May 9th, 2008

Psystar: Just how loud is it? (updated 2x)

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 10:07 am

Categories: Clone, Diary, Psystar

Tags: Card, Monitor, Wireless, Jason D. O'Grady, Jason D. O'Grady

Today was my second day with my spankin’ new Psystar Open Computer. Following are some observations.

I don’t have a wireless card in it yet and my desk is too far away from my router to string an Ethernet cable, so I’m offline for the time being and cannot test things like Software Update. I ordered a D-Link DWA-556 draft-n WiFi card which should be here on Saturday.

I noted previously (in a comment) that the motherboard is a Gigabyte S-Series, Model GA-G31M-S3L featuring:

1. Supports Intel Core 2 multi-core and 45nm processors
2. Solid capacitors design in CPU VRM
3. Dual Channel DDR2 800 for outstanding system performance
4. Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 (Intel GMA 3100)
5. Integrated SATA 3Gb/s interface
6. Features high speed Gigabit Ethernet
7. Integrated High Definition audio

The case is an ASUS TM-210 mini tower, (US$55 from NewEgg) featuring:

1. Power on/off button with blue LED light
2. All door-covered drive bays
3. Excellent thermal solution supporting the latest processing platform
4. Two 5.25″ external, two 3.5″ external, and three 3.5″ internal drive bays

I connected an external FireWire hard drive (an OWC Mercury On-The-Go 500GB) to the Psystar and copied an OS X user account from it using Apple’s Migration Assistant. I also booted directly from the external FW drive without issue.

The Samsung 206BW 20” LCD monitor (US$299 from Tekserve) is almost a perfect complement to the Psystar’s black case. The Sammy glossy black bezel and hint of aluminum looks like it was designed for the Psystar black case.

I successfully installed iLife and iWork ‘08 and both went fine. However I noticed that the optical drive is pretty loud when accessing the disc. When just the machine itself is running, sound levels are as follows:

• In front of the monitor: <50 dBA
• In front of the tower: <50 dBA
• Behind the tower (four inches from the power supply): <50 dBA
• Behind the tower (four inches from the lower fan): 50-51 dBA

This machine is almost silent, folks. In fact, I opened the case and put the sound meter about an inch from the main exhaust fan and the highest reading I could get was 52 dBA, barely. The shutter of the camera (Nikon D80) made it jump to 57 dBA, as a comparison. The fan over the CPU registered <50 dBA.

When an optical disc is inserted the sound level (about four inches from the front of the optical drive door) ranges from 52-54 dBA. While louder than when it’s not running (<50 dBA) it’s not obnoxious either.

To-do:

• Install WiFi card
• Benchmarks
• Install a better video card (recommendations?)

Anything else you’d like to know?

Update and more pics after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

February 27th, 2008

The SSD failure debate

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 5:00 am

Categories: Diary, MacBook Air, SSD

Tags: Jason D. O'Grady

To listen to some people talk about it, Solid State Drives (SSDs) – like the 64GM model from Samsung that you can get in the new MacBook Air – are doomed to fail.

SSD is defined as “A disk drive that uses memory chips instead of rotating platters for data storage.”

By now you should be able to recite the benefits of SSD by rote: lighter, longer MTBF, more shock resistant, lower operating temperature, faster boot times, yadda, yadda.

In a previous post I posited that SSD may be overhyped because it’s not really that fast but is super expensive. While random “disk” access is pretty fast, initial benchmarks show that SSD boot times and sequential disk access are nothing special.

The other big knock on SSD technology is its finite lifespan. People in the know claim that SSDs can start to fail after 100,000 writes to every single cell in the chip, which is almost virtually impossible.

Steve Gibson addressed the SSD lifespan issue on Security Now podcast #122 (transcript). Gibson also responded to a commenter on The Apple Core that wrote to his company to ask why he couldn’t use his Spinrite hard disk repair software on a thumb drive.

