Dan Knight
- 2006.05.22
The MacBook Is Hot - Literally
Donald Crease writes:
Dan,
macBOOK
heats up
dramatically
so much so that the computer crashes it is not since I started
reading about these crashes, that I've noticed a number of crashes
on my present iBook on paper the macBOOK looks great the specs bowl
you over it's about putting theory into practice and this is where
Apple falls short, until it is able to sort out the kinks
i'm just not sure i feel comfortable purchasing a macBOOK until
the end of the year
in the back of my mind, i'm sensing Apple will come out with a
revamped macBOOK, sporting a faster processor and possibly, just
possibly a less glossy, reflective screen.
ah the drama
Donald, thanks for the tip on heat issues. I've
checked some of the online forums, and find that field results are
very mixed. Some people claim a lot of heat, others say it's no
hotter than their previous iBook or PowerBook.
In general, notebook computers do run hot. That's
why Apple doesn't call them laptop computers; they're not intended
to be used on your lap. And it's why there are so many cooling
stands for notebooks on the market.
Being a new design, the MacBook will probably have
some teething problems, just as the 15" MacBook Pro did. One of the MBP
problems was overheating, and some of that was due to too much
thermal paste. Apple also releases a firmware update that helped
resolve the heat problems.
Expect unannounced improvements over the first
month or so the MacBook is available. Buying a brand new design
right away may work out, but it's usually wisest to wait at least a
few weeks and read field reports before deciding whether to
invest.
Apple is sure to come out with faster MacBooks,
but not until the Pro models have moved up another notch in clock
speed. I would love to see Apple offer a matte screen as a CTO
option on the MacBook. While most notebook computers today have
glossy screens, it's interesting to note that freestanding displays
are invariably matte finish. That should tell us something.
SheepShaver on an Intel Mac
In response to my request for
feedback from SheepShaver users with Intel Macs, Fred Goff
writes:
Mr. Knight,
I downloaded and played around with the latest SheepShaver
snapshot last night and today on a Core
Solo Mac mini. Here's what I found:
The only ROM image I could get the program to work with was that
bundled in Apple's ROM Update 1.0 download. Extract the ROM image
from the tome using the TomeViewer
program (TomeViewer requires classic).
SheepShaver recognizes dmg [disk image] volumes, so you can
create your disk image using disk utility.
The SheepShaver GUI for setting your preferences is very Unixy
X-windows ugly, but it gets the job done.
I was never able to boot off anything later than Mac OS 8.6. I
could upgrade 8.6 to 9.1, but the emulator then failed to recognize
the disk image as a bootable drive.
When you are installing 8.5 or 8.6 (I installed 8.5 and then
updated to 8.6), you will need to make sure you erase the hard
drive image before you install - even if the image is already
formatted from when you created it in Disk Utility - otherwise you
won't be able to start up from the hard drive once you have
finished the install. I suspect this might have to do with Disk
Utility having journaling on by default, but I haven't had the time
nor inclination to research it.
Once I got 8.6 installed and running, it was pretty stable.
Issues: Video is very slow. Think
VirtualPC slow. Shared files are problematic. It may have to do
with having your shared files in a path that has spaces in it, but
I need to research this.
Performance: The SheepShaver people claim about 1/8th
speed, and that seems about right. On my 1.5 GHz Core Solo, it felt
about as fast as on my PowerBook
3400c, which was a 180 MHz machine. Except for the video
performance, which feels about as fast as a Color Classic running 7.5.3
Networking: It worked pretty well, although pretty
slowly, especially when trying to do Internet downloads. On my
broadband connection, I was getting 14.4k dialup speeds.
Some people have suggested installing Linux under Parallels
and
then running the Linux version of SheepShaver, which is apparently
further along in development and has a more responsive video. I may
try this over the next few days.
Personally, I think SheepShaver is fun for the hobbyist
tinkerer, but you'd probably be better served in migrating Low End
Mac into RapidWeaver over
the next several months (each day, spend a couple of hours
migrating the site, then once you've got it over, make the switch
and don't look back) or fork out the money for Dreamweaver
or GoLive,
which can load and edit your existing site.
Hope this helps.
Fred Goff
Fred, thanks for taking the time to tinker and
provide your feedback.
I've long maintained that a 300 MHz G3 is plenty
of power for most users most of the time with the classic Mac OS,
so emulation in the 200 MHz range shouldn't be too hard to deal
with - except for the horribly slow graphics you mention.
