If you have your no-name it-came-with-your-computer speakers, you won't tell much of a difference between the various bitrates. But if you blew off $100 at Best Buy for some nice speakers and a subwoofer, you'll be able to tell.
Going from 128kbps to 256kbps is pretty noticeable. frequencies are more accurately produced all around, and some sounds that are in the background of the music sort of get cut out at 128kbps. For example, if there's some subtle tamberine sound in the background, you probably won't hear it too much with 128kbps, but you sure will with 256kbps.
From 256kbps to 320kbps, you have to pay VERY close attention to tell, but once again, there's a very subtle difference. Frequencies are produced a bit more accurately. I can barely tell the difference myself, so it's probably better to stick with 256kbps if you're concerned about saving space.
I go 320kbps everytime I encode a CD. I paid $15 for it, so I better damn well be listening to it at the best quality possible.
The encoder is important as well. I use Soundjam MP or iTunes (same thing basically). They are very good encoders. I have never heard a single pop, crack, or whistle that those PC encoders can do. They're both very fast and developed programs. For maximum speed, I use Soundjam. I usually have iTunes open for playing MP3s (sounds better), so if I'm lazy I'll use that, but it's slower. They both take advantage of dual processors and altivec, so a dual G4/800 should encode at like 25-30x. I know a dual G4/450 can do it at 12x in Soundjam. Very impressive speeds. My G3/280 can do it at...pay attention now...5x!! WOOHOO!!
It's impossible to say "this processor is x amount better than that processor" in Apple machines. They've used a total of about 6 or 7 variants throughout the years. Lemme go through them.
Motorola PPC 750 - first G3 processor. Integer performance is 20% better than the PPC 604e. fpu performance is 5% worse.
I think there was a PPC 760. Low power version of the 750.
IBM 750CX - IBM's G3 processor. 256k onchip L2 cache. That's pretty much all I know about it. I think there's a CXe version, but I know nothing of it.
Motorola PPC 7400 - first G4. fpu was improved a bit from Motorola PPC 750 as well as first processor to have altivec.
PPC 7410 - low power version of the 7400. This is what's in Tibooks.
PPC 7440 - Low power version of the PPC 7450. Not in any of Apple's computers (yet).
PPC 7450 - increased pipeline from 4 stages to 7. 256k on-chip L2 cache. Support for up to 2 megs of L3 cache. Added integer and altivec units. Altivec can now processor 2 instructions at the same time. The design is expected to top out at 1ghz.
PPC 8500 - originally called the PPC 7500, but changed for probably marketing reasons. This is the G5. First total revamp of the PPC processor design since it was first introduced in 1994. 64 bit processor with full 32 bit compadibility at full speed. Rumor has it that they're pretty stable at 1.2ghz and up until you reach 2ghz. Another rumor is that the design is expected to top out at 4-5ghz.
As far as performance, the 750 and 7400 are almost dead even if altivec is not in use.
IBM's G3 and the PPC 7450 are for the most part dead even in practice, but if things were optimized for the 7450 it would be 1.5x faster. I think the 750CX does integers 20% faster than the 7450. This is assuming that altivec is not in use.
If whatever you're doing does use altivec, the G4 wins everytime. it really depends on what you're doing that determines how much of a speedbump you get. The lowest number I've seen is a 40% speed increase. That number can be drastically higher. Some technical document of altivec showed that a single instruction put through it went 10x faster. Not that it does much for real world performance, but it does show altivec's potential.
In MacOS 9 and older, nothing really used Altivec, so you wouldn't see too much of a difference between a G3 and a G4. There's less than 20 apps that use it. In OS 9, there is hardly any difference in speed from my 300mhz G3 and my friend's dual 450 simply because OS 9 doesn't really take advantage of altivec nor dual processors.
In MacOS X you will see a very noticeable difference because it uses altivec a lot. I don't have it, so I can't really comment on the speed of it personally, but from what other people are saying, it's highly recommended that you have a G4.
After going through the comments, there are only two people who said their 75GXP is still working fine and dandy after a good amount of time. The rest said their's failed. On top of that, a lot of people said they RMAed multiple times and those failed as well. That's like a 95% failure rating for the Slashdot crowd.
