Dan Knight
- 2006.07.07
Are Western Digital Drives Inferior?
After reading Misleading Hard
Drive Capacity and the Western Digital Settlement, Tom Gabriel
says:
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the great job on Low End Mac - I have to check in
every day or so, so that I won't miss a useful article.
I noted that a reader commenting on the Western Digital lawsuit
said that "New Macs have this brand (Western Digital), I
think."
This may not be good news, if what I hear about Western Digital
is true, i.e. that its quality control is inferior to Hitachi
Deskstar, Maxtor, and Seagate, and the drives themselves have a
higher rate of failure as a result.
Do you know if it's true that Apple is using Western Digital,
and if their lower reliability relative to other brands is
true?
Thank you,
Tom Gabriel
Tom, there isn't an easy answer. There seems to be
a fair bit of anecdotal evidence that WD drives have a higher
failure rate than the rest of the industry, and Storage Review is
collecting
hard data from users on all major brands and models of hard
drives. (You must register [free] and contribute at least one hard
drive report to see their results.)
While IBM/Hitachi drives are generally considered
reliable, the IBM Deskstar (a.k.a. "Deathstar) 60GXP is worse than
95% of the drives on the market at the 5th percentile. Yet the
Deskstar 180GXP is more reliable than 87% of the drives out there,
according to the same survey.
WD drives range from the 10th percentile (better
than 10% of drive models) to the 93rd (for their Caviar WD800AB).
Fujitsu seems to have the worst track record overall, with their
worst drive at the 0 percentile mark and their best at the
68th.
As for other brands, Maxtor ranges from 4th to
76th percentile, Quantum from the 33rd to the 99th, Samsung from
the 39th to 56th, and Seagate from 11th to 97th.
In short, the drive brand is far less an indicator
of quality than the drive mechanism.
As to whether Apple is currently using WD hard
drives, the answer is probably. Apple buys drives from a variety of
vendors, and I know they have used WD drives in the past.
Dan
The Education iMac Story
Hello,
Regarding the education
iMac:
Actually, since this new iMac is for education customers only,
they will save only $300, not $400 - the education price on the
regular 17" iMac is $1,199, which is $100 cheaper than the retail
price.
We just bought the regular 17" iMac last week for $1,199 (my
wife is a teacher), so I cringed when I heard about this new $899
model, fearing I'd missed a great deal. But after reviewing the
specs, I still think the regular iMac 17" is the better education
buy. I like the extra hard drive space, faster VRAM, DVD burner,
and remote control for the iMac, so I'm glad I didn't wait on the
education model. I don't use Bluetooth, so that one is a non-issue
for me.
One other thing of note with the new education iMac - instead of
one 512 MB DIMM, like the two normal iMacs, it comes with two 256
MB RAM chips that take up both RAM slots. Replace one with a bigger
DIMM, and now you have an extra 256MB DIMM hanging around your
house.
Cheers,
Rick
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Rick.
Thanks for the clarification on price. While the
education iMac sells for US$400 less than the retail iMac, it's
only US$300 less than the education price.
I really don't know what Apple was thinking when
they chose to put an 80 GB hard drive in the edu-iMac. Sure, it
saves a little money, but 160 GB drives are commodity items these
days. And the larger drive is available as a $50 BTO option. You
can also add the wireless remote for $26, making it a $975 computer
to roughly match the earlier model.
ramseeker
doesn't even track 256 MB modules for the iMac, but 512 MB modules
are available for as little as $41 (before shipping) these days.
(US$70 for the 1 GB modules needed to reach 2 GB total
RAM.) If anything, a pair of 256 MB modules probably costs Apple
more than a single 512 MB module.
That being the case, there must be a reason for
it. Paired RAM allows faster memory access, and that seems to be
important to the Intel GMA 950 graphics, as both the Mac mini and MacBook - Apple's other models with
Intel graphics - also used paired RAM. That would mean upgrading
with paired RAM, and Apple does offer a $90 BTO option of 1 GB
of total RAM using two 512 MB modules. (2 GB is a whopping
$270!)