I don't think we'll ever find an especially
responsive/optimized emulator from the Open Source community, but
they've given us some decent ones (Mini vMac, PearPC, Basilisk II, SheepShaver). I still
have some hope that we'll see a commercial PowerPC emulator that's
responsive and easy to install.
On the HTML front, I'm quite content with my
workflow: write and edit in Claris Home Page, apply classes in Nvu,
convert HTML to XHTML in TextWrangler, and then back to Home Page
to upload the site updates. Nvu is the slow step, but it does let
me preview with CSS styles and classes applied.
I'll probably stick with this workflow as long as
I'm using PowerPC hardware. That's how comfortable I am with Home
Page. (Not to mention that Apple has all but abandoned AppleWorks,
so we'll probably never see an Intel version of the word processor
and spreadsheet I use daily.)
It's a low-end solution, and it works just right
for me. Playing with Dreamweaver and GoLive has convinced me that
such complex are overkill when all I need to do is write, edit,
insert graphics, and then drop it into my standard page
template.
Replacing Home Page with Nvu
Hello Dan Knight,
concerning your ongoing search for an HTML editor to replace
Claris Home Page - maybe it seems too obvious to be noticed, or
it's entirely an unsuitable application in comparison to Claris
Home Page: Have you ever tried Nvu, which is the standalone
successor/derivative of good old Mozilla (now SeaMonkey) Composer?
It's not a high-end pro application, but it's nevertheless much
better than apps "for beginners", and it will definitely let you
open existing HTML files. It features WYSIWYG mode as well as HTML
source edit mode, has a built-in CSS editor, and produces
w3.org-valid code.
Best regards,
Christoph Trusch
Thanks for writing. I've tried Nvu, I really want
to like Nvu, and it is part of my workflow, but I find it both slow
and unstable. It is the closest thing I've seen to Claris Home Page
for OS X, but it seems stuck at the 1.0 revision. With improvements
in stability and speed, it could replace Home Page.
Freeway Pro and HTML Import
Following up on Replacing Claris
Home Page, Gilbert Wildin writes:
Yes, that is a serious drawback! They have a method, but it
sounds like it is for Freeway Pro. It might be possible to cut and
paste into an HTML object.
Here's what they say:
You can import existing HTML pages via the File
> Get HTML menu and browsing to the location of your existing
files.
As Freeway does not work directly in HTML the
conversion process is unlikely to result in an exact match after
import and you should expect to do further editing and fine tuning.
Sometimes this can require a lot of work.
Freeway was developed to offer the greatest
possible flexibility for the creation of websites from scratch. You
can simply drag and drop images from your current site in the
browser directly onto your Freeway page. Text can be copied and
pasted from the browser directly into HTML items within your
document.
If you use Internet Explorer, you can also save
the HTML text from the page as a text file and import this into a
HTML item in Freeway.
Should you want to recreate the site completely,
you can use Master pages to place any common elements quickly and
easily on pages throughout your site . . . saving you
loads of time.
Note: This feature is not available in
Freeway Express.
Gilbert Wildin
Gilbert, thanks for the info. From my perspective,
a webpage design program that can't import existing HTML properly
(as the above says, "the conversion process is unlikely to result
in an exact match after import") is the equivalent of a word
processor that can't import simple text files properly.
I'd love something as quick and simple as Claris
Home Page, and the free Nvu
editor is the closest I've seen. But IMHO it's not yet polished
enough to replace this Classic app.
Great PowerBook 1400 Article
Hey LEM
Whoever put the following article together [What's a Good, Inexpensive, Useful, Older
Mac? The PowerBook 1400] - it's fantastic - I've just brought
an old 1400 and this was an immense help.
So thanks!!!
Regards
Trent Rule
Thanks for your kind words, Trent. I've forwarded
your email to Thomas Ahart, the author of that article.
I've been a fan of the PB 1400 since it first came out, although I
have always seen Apple's failure to include ethernet and an
internal modem as shortsighted. I acquired my first 1400s over
Christmas break, and while the 1400cs has a decent display, the
active matrix display on the 1400c is fantastic.
Most of the 1400's drawbacks can be overcome. RAM
Doubler 8 will let you emulate 3x the installed RAM, larger and
faster notebook hard drives are readily available, and it's still
possible to locate G3 upgrades (usually used).
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.