…the other thing that happens is, if you write to (non-volatile, solid state memory) over and over and over, they die. So they don’t die fast. It’s like on the order of 10 to the 5 write cycles, so like 100,000 write cycles. But not infinite. Hard drives are infinite. That is, it doesn’t hurt them in any way to change the data on them. It actually hurts non-volatile memory to change its data. So in order to mitigate the damage, non-volatile RAM has a technology that spreads the actual writing around the surface of the RAM. So that even if you are reading and writing the same area, that is, the same address of the RAM over and over and over, it’s actually occurring in a distributed fashion across different physical areas of the RAM. They do that in order to spread out the damage caused by writing to it.

But naturally the manufacturer says that it’s not the case…

Read the rest of this entry »

February 22nd, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 23: Lovin' the F8 key

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 10:43 am

Categories: Diary, Hardware, Keyboard, MacBook Air

Tags: Apple MacBook, Apple Inc., Keyboards, Hardware, Peripherals, Jason D. O'Grady

Apple’s new, low-throw, “chiclet” style keyboard arrived to great controversy. First in the MacBook, then again when it was adopted as the defacto standard USB keyboard for all Macs, replacing the clear lucite and white 109-key keyboard.

People derided the new keyboard design because of its flat and wide keytops, cramped feel, lower key travel and even because of the changes to the layout, specifically the function keys. There were even comparisons to the chiclet keyboard from the IBM PC jr.

I blogged about the differences between the new slim-line USB keyboard and the discontinued 109-key Apple keyboard back in July 2007, when the new “iMac keyboard” was first leaked:

• Volume controls were moved from above the numeric keypad to the F10, F11 and F12 keys
• The Eject key is now directly above the delete key (like it is on the MacBook)
• The Help key has been replaced by a Function (”fn”) key
• The Apple logo has been replaced by the word “Command”
• New playback keys (back, play/pause, forward) have been added to F7, F8 and F9
• Bright and Dim keys have been added to F1 and F2 (like the MacBook)
• Expose (F3) and Dashboard (F4) keys have been added

I have to admit to being critical of the new Apple keyboard when it came out, but after a little getting used to it’s not bad. In fact, I’ve actually become quite attached to it since they added backlighting to the MacBook Air keyboard. (Can anyone explain to my why they chose black for the MBA keyboard? Over, say, I don’t know, silver!? The black keyboards sticks out like a sore thumb.)

In fact, it’s almost weird to go back to the older 109-key lucite and white keyboard after using the MBA’s so much (I sometimes use the Bluetooth version in my office). I wish that Apple would release a Bluetooth keyboard with a numeric keypad again. I thought that wireless was the future, Apple!

One thing that I’m absolutely hooked on is the Play/Pause feature that appears on the F8 key. It’s perfect if you like to listen to podcasts or audio books but are frequently interrupted or need to make calls. When listening to music, the standard old mute key (above the “/” on the old keyboard) works just fine. It’s bad however for spoken word because when muted you end up missing things and eventually lose your spot.

 Loading ...

February 21st, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 22: Argh! Recessed headphone jack

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 6:50 am

Categories: Diary, Hardware, MacBook Air

Tags: Headphone, Adapter, Apple MacBook, Apple Inc., Jason D. O'Grady

It’s almost as if Apple didn’t learn anything from the recessed headphone jack fiasco with iPhone. The MacBook Air, my friends, also has a recessed headphone jack.

While it’s not nearly as bad as the headphone jack on the iPhone, the MBA’s headphone jack is similarly recessed preventing a good number of headphones from fitting. (iPhone’s recessed jack has never been officially explained but theories exist.)

I noticed this last week attempting to record the first PowerPage podcast on the MBA when my favorite DJ headphones (Technics RP-DH1200’s) wouldn’t fit into the teensy jack. Granted the Technics have a largish, 45 degree angled connector on the male end of the plug – but they fit fine into my MacBook Pro!

Apple addresses the issue in knowledge base Article: 307322:

Some third-party audio products, such as headphones, may not plug into the MacBook Air headphone jack because part of the connector does not fit within the port hatch. In some instances, it may appear to fit, but the audio quality is intermittent or poor when used with MacBook Air.

Solution

Use a third-party headphone adapter to extend the audio connection outside of the port hatch. This enables a complete connector seating and electrical connection. Adapters are available at the Apple Store.

Lovely.