For what works out to a $225 savings for a
comparably equipped edu-iMac vs. the normal 17" model at
educational pricing, I think it's going to be a huge hit. But with
"vampire video" siphoning off 80 MB of RAM, upgrading to at least
1 GB total RAM is more important on this iMac than on the
consumer model.
Dan
The Politics of the Metric System
In response to iTunes and the
French Interoperability Law, Mike Perry writes:
Low-end,
"The metric system didn't evolve. It was created
artificially and imposed from the top down, and it may be the
greatest thing the French have ever given the world."
I beg to differ. The "top down" imposition of the metric system
lies at the roots of its problem and why it isn't the "best thing"
for many purposes. It's almost as dumb as the rather
weird calendar that the French developed at the same time, a
calendar that assumed that the entire world had French seasons.
What do the numbers in traditional, self-evolved measurement
systems, 12, 64, 360... have in common? They're easy to divide by
in half, thirds, fourths, sixths, etc. The metric system is only
whole-digit divisible by two (no big deal) and five (not very
useful). So divide a something in meters into thirds, and you'll
end up with numbers that are an endless (0.333). Not good it you're
doing real work rather than a French philosopher with his head in
the clouds. That's why home construction sticks so firmly with the
English system and cars switched so easily. You don't measure when
you work on a car, you replace. Only a few car designers measure,
and they use computers that spare them the hassles of metrics. And
what good is a measurement system when it only works well where it
isn't used to measure?
Or take something workers need to do all the time, half
something then half it again and again as in cutting wood. With a
fractional English system of inches, that's as easy as pie - 1/2,
1/4, 1/8, 1/16. For the metric system from the second division on,
dividing by two means having to guess between "official" lines. In
real work, people rarely convert from millimeters to kilometers,
and even when they do, the metric system hardly helps - just how
many digits to move isn't intuitive. But workers half and third all
the time.
This isn't an abstract question. Imposed, top-down solutions are
one of the chronic problems in politics. The Great Terror of the
French Revolution and the communistic gulags were the product of a
system that tried to make people fit the ideology rather than
building society around what people actually are and how they work
together based on long periods of social feedback and
adjustment.
That's the central point of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French
Revolution. Try to rebuild the world "according to
an idea," and you'll almost always get it wrong and, if you're
stubborn, have to kill a lot of people (i.e., Stalin's slaughter of
5 million Ukranian peasants for not fitting into his farm
collectives). There's a lot to be said for being "reactionary" in
the presence of such folly and violence. As G. K. Chesterton
pointed out, it means that your democracy takes into the account
those who lived before you. It doesn't sneer and think wisdom was
born with you, much less a few Frenchman with soft hands and limp
wrists.
That, incidentally, is my gripe with soccer. It's a top-down
game whose rules are extremely frustrating to fans, who take out
their rage at its stupidity (i.e., at so few scores and the
resulting exaggerated importance of each) in all sorts of
irrational, nasty ways. Compare that to basketball, US football,
and, to a lesser extent, baseball, where the rules are regularly
adjusting to make the game more interesting. There the fans rule
rather than EU-like experts "who know best."
Finally, in a loose sense, the metric system is like Microsoft
Windows - a bad solution imposed from the top down and widely used
only because it is widely used. Windows is researched by "experts"
in lab usability tests that frustrate users, who're given less
input toward the result than high-tech gadgets. (I know, I've
participated.) The conventional English system is like Apple - it's
designed by users (at Apple) who think and ponder for other users
and response to user feedback over time.
That's why I tell people that the best thing about Macs is that
their users complain so loudly about anything they don't like.
Windows users are sooooooo . . . passive.
- Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle, Author of
Untangling Tolkien
P.S. Feel free to post this online as a response.
Wow, Mike, that's a lot of meat to chew on.