If I can't get my porn online, I'm going to have to start getting it offline, and that means fucking real life people instead of me imaging that I'm fucking real life people. Sure it's illegal, but that's better than me making babies, a much better thing.
I'm a student in Southeast High School in Lincoln, Nebraska. To be short and to the point, the school system here could be equated with being as loving and as caring as Microsoft. Heh.
Anyway, in my chemistry class, how we WERE doing things, you basically did your own work then you took a test to see if you understood it all. If you passed it, you got to move onto the next chapter. If you didn't, you could take it over and over until you passed it. There was no teacher intervention unless you went up to the teacher yourself. There was no groupwork either. You did everything for yourself, by yourself.
We did this for a few weeks, then the teacher surveyed us and asked if we liked the current layout or if we would prefer the traditional method of where the teacher teaches, and the students spit it right back out. 66% of the class liked the "do it all yourself" method, 19% wanted to go back to the tradional method, and 15% didn't care either way.
The reason the teacher did the survey was because six angry parents called and bitched to the school. As I understand it, the school asked him to come up with an answer as to why they shouldn't force him to go back to the traditional method. He gave them the survey. They made him go back to the traditional method.
I was all right with that at first, until my grade dived down like a car rolling off a mountain. It is currently rather close to failing, which is 63.9% or lower in his class. Before the layout switch, I had a 86.7%, which is almost a B+.
That's the least of the school's evil and dirty tactics. We're currently building two new schools (with really lame names. Southwest and Northstar), since the ones we have are vastly overcrowded with acedemic losers who shouldn't be in them anyways. The school went overbudget by a couple million dollars. So they went to the voters and basically said, "Increase your property taxes, or we will fire a whole bunch of staff." Keep in mind our property taxes are already in the top 5 in U.S. The amount of staff they said they would cut was rather high. It was like 104 people from my school alone. Anyway, the voters said HELL NO in January. They tried to get it passed again in April. The voters said HELL NO once again. So this year, there should be 104 or so less staff at my school, right? HELL NO. They didn't fire anybody. While that is a good thing, they lied to try to squeeze more money out of the public. That's an evil thing to do.
And I have another story. The schoolbusing here is getting cut drastically. It'll be just enough to not get in trouble with the law. This saves $1.2 million. But get this. The district budget this year is $10 million higher than it was for last year. Where the hell is that money going? Geesh.
So yes, I hate our school system. The guys in power don't really care about pursuing the best education for the students, but rather that they get their inflated check while the teachers suffer. Nationwide, our school is in the 70% percentile, but our teachers are getting paid 27k/year, which is like 43rd lowest in the nation. I'm not too sure about this next part, but I heard something about the district office hiring secretaries with only a high school education for around 35k/year. And anyway, the superintendant gets 1% of the district budget, so this year he gets $230,000.
In my opinion, a well-rounded education is not a good idea. I'm currently taking math, history, science, acting, and foreign language classes. I don't know what I want to do yet, but it's going to be something with macs. I couldn't care less about my classes. As a Brainbench Certified Power User for macintosh systems, the computer classes at school are meaningless to me. So basically, I'm just sitting in school and wasting tax dollars. I'd gladly drop out and not look back, but then my parents would kick me out of the house.
Mike at www.xlr8yourmac.com has a nice article with some MacOS X 10.1 tests. In some your usual 21 photoshop filter test, 10.1 running Classic got like 75 seconds, while MacOS 9.2.1 got 71 seconds. 5% difference. That's pretty damn good. I don't really understand why you would want to use MoL on MacOS X when you can just use Classic, unless it's for shits and giggles.
But then again, I don't even have MacOS X. What do I know?
Code Red would have been heralded as the "#1 Software Program" if it targeted x10.com instead of the whitehouse. WindowsXP will probably be riddled with bugs. Perfect opportunity to make a new worm.
Apple legal has always been very brutal. If you go back far enough, you'll see that they have not lost a match yet, except for Apple vs. Microsoft. Even so, they did get Microsoft to basically admit that they just ripped off the MacOS. They won the legal battles with Colorsync, Quicktime VR, some company that copied the imac, and some other stuff. Not to mention a million and one Cease And Desist orders to places like macosrumors.com.
