yourself and live out a virtual life; to MySpace where you connect with friends in an online environment, similar to an MMORPG in that you can create your persona, and I find that when you have the disconnect from the physical, people are radically different than when they are in person. It’s really almost a scary thought, as technology grows and makes a persons life easier, does it really make it harder by separating us from each other? It’s almost a scary thought really.

Well, I finally joined MySpace after several people have asked my “Why aren’t you there?”, including Jenny. For those who don’t know, MySpace is a virtual gathering place where you can network with other people. I must say that I have several opinions of the site, good and bad even with my relatively short experience with it. First, it does allow you to easily connect with friends that maybe you see now and then or even ones you talk to all the time. And I do like this aspect of the site. It’s nice to search and find someone who I haven’t seen or talked to in years that I really would have like to keep up with but we just fell out of touch. It allows you to find these people and look at their site, and you can then add them as a friend, or send MySpace e-mail to them. Nice, and fun. The downsides are that it really doesn’t take advantage of all these other technologies that are around that I’ve been using for years like iChat or MSN Messenger (or any IM for that matter) as well as e-mail, and websites or blogs. I have spent a lot of time getting my e-mail setup, as well as my blogs, why now do I have to setup another one on another site? I guess it really goes into the geek factor that it takes to setup your own blog, figure out how to use IM, etc. So I guess I find MySpace kinda cheesy in that regard. It really is for computer illiterates who don’t know that much about setting up blogs (even though it’s a relatively simple process if you find the right site). I wish there was an easy way to have people you connect with on MySpace go to your personal blog, send messages to my personal e-mail and IM me on my chat programs, which are all better IMHO than MySpace’s equivalents. What I would like to see is a networking site that would allow you to do this. It would be relatively easy to add the functionality of a networking site to a chat program (I guess ICQ has already done this to a certain extent), and allow people to e-mail you and shoot you over to your personal blog. I guess I hate to see duplicated efforts especially when the duplicates are poor representations of the original. I know that most of my gripes are technical in nature and really MySpace is fairly good at what it was designed for, and I can’t complain about being able to connect with my friends in a different way, but one problem I see is a lot of my friends (even ones who live in Las Cruces) are using MySpace to communicate even when they could easily pick up the phone or better yet, just come over and see me.