A standard hard drive can't provide as much throughput as firewire 800 supports. FW800 is overkill for an external hard drive. Therefore an internal disk won't give you any better I/O rates. AFAIK the FW800 was created for the demands of video I/O.
It's not all about the throughput, otherwise USB 2.0 at 480 would be faster than FW400, which it isn't. eSATA-connected hd connectors allow faster HD connections than FW800 which can be measured in actual throughput, not just theoretical bandwidth numbers. I've no idea on the CPU utilization numbers, though, as that depends on the hardware & driver implementations of each.
It'll be interesting seeing some independent benchmarks of the new Mac Minis...who knows, maybe it'll be good enough for me to switch, after all, but I don't have high hopes for the playability of BZFlag on these new machines...
SO-DIMMs, okay then, despite searching, I didn't notice that detail, thanks. That actually makes their $300 memory upgrade from 512 Meg to 2 Gig fairly reasonable, considering the prices I see on Newegg.
If it weren't for the lackluster video on this thing, I'd like to get one, rip the guts out and place them in a real computer case, and upgrade some of the bits and pieces. Raptor 150 for the HD, lowest-latency memory I could find (not sure what's available in SO-DIMM form factor yet; probably not great), my nice NEC fast optical drive.
That damned shared video, though - bleh.
I guess I'll have time to save up for a 'real' Intel Mac, whenever they come out. *sigh*
I think I'd prefer to use some NAS over the Gigabit Ethernet, rather than a FW400 connection, though I wonder what the CPU utilization would be like between those two options.
I'm disappointed in the graphics - I was hoping for something along the lines of an X1300 or X1600 (the MacBook Pro has an X1600, I think).
I like that it has optical in and out, now, plus the remote control, wifi, and bluetooth are all now included. The superdrive is a dual layer drive (though certainly not as fast as the one in my current machine (NEC-3550A).
Here's what's really "interesting": memory. It's using DDR2-667. The price to upgrade from the default 512 Meg to 2 Gig is $300. So, search Newegg, and you'll find only ONE 2 Gig DDR2 stick at that speed (by Corsair), and it costs $999! All the other 2 Gig DDR2 sticks are at slower speeds.
So, how much you wanna bet if you buy Apple's 2 Gig DDR2 stick, it won't be running at 667? Tricky, tricky.
The video output should support my 1600x1200 resolution (it goes up to 1920x1080, which is the same # of pixels as 1600x1200), but I'm wondering at what refresh rate.
I dunno about this; this isn't a slam-dunk, "Yeah, it's time to get an Apple" product. Hmmm.
I think I want a Mac Mini Pro:
a) slightly larger to accomodate the use of a normal 3.5" harddrive, not the slow-as-hell 2.5" laptop class drive used here
b) big enough to fit a real graphics card in it
c) eSATA connector for fast external storage. FW400 won't cut it - even FW800 isn't as fast as an internal drive
d) full-speed tray-loading optical drive (16x, plus 8x burning for DL media, like my lovely NEC drive)
e) they could even ditch the FireWire entirely if I get my eSATA; this isn't a video production machine, ya know?
f) just large enough for 2 memory slots; fast 2 Gig DDR2 sticks are effin pricey, as mentioned above
I think something about 2x the size of the current Mac Mini would probably be able to fit all that in it; maybe 2.5x, though I'm not sure about the depth necessary for the decent optical drive.
I'm on the fence on this one until I see some independent tests and more technical details (does this one support all of the CoreImage functionality? VGA refresh rate at 1600x1200?). I may have to wait for the PowerMac replacement, unfortunately. Grr.
I think it'd be interesting to see a really aggressive version of that. Does the computer know when the monitor is off? If it does, let the graphics card power down completely. If your computer is downloading something overnight or whatever, just shut the whole graphics bit down and let the rest of the computer do its thing. This may be possible with other devices in the machine, too - audio card off if speakers are off and no headphones plugged in, etc. We've definitely not seen a big push for energy efficient desktop machines, yet, so the possibilities are numerous.
What would be interesting is if someone would build into the next generation of graphics cards a power-saving mode, much like AMD's badly-named "Cool-n-Quiet," so it consumes much less power when not needed. This would be especially beneficial for machines that aren't used for 3D gaming (many home computers and most business machines).
I usually have my machine at home on while I'm at work, and while I sleep, as it's generally downloading something from somewhere; turning it off isn't usually an option.
"Instead of putting up a 500-megawatt power plant in a developing country, he argues, it would be much better to place 500,000 one-kilowatt power plants in villages all over the place"
Indeed, not to mention it's using a carbon neutral fuel (which your average 500-MW plant in Africa would likely not be doing) and generating pure drinking water at the same time. Nicely done, sir.