I realize that the jack’s recessed so that the port hatch on the MBA can close and that it’s a tradeoff for size, but it still bugs the hell out of me. Not surprisingly, Apple’s iPhone earbuds fit into the tiny port without a problem. Hmm…

Apple would most likely label this as a “third party opportunity” (for the likes of Belkin, Griffin, RadTech, Shure et. al). I call it annoying.

February 19th, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 20: Cutting the cord

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 6:49 am

Categories: Diary, MacBook Air, WiFi

Tags: Apple MacBook, AT&T Corp., Starbucks Corp., AT&T DSL Rate, DSL, Broadband Internet, Network Technology, Wireless, Telecommunications, Personal Technology

Yesterday, I blogged about traveling light and paring down my computer bag down to a MacBook Air in a simple sleeve. Today I want to ween myself off wired network connections.

For some, going 100 percent wireless borders on blasphemy (with its inherent security issues, lack of hot spots, usurious fees, etc.) but for this journalist pure wireless is the way to go.

The absolute icing on the cake was last week’s announcement that Starbucks was switching to AT&T for WiFi Internet access in all of their 7,000 U.S. stores. Glen Fleishman thinks that the switch could be a harbinger of a larger deal between Starbucks and Apple to woo iPhone customers:

I think… that we’ll see the 3G iPhone rolled out as part of a larger play that involves downloading movies in Starbucks over AT&T’s new network.

But his piece contained a bigger bombshell that could be earth shattering for wireless road warriors.

The deal yesterday brings Wi-Fi at 7,000 U.S. company-owned Starbucks stores at no additional cost to 7 million AT&T DSL subscribers.

Come again? This means that if I subscribe to AT&T DSL at home, I get free WiFi access at every Starbucks in the U.S.? Jackpot!

AT&T’s DSL rates are roughly the same as Verizon’s so it’s like getting a $30-40 per month hot spot subscription for free!

But wait, there’s more.

Read the rest of this entry »

February 18th, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 19: Traveling light

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 5:35 am

Categories: Diary, MacBook Air

Tags: MBA, Apple MacBook, Accessory, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Jason D. O'Grady

I finally did it. After almost 20 days of using the MacBook Air I’m now carrying just the MBA sans accessories.

Like Linus with his blanket, I started by carrying the MBA in a padded sleeve case inside my regular bag for the first two weeks. This almost eliminated the the two pound (give or take) advantage of carrying the 3 pound MBA over its larger cousins.

Any bag I carry ends up being a virtual tub for whatever I think that I may need with me. It’s a catchall for every accessory, magazine, peripheral and other pointless item that I pick up in my travels. And the larger the bag, the more junk it attracts. All these extra items really add up and my bag ends up weighing the same (or more) than it did with a MacBook or MacBook Pro in it.

The tipping point came Friday when I gutted my bag and realized that there were a bunch of items in it that I hadn’t needed or used all week. After filing away all of the paperwork and putting away the accessories, recycling all the magazines and newspapers I vowed to go sleeve only from now on.

It’s a total lifestyle change and you have to force yourself to do it, but 90 percent of the time I only need my MacBook Air. What’s the point of carrying a bunch of printed material that I already have on the MBA? Why carry paper notebooks and notepads when the MBA can do that too? Magazines? Newspapers? Bah. That’s what RSS is for baby!

Granted, going on a business trip or vacation requires a larger bag with more accessories, but my daily commute requires next to nothing. I leave an AC power and video adapter at my office and I keep a JIC (Just In Case) accessory bag in my car that has an AC adapter, Ethernet dongle, USB hub and my USB hard drive. (I didn’t need anything from the JIC bag all week.)

While it won’t suit everyone, if your daily commute consists of going from home to office or school five days a week and you don’t need an optical drive or massive hard drive then the MacBook Air in a simple sleeve case is a game changer. For me, the MBA is the ultimate blogging machine.

I suspect that many notebook computer users could function with a thin and light notebook computer and can’t help but think that we’ve been brainwashed by the computer manufacturers into thinking that we need a bunch of extra stuff with us all the time.

 Loading ...