Personally, I think Apple should sue Microsoft for stealing the rubber ducky and putting it in Windows XP! That's just SO WRONG!! it's Apple's ducky, and those punks at Microsoft think they can just horizontally flip it and call it theirs. It doesn't work that way! I'd go so far as to say the rubber ducky should be Apple's mascot.
Wait. I think I heard from somewhere that Microsoft did remove the rubber ducky. Any truth to this?
No. Microsoft already made a patch for it before Code Red hit. But assuming Code Red is terroristic, wouldn't the users who got infected by it be sent to jail for harboring terrorist activities?
The MacOS X version was released on the 18th and is already up to beta 7. On a related note, rumor has it that MacOS X 10.1 will be released on the 24th, which is a monday. It is definately not an update to miss.
Damn straight. This day and age of computer games suck beyond belief. id is taking the Computer Gaming Industry in the wrong direction. They have been since day 1. Doom was pitiful, so was Quake 1. The rest, well, I haven't played those, but there's not too much reason to do so. It's all the same thing.
Personally, Bungie gets my full support. Marathon and Marathon 2 are still way better than games coming out this day and age. Myth 1 was way better than Warcraft (myth 2 was unbalanced). Oni...holy hell. I've been waiting for a game for years where I can beat the shit out of people. hand-to-hand combat is so awesome. ALL of these games have a plot, and ALL of them were very big sellers (except maybe Oni? Pitiful mac port). And all of them came at the time when the competition sucked compared to what Bungie had.
Hopefully Halo will lead the Gaming Industry in the right direction. Last I heard, it's still coming out for windows and MacOS.
Geesh people. Calm down. The sky isn't falling or anything like that. But nevertheless, not to spawn an OS war, the operating system matters as much if not more than the hardware.
The MacOS has been proven again and again to be more reliable in the sense that it's more secure and takes less steps to get the same job done compared to any Microsoft OS.
I read from somewhere that in a years time, the average PC user will spend more than 50 hours tech supporting their system, while the average mac user spends less than 5. I'm not too sure about the windows side of the equation, but I'd say that's pretty accurate for the mac side. I've spent maybe...umm..lemme think here. ok. It's been so long that I can't remember. 10 minutes maybe. In a worst case senario, it might be 2-3 hours in a year.
Besides that, MacOS X looks like it has some real potential. 10.1 looks like a winner. They've got about a month to perfect it. Even on that ram retarded icebook it should run semi-decent after the upgrade to 10.1.
It's not just the hardware which commands the premium price, it's all the stuff that comes with it. MacOS 9, MacOS X, itunes, imovie, Appleworks. All of those are in the price of the computer.
Beyond all of that crap I just typed, a lot you guys seem to be making price your first priority when buying something. I don't know about you guys, but USER SATISFICATION comes first for me, then comes price. I always pay a lot of money for stuff I want, but my reaction is always something like, "Yup. I paid a lot of money for this, but I'm damned glad I did!"
hmm...are you using Imac Firmware version 4.1.7? It should tell you at Apple Menu --> Apple System Profiler, I think. That adds "stability enhancements" and a few other things. www.apple.com should have the update somewhere.
If you have 3rd party ram in it, definately check with whoever makes it that it'll work before installing that. The new firmware (after it's installed) checks for "bad ram" and if it sees any, your system won't recognize it.
Heh..this just came to mind. It might be something as simple as a 3rd party control panel/extension doesn't like your computer.
Either way, Apple prides itself on rock hard stable systems. It can be fixed!
Crash regularly? That doesn't happen on a mac unless something's wrong. Mine crashes once in a blue moon. I'm not sure about my uptime, but I'm sure that I score 20+ days of uptime regularly before a restart. Basically, the amount of uptime I have sort of makes my attitude of MacOS X's protected memory like, "What the bloody blazes?! My computer never crashes! Don't need it, but it's nice to have."
Be sure your software is all up to date. MacOS 9.1 is as stable as a rock. MacOS 8.6 was pretty damn stable also. If there's one thing that Microsoft should have copied from Apple, it's the Software Update control panel. Works like a charm. Make sure all your 3rd parties are all up to date also.