I remember back in the day, I ran OS/2 with the WPS ripped-out, using some IBM employee-written freeware/shareware/whateverware called TShell as my text-mode interface. That thing multitasked like a beast in very little RAM. Great for my BBS machine. I came to the OS/2 world from an Amiga, so real multitasking was very important to me. Now I have several times more RAM on my videocard than I had in that whole machine. w00t!
Have you considered an FPGA, since it's a limited # you want? My knowledge of such things is severely limited, so forgive me if this isn't appropriate.
There's a difference between ripping and encoding. For a task like the poster is describing, you'd want to rip all of the discs to wav first, then encode unattended later. Depending on the drive and condition of the discs, this could take less than 4 mins each (haven't timed it in awhile).
400 gig drives (to store the uncompressed wavs) are relatively inexpensive these days.
"So, I stopped work. Then I saw Alien vs Predator and it was actually pretty good. (laughs) I think of the 5 [sic] Alien films, I'd rate it 3rd."
That's like rating Return of the Jedi the third-best of the Star Wars films - like there was ever any doubt about which would be the worst three? C'mon.
Opera 8.5 renders it very well, though not perfectly. I'm sure Opera 9 (beta) gets even closer, if not passes it. I've heard the current builds of FF (1.5.01?) pass it, though I don't know for sure.
You can't always blame non-IE browsers 'display problems' on the browser - too many sites still serve up crap when they detect a non-IE browser (particularly a problem for Opera).
This IE7 preview did better than I thought it would. I have a range of web sites I created to test it with, and it works on "tag soup" sites, outer table layout with CSS styling sites, and all-CSS sites. I didn't use any CSS hacks with any of my sites, so no idea how that'll work out. But, you use the hacks, you pays the price. *shrug*
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A standard hard drive can't provide as much throughput as firewire 800 supports. FW800 is overkill for an external hard drive. Therefore an internal disk won't give you any better I/O rates. AFAIK the FW800 was created for the demands of video I/O.
It's not all about the throughput, otherwise USB 2.0 at 480 would be faster than FW400, which it isn't. eSATA-connected hd connectors allow faster HD connections than FW800 which can be measured in actual throughput, not just theoretical bandwidth numbers. I've no idea on the CPU utilization numbers, though, as that depends on the hardware & driver implementations of each.
It'll be interesting seeing some independent benchmarks of the new Mac Minis...who knows, maybe it'll be good enough for me to switch, after all, but I don't have high hopes for the playability of BZFlag on these new machines...
SO-DIMMs, okay then, despite searching, I didn't notice that detail, thanks. That actually makes their $300 memory upgrade from 512 Meg to 2 Gig fairly reasonable, considering the prices I see on Newegg.
If it weren't for the lackluster video on this thing, I'd like to get one, rip the guts out and place them in a real computer case, and upgrade some of the bits and pieces. Raptor 150 for the HD, lowest-latency memory I could find (not sure what's available in SO-DIMM form factor yet; probably not great), my nice NEC fast optical drive.
That damned shared video, though - bleh.
I guess I'll have time to save up for a 'real' Intel Mac, whenever they come out. *sigh*
Yeah - how well does that run OS X?
I think I'd prefer to use some NAS over the Gigabit Ethernet, rather than a FW400 connection, though I wonder what the CPU utilization would be like between those two options.
I'm disappointed in the graphics - I was hoping for something along the lines of an X1300 or X1600 (the MacBook Pro has an X1600, I think).
I like that it has optical in and out, now, plus the remote control, wifi, and bluetooth are all now included. The superdrive is a dual layer drive (though certainly not as fast as the one in my current machine (NEC-3550A).
Here's what's really "interesting": memory. It's using DDR2-667. The price to upgrade from the default 512 Meg to 2 Gig is $300. So, search Newegg, and you'll find only ONE 2 Gig DDR2 stick at that speed (by Corsair), and it costs $999! All the other 2 Gig DDR2 sticks are at slower speeds.
So, how much you wanna bet if you buy Apple's 2 Gig DDR2 stick, it won't be running at 667? Tricky, tricky.
The video output should support my 1600x1200 resolution (it goes up to 1920x1080, which is the same # of pixels as 1600x1200), but I'm wondering at what refresh rate.
I dunno about this; this isn't a slam-dunk, "Yeah, it's time to get an Apple" product. Hmmm.