February 14th, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 15: Temperature benchmarks

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 6:21 am

Categories: Benchmark, Diary, MacBook Air

Tags: MBA, Apple MacBook, Degree, Apple Inc., Temperature, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Jason D. O'Grady

A big concern for anyone using a notebook computer for any length of time is the heat it generates. It actually came to a head a few years ago when the lawyers at most notebook computer manufacturers replaced the term “laptop” with “notebook” for fear of litigation.

Apple recommends that their notebook computers only be used on a flat, stable surface – not on your lap. They go so far as saying the following on their MacBook care Web site and in the user guide:

When you’re using your MacBook or charging the battery, it’s normal for the bottom of the case to get warm. For prolonged use, place your MacBook on a flat, stable surface. Do not place your MacBook on your lap or other body surface for extended periods of time. Prolonged body contact can cause discomfort and potentially a burn. The bottom of the MacBook case functions as a cooling surface that transfers heat from inside the computer to the cooler air outside. The bottom of the case is raised slightly to allow airflow, which keeps the unit within normal operating temperatures. In addition, warm air is vented from the slots in the back of the case.

(emphasis mine)

To measure the heat generated by the MacBook Air I created 12 temperature zones on the bottom plate. I flipped over the MBA and mapped locations in three rows and four columns. Zones 1 to 4 are across the top from left to right. Zones 5 to 8 are in the middle row and 9 to 12 are the bottom row.

I measured the temperatures (in degree Fahrenheit) on the bottom of an MBA (1.6GHz HDD) and MBP (2.4GHz Santa Rosa) after approximately three and five hours of use using a Mastercool 52224 infrared thermometer. Both machines were attached to AC power and sitting on a cloth upholstered ottoman.

Take the jump to compare the MBA to the MBP temperatures after three and five hours of use.

Read the rest of this entry »

February 13th, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 13: Installing 10.5.2

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 6:49 am

Categories: Diary, Mac OS, MacBook Air, Software, Software Update

Tags: Software, Apple Macintosh, Update, Apple MacBook, Apple Inc., Knowledge Base, Mac OS 10.5.2 Update, Nothing, Desktops, Tools & Techniques

I generally wait at least 72 hours before installing any operating system updates from Apple but yesterday’s announcement of 10.5.2 made me throw caution to the wind. I figured that I had a solid backup (as Apple recommends) and I wanted to see if the new update from Cupertino would play nice with the MacBook Air.

The Mac OS 10.5.2 Update weighs in at a hefty 341MB and is available via Software Update. A 10.5.2 Combo update (343MB) is available as a standalone download that will update both 10.5.0 and 10.5.1 and is convenient for IT folk and people that may be updating multiple Macs. (I don’t have any HP printers so I skipped the 84MB driver update.)
I highly recommend running Disk Utility > Repair Disk Permissions on your hard drive before installing the 10.5.2 Update. If the repair find lots of bad permissions on the first go around, run it again. Apple has posted several important tips in knowledge base Article 307109 that should be heeded before installing 10.5.2:

• It is recommended that you back up your system prior to installing any updates.
• The installation process should not be interrupted, even if the progress bar remains unchanged for several minutes. If a power outage or other interruption occurs during installation, use the standalone installer (see below) from Apple Support Downloads to update.
• You may experience unexpected results if you have third-party system software modifications installed, or if you’ve modified the operating system through other means. (This does not apply to normal application software installation.)
• If issues occur during installation–for example, if Software Update quits unexpectedly–please see this article.

The software update downloaded fairly quickly over a standard cable connection but takes a decent amount of time to complete. You have to “restart and install” and your Mac will restart between one and two more times before the process completes.

Be patient. The 10.5.2 update took the better part of an hour to install on my MacBook Air. Keep the AC adapter plugged in and don’t panic if there are long periods of time where nothing seems to be happening. Don’t interrupt the procedure for any reason (for example by force quitting or powering down) as doing so can render your drive useless and lead to data loss.

Installing the 10.5.2 update on my MBA was fairly painless – other than the multiple reboots and long waits which will make any Mac user bite their nails after a while. Clicking on the software version number in the “About This Mac” dialog box reveals a build number of 9C31, which is the build that was seeded to developers on 06 February 2008. Clicking on it again displays your motherboard serial number.

Advice for the impatient: After you’ve clicked Ok and Agree buttons the requisite amount of times, go grab a coffee, walk the dog or use one of your other Macs for a while. Nothing is worse than watching grass grow.