Slashdot Mirror
If you have your no-name it-came-with-your-computer speakers, you won't tell much of a difference between the various bitrates. But if you blew off $100 at Best Buy for some nice speakers and a subwoofer, you'll be able to tell.
Going from 128kbps to 256kbps is pretty noticeable. frequencies are more accurately produced all around, and some sounds that are in the background of the music sort of get cut out at 128kbps. For example, if there's some subtle tamberine sound in the background, you probably won't hear it too much with 128kbps, but you sure will with 256kbps.
From 256kbps to 320kbps, you have to pay VERY close attention to tell, but once again, there's a very subtle difference. Frequencies are produced a bit more accurately. I can barely tell the difference myself, so it's probably better to stick with 256kbps if you're concerned about saving space.
I go 320kbps everytime I encode a CD. I paid $15 for it, so I better damn well be listening to it at the best quality possible.
The encoder is important as well. I use Soundjam MP or iTunes (same thing basically). They are very good encoders. I have never heard a single pop, crack, or whistle that those PC encoders can do. They're both very fast and developed programs. For maximum speed, I use Soundjam. I usually have iTunes open for playing MP3s (sounds better), so if I'm lazy I'll use that, but it's slower. They both take advantage of dual processors and altivec, so a dual G4/800 should encode at like 25-30x. I know a dual G4/450 can do it at 12x in Soundjam. Very impressive speeds. My G3/280 can do it at...pay attention now...5x!! WOOHOO!!
It's impossible to say "this processor is x amount better than that processor" in Apple machines. They've used a total of about 6 or 7 variants throughout the years. Lemme go through them.
Motorola PPC 750 - first G3 processor. Integer performance is 20% better than the PPC 604e. fpu performance is 5% worse.
I think there was a PPC 760. Low power version of the 750.
IBM 750CX - IBM's G3 processor. 256k onchip L2 cache. That's pretty much all I know about it. I think there's a CXe version, but I know nothing of it.
Motorola PPC 7400 - first G4. fpu was improved a bit from Motorola PPC 750 as well as first processor to have altivec.
PPC 7410 - low power version of the 7400. This is what's in Tibooks.
PPC 7440 - Low power version of the PPC 7450. Not in any of Apple's computers (yet).
PPC 7450 - increased pipeline from 4 stages to 7. 256k on-chip L2 cache. Support for up to 2 megs of L3 cache. Added integer and altivec units. Altivec can now processor 2 instructions at the same time. The design is expected to top out at 1ghz.
PPC 8500 - originally called the PPC 7500, but changed for probably marketing reasons. This is the G5. First total revamp of the PPC processor design since it was first introduced in 1994. 64 bit processor with full 32 bit compadibility at full speed. Rumor has it that they're pretty stable at 1.2ghz and up until you reach 2ghz. Another rumor is that the design is expected to top out at 4-5ghz.
As far as performance, the 750 and 7400 are almost dead even if altivec is not in use.
IBM's G3 and the PPC 7450 are for the most part dead even in practice, but if things were optimized for the 7450 it would be 1.5x faster. I think the 750CX does integers 20% faster than the 7450. This is assuming that altivec is not in use.
If whatever you're doing does use altivec, the G4 wins everytime. it really depends on what you're doing that determines how much of a speedbump you get. The lowest number I've seen is a 40% speed increase. That number can be drastically higher. Some technical document of altivec showed that a single instruction put through it went 10x faster. Not that it does much for real world performance, but it does show altivec's potential.
In MacOS 9 and older, nothing really used Altivec, so you wouldn't see too much of a difference between a G3 and a G4. There's less than 20 apps that use it. In OS 9, there is hardly any difference in speed from my 300mhz G3 and my friend's dual 450 simply because OS 9 doesn't really take advantage of altivec nor dual processors.
In MacOS X you will see a very noticeable difference because it uses altivec a lot. I don't have it, so I can't really comment on the speed of it personally, but from what other people are saying, it's highly recommended that you have a G4.