I think I want a Mac Mini Pro:
a) slightly larger to accomodate the use of a normal 3.5" harddrive, not the slow-as-hell 2.5" laptop class drive used here
b) big enough to fit a real graphics card in it
c) eSATA connector for fast external storage. FW400 won't cut it - even FW800 isn't as fast as an internal drive
d) full-speed tray-loading optical drive (16x, plus 8x burning for DL media, like my lovely NEC drive)
e) they could even ditch the FireWire entirely if I get my eSATA; this isn't a video production machine, ya know?
f) just large enough for 2 memory slots; fast 2 Gig DDR2 sticks are effin pricey, as mentioned above
I think something about 2x the size of the current Mac Mini would probably be able to fit all that in it; maybe 2.5x, though I'm not sure about the depth necessary for the decent optical drive.
I'm on the fence on this one until I see some independent tests and more technical details (does this one support all of the CoreImage functionality? VGA refresh rate at 1600x1200?). I may have to wait for the PowerMac replacement, unfortunately. Grr.
These now include wifi and bluetooth, which I think is where the price disparity comes in (though I could be wrong).
Prepare to pay twice as much for future NEC optical drives. :(
Nice to see the Editors are living up to their name.
I think you mean the 'Editros.' Yeesh, get it right. ("Don't call me 'Yeesh.'")
I'm more interested in announcements from PMA, anyway.
I think it'd be interesting to see a really aggressive version of that. Does the computer know when the monitor is off? If it does, let the graphics card power down completely. If your computer is downloading something overnight or whatever, just shut the whole graphics bit down and let the rest of the computer do its thing. This may be possible with other devices in the machine, too - audio card off if speakers are off and no headphones plugged in, etc. We've definitely not seen a big push for energy efficient desktop machines, yet, so the possibilities are numerous.
What would be interesting is if someone would build into the next generation of graphics cards a power-saving mode, much like AMD's badly-named "Cool-n-Quiet," so it consumes much less power when not needed. This would be especially beneficial for machines that aren't used for 3D gaming (many home computers and most business machines).
I usually have my machine at home on while I'm at work, and while I sleep, as it's generally downloading something from somewhere; turning it off isn't usually an option.
Let's see if it'll run MAME! That'd make for a whole new way of playing Super Zaxxon.
"Instead of putting up a 500-megawatt power plant in a developing country, he argues, it would be much better to place 500,000 one-kilowatt power plants in villages all over the place"
Indeed, not to mention it's using a carbon neutral fuel (which your average 500-MW plant in Africa would likely not be doing) and generating pure drinking water at the same time. Nicely done, sir.
I remember back in the day, I ran OS/2 with the WPS ripped-out, using some IBM employee-written freeware/shareware/whateverware called TShell as my text-mode interface. That thing multitasked like a beast in very little RAM. Great for my BBS machine. I came to the OS/2 world from an Amiga, so real multitasking was very important to me. Now I have several times more RAM on my videocard than I had in that whole machine. w00t!
Have you considered an FPGA, since it's a limited # you want? My knowledge of such things is severely limited, so forgive me if this isn't appropriate.
Your not hard core unless you shave with fire.
Personally, I use a lightsabre.
There's a difference between ripping and encoding. For a task like the poster is describing, you'd want to rip all of the discs to wav first, then encode unattended later. Depending on the drive and condition of the discs, this could take less than 4 mins each (haven't timed it in awhile).
400 gig drives (to store the uncompressed wavs) are relatively inexpensive these days.
Apple has said officially that they're not going to do anything to prevent Windows from booting on the Intel-based Macs.
There's a difference between "hardcore" and "gross."
Sure, it takes longer, but it lasts longer, too.
"You're not hardcore unless you shave with a rock."
... with your fingers!
Wuss. You're not hardcore unless you pluck the whiskers out individually
Half the power with 18% of the range of the gas version. No thanks.
"So, I stopped work. Then I saw Alien vs Predator and it was actually pretty good. (laughs) I think of the 5 [sic] Alien films, I'd rate it 3rd."
That's like rating Return of the Jedi the third-best of the Star Wars films - like there was ever any doubt about which would be the worst three? C'mon.
100%. Really. Do tell.
Perl is a scripting language to do things more neatly than C/C++
_MORE NEATLY_?! _PERL_?!
Uhm, okay, then.
Opera 8.5 renders it very well, though not perfectly. I'm sure Opera 9 (beta) gets even closer, if not passes it. I've heard the current builds of FF (1.5.01?) pass it, though I don't know for sure.
You can't always blame non-IE browsers 'display problems' on the browser - too many sites still serve up crap when they detect a non-IE browser (particularly a problem for Opera).
This IE7 preview did better than I thought it would. I have a range of web sites I created to test it with, and it works on "tag soup" sites, outer table layout with CSS styling sites, and all-CSS sites. I didn't use any CSS hacks with any of my sites, so no idea how that'll work out. But, you use the hacks, you pays the price. *shrug*