After successfully installing the 10.5.2 update on my MBA I ran Software Update again (just an old habit) and to my surprise, there was an almost 50MB “Leopard Graphics Update” waiting to be installed. Little is mentioned in the knowledge base article about the Leopard Graphics Update other than: “Leopard Graphics Update is recommended for all users and improves the stability and compatibility of your Mac. This update requires Mac OS X 10.5.2.”

Ok, guess I’d better install that one too…

No noticeable changes after installing the LGA, but hey, what the heck.

After the jump, some 10.5.2 fixes and a poll…

Read the rest of this entry »

February 11th, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 12: Tackling the storage issue

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 6:02 am

Categories: Diary, Hard drive, MacBook Air, Storage

Tags: Hard Drive, MBA, Storage, Passport, Apple MacBook, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Jason D. O'Grady

Being somewhat of a data packrat, the MacBook Air’s tiny 80GB hard drive was probably its biggest problem for me. I got accustomed to having a fairly heavy Aperture (20GB) and iTunes library (30GB) at my fingertips on my MacBook Pro’s spacious 320GB HDD. The teensy MBA hard drive makes this impossible.

Read more about data thinning strategies:

• Putting your HDD on an 80GB diet (Redux) 06 Feb 2008
• Putting your HDD on an 80GB diet - 16 Jan 2008

The reality is that, just like Apple taught us with the advent of flash-based iPods, you don’t need to have all your music with you all the time. The same is true for photos and data, and heck, applications for that matter. I’ve already gotten used to the MBA’s small storage capacity (I’ve got 25GB free!), but I’ve enlisted some help.

As I mentioned in my “80GB Diet” pieces, I archived the contents of my Movies, Music and Pictures folder to an external HDD, and I also made a reference copy of my Applications folder and only installed my mission critical applications on the MBA.

A good, high capacity, lightweight external USB drive is a nice addition to the MBA and I am really digging the Western Digital Passport 320GB (Model: WDXMS3200, US$199). The passport is a perfect companion to the MBA because it’s USB 2.0 only (no need to waste money on those pesky Firewire and eSATA interfaces), lightweight (3.7 ounces/104 grams) and ships with the same snappy, 320GB, 5400RPM, SATA Scorpio mechanism that I used to have in my MacBook Pro (I reviewed “the mother of all notebook drives” on 16 Nov 2007).

Read the rest of this entry »

February 8th, 2008

MacBook Air Diary-Day 9: Is the SSD overhyped?

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 6:38 am

Categories: Diary, Flash, Hard drive, Hardware, SSD

Tags: Hard Drive, Problem, Apple MacBook, Solid State Disk, Jason D. O'Grady

Boy I am I glad I didn’t pony up an extra US$1,000 for the Solid State Drive (SSD) option in my MacBook Air. While the temptation was there, sticker shock at the upgrade price led me to stick with the traditional HDD option.

The MBA hard drive has its share of problems: it’s small, slow, PATA, etc. (but that’s a topic for another blog post.) According to benchmarks posted by ArsTechnica the flash/SSD option in the MacBook Air may not be all that it’s cracked up to be.

In their tests they pitted the MacBook Air HDD against the pricey SSD model and the results are surprising. The MBA SSD took 28.5 seconds to boot, 12 seconds faster than the HDD model and 11.5 seconds faster than the Santa Rosa MacBook but 2.5 seconds slower than the Santa Rosa MacBook Pro. Eeek!

In sequential read and write tests the HDD model outperformed the SSD model:

The overall disk test scores aren’t much different—29.37 on the HDD and 34.30 on the Air. But the SSD performs a fair amount worse than the HDD model when it comes to sequential read and write tests. The SSD was able to write sequentially between 14.67 and 13.86MB/sec, and sequentially read between 7.29 and 49.59MB/sec (the first and second numbers are differentiated by the size of the blocks being written). Comparatively, the HDD model sequentially writes between 31.35 and 33.33MB/sec, and reads between 6.32 and 32.74MB/sec for the same-sized blocks.

(emphasis mine)

But these results aren’t totally surprising…

Read the rest of this entry »