After going through the comments, there are only two people who said their 75GXP is still working fine and dandy after a good amount of time. The rest said their's failed. On top of that, a lot of people said they RMAed multiple times and those failed as well. That's like a 95% failure rating for the Slashdot crowd.
IBM should do the right thing and issue a recall.
What a big surprise.
If I can't get my porn online, I'm going to have to start getting it offline, and that means fucking real life people instead of me imaging that I'm fucking real life people. Sure it's illegal, but that's better than me making babies, a much better thing.
Right on! I'd give that a +5 if I was a mod.
I'm a student in Southeast High School in Lincoln, Nebraska. To be short and to the point, the school system here could be equated with being as loving and as caring as Microsoft. Heh.
Anyway, in my chemistry class, how we WERE doing things, you basically did your own work then you took a test to see if you understood it all. If you passed it, you got to move onto the next chapter. If you didn't, you could take it over and over until you passed it. There was no teacher intervention unless you went up to the teacher yourself. There was no groupwork either. You did everything for yourself, by yourself.
We did this for a few weeks, then the teacher surveyed us and asked if we liked the current layout or if we would prefer the traditional method of where the teacher teaches, and the students spit it right back out. 66% of the class liked the "do it all yourself" method, 19% wanted to go back to the tradional method, and 15% didn't care either way.
The reason the teacher did the survey was because six angry parents called and bitched to the school. As I understand it, the school asked him to come up with an answer as to why they shouldn't force him to go back to the traditional method. He gave them the survey. They made him go back to the traditional method.
I was all right with that at first, until my grade dived down like a car rolling off a mountain. It is currently rather close to failing, which is 63.9% or lower in his class. Before the layout switch, I had a 86.7%, which is almost a B+.
That's the least of the school's evil and dirty tactics. We're currently building two new schools (with really lame names. Southwest and Northstar), since the ones we have are vastly overcrowded with acedemic losers who shouldn't be in them anyways. The school went overbudget by a couple million dollars. So they went to the voters and basically said, "Increase your property taxes, or we will fire a whole bunch of staff." Keep in mind our property taxes are already in the top 5 in U.S. The amount of staff they said they would cut was rather high. It was like 104 people from my school alone. Anyway, the voters said HELL NO in January. They tried to get it passed again in April. The voters said HELL NO once again. So this year, there should be 104 or so less staff at my school, right? HELL NO. They didn't fire anybody. While that is a good thing, they lied to try to squeeze more money out of the public. That's an evil thing to do.
And I have another story. The schoolbusing here is getting cut drastically. It'll be just enough to not get in trouble with the law. This saves $1.2 million. But get this. The district budget this year is $10 million higher than it was for last year. Where the hell is that money going? Geesh.
So yes, I hate our school system. The guys in power don't really care about pursuing the best education for the students, but rather that they get their inflated check while the teachers suffer. Nationwide, our school is in the 70% percentile, but our teachers are getting paid 27k/year, which is like 43rd lowest in the nation. I'm not too sure about this next part, but I heard something about the district office hiring secretaries with only a high school education for around 35k/year. And anyway, the superintendant gets 1% of the district budget, so this year he gets $230,000.
In my opinion, a well-rounded education is not a good idea. I'm currently taking math, history, science, acting, and foreign language classes. I don't know what I want to do yet, but it's going to be something with macs. I couldn't care less about my classes. As a Brainbench Certified Power User for macintosh systems, the computer classes at school are meaningless to me. So basically, I'm just sitting in school and wasting tax dollars. I'd gladly drop out and not look back, but then my parents would kick me out of the house.
spam (spm)
n.
Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.
And a couple more definitions just to be clear on what the above is saying:
junk
adj.
1.Cheap, shoddy, or worthless
2.Having a superficial appeal or utility, but lacking substance
and
unsolicited (ns-ls-td)
adj.
Not looked for or requested; unsought
Dictionary.com rules.
Mike at www.xlr8yourmac.com has a nice article with some MacOS X 10.1 tests. In some your usual 21 photoshop filter test, 10.1 running Classic got like 75 seconds, while MacOS 9.2.1 got 71 seconds. 5% difference. That's pretty damn good. I don't really understand why you would want to use MoL on MacOS X when you can just use Classic, unless it's for shits and giggles.
But then again, I don't even have MacOS X. What do I know?
Code Red would have been heralded as the "#1 Software Program" if it targeted x10.com instead of the whitehouse. WindowsXP will probably be riddled with bugs. Perfect opportunity to make a new worm.
Apple legal has always been very brutal. If you go back far enough, you'll see that they have not lost a match yet, except for Apple vs. Microsoft. Even so, they did get Microsoft to basically admit that they just ripped off the MacOS. They won the legal battles with Colorsync, Quicktime VR, some company that copied the imac, and some other stuff. Not to mention a million and one Cease And Desist orders to places like macosrumors.com.
Personally, I think Apple should sue Microsoft for stealing the rubber ducky and putting it in Windows XP! That's just SO WRONG!! it's Apple's ducky, and those punks at Microsoft think they can just horizontally flip it and call it theirs. It doesn't work that way! I'd go so far as to say the rubber ducky should be Apple's mascot.
Wait. I think I heard from somewhere that Microsoft did remove the rubber ducky. Any truth to this?
No. Microsoft already made a patch for it before Code Red hit. But assuming Code Red is terroristic, wouldn't the users who got infected by it be sent to jail for harboring terrorist activities?
The MacOS X version was released on the 18th and is already up to beta 7. On a related note, rumor has it that MacOS X 10.1 will be released on the 24th, which is a monday. It is definately not an update to miss.
Damn straight. This day and age of computer games suck beyond belief. id is taking the Computer Gaming Industry in the wrong direction. They have been since day 1. Doom was pitiful, so was Quake 1. The rest, well, I haven't played those, but there's not too much reason to do so. It's all the same thing.
Personally, Bungie gets my full support. Marathon and Marathon 2 are still way better than games coming out this day and age. Myth 1 was way better than Warcraft (myth 2 was unbalanced). Oni...holy hell. I've been waiting for a game for years where I can beat the shit out of people. hand-to-hand combat is so awesome. ALL of these games have a plot, and ALL of them were very big sellers (except maybe Oni? Pitiful mac port). And all of them came at the time when the competition sucked compared to what Bungie had.
Hopefully Halo will lead the Gaming Industry in the right direction. Last I heard, it's still coming out for windows and MacOS.
The MacOS has been proven again and again to be more reliable in the sense that it's more secure and takes less steps to get the same job done compared to any Microsoft OS.
I read from somewhere that in a years time, the average PC user will spend more than 50 hours tech supporting their system, while the average mac user spends less than 5. I'm not too sure about the windows side of the equation, but I'd say that's pretty accurate for the mac side. I've spent maybe...umm..lemme think here. ok. It's been so long that I can't remember. 10 minutes maybe. In a worst case senario, it might be 2-3 hours in a year.
Besides that, MacOS X looks like it has some real potential. 10.1 looks like a winner. They've got about a month to perfect it. Even on that ram retarded icebook it should run semi-decent after the upgrade to 10.1.
It's not just the hardware which commands the premium price, it's all the stuff that comes with it. MacOS 9, MacOS X, itunes, imovie, Appleworks. All of those are in the price of the computer.
Beyond all of that crap I just typed, a lot you guys seem to be making price your first priority when buying something. I don't know about you guys, but USER SATISFICATION comes first for me, then comes price. I always pay a lot of money for stuff I want, but my reaction is always something like, "Yup. I paid a lot of money for this, but I'm damned glad I did!"
If you have 3rd party ram in it, definately check with whoever makes it that it'll work before installing that. The new firmware (after it's installed) checks for "bad ram" and if it sees any, your system won't recognize it.
Heh..this just came to mind. It might be something as simple as a 3rd party control panel/extension doesn't like your computer.
Either way, Apple prides itself on rock hard stable systems. It can be fixed!
Be sure your software is all up to date. MacOS 9.1 is as stable as a rock. MacOS 8.6 was pretty damn stable also. If there's one thing that Microsoft should have copied from Apple, it's the Software Update control panel. Works like a charm. Make sure all your 3rd parties are all up to date also.