Come to think of it, the decimal vs. natural
distinction seems to be at the core of the Western Digital drive
capacity issue. Almost all human cultures settles on a decimal
(base 10) numbering system, but the world of computers is much more
comfortable with binary (base 2).
If only we had a more practical number of digits,
like 8 fingers or 12, we could dispense with base 10 except in math
class. It's a lot easier to divide a dozen donuts among three
people - or two, four or six. But never five or seven.
Your example of the construction industry is
interesting. Cutting a piece of wood in thirds is no easier with
inches than with cm, and it begs the question why someone would
want to cut a piece of lumber into thirds, or cut it in half and
then half it again. Then again, they could simply plug the length
of the board into their calculator, divide appropriately, measure
twice, and cut once whether the board is 8" long, 1 meter, or
27".
The biggest problem the metric system addressed
wasn't decimal vs. octal (as 8 oz. in a cup) or duodecimal (12" in
a foot), but one system of weights and measures used in Paris,
another in Madrid, another in Berlin, another in Rome, another in
London, and so on. (I'm still trying to fathom why 1,760 yards
equals a mile, and I've been using the English system all my
life.)
For better or worse - and I definitely think it's
better - the French gave us a single international standard system
for weights and measures. No more wondering whether an ounce of
something is its weight or volume, let alone whether it's an
avoirdupois ounce, a troy ounce, an English ounce, or a US
ounce.
Perhaps it would have been better if they had used
a more natural base 8 or base 12 system, but they chose to use the
more sensible decimal system, one which almost every human society
is comfortable with.
As for rules and soccer, it's just human nature to
bureacratize things. Football, baseball, and basketball also have
more rules than they used to, and some of them seem just arbitrary.
But that's nothing compared with things like the tax code; despite
decades of promising to simplify and reform the tax system, every
step in that direction is followed by more steps toward complexity.
It seems someone always has a vested interest that is best served
by changing one or more of the rules.
As you note, that seems to be the thinking behind
Microsoft products. "If a two-button mouse is good, a seven-button
one will be better." "If WordPerfect has 23 new features, we can
come up with at least 40." "If someone can conceive of a function
Windows might possibly use, we need to find a way to integrate it."
It's not driven be research or needs, but by the ability to market
a product with more features.
The Mac OS, on the other hand, tends to improve
what's there and add useful new features, not ones developed in the
abstract. Whether I use them or not, Spotlight and Dashboard are
widely viewed as benefits of Tiger, not just useless new features
that waste precious computing resources. (That brings up the whole
issue of feature bloat, something Tyler Sable covered in Vintage Macs with System 6 Run Circles Around
3 GHz Windows 2000 PC.)
Dan
My First Mac Is a G4
Richard Chong writes:
Hi:
I just want to thank you for your site. I have been checking if
for years, and I have finally got myself a Mac! I use Windows at
work, but I knew if I ever got a computer for home it would be a
Mac. My Mac is a 933 G4
Quicksilver with an upgraded 120 GB hard drive and upgraded
1.25 GB memory with a CD/DVD burner.
I also have a 17" LCD Apple Studio Display. I work at a local
college here in Vancouver and periodically they get rid of their
old Macs, so I purchased my computer and LCD Monitor for $450
Canadian! Since the computers don't come with an OS, I purchased
Tiger for $100 Can. with my education discount. So it's not the
most up-to-date computer, but it's still cheaper than a Mac mini!
It's fast for what I need it for - now just Internet browsing. I am
happy with the computer, and thanks to your site I checked the
specs out before buying and determined a used G4 tower fit my needs
perfectly. Keep up the good work.
Thanks,
Richard Chong
Vancouver, BC
Thanks for sharing your story, Richard.
Although I've occassionally owned new Macs, my
main computer is a 2002 Power Mac
G4/1 GHz dual with a 250 GB hard drive and 1.75 GB of RAM. I
bought it used last year when a friend at church upgraded to a
Power Mac G5, and it's all the computer I need, if not more than
that.
I'm sure you'll see several years of use from your
Quicksilver Power Mac, especially since you can easily upgrade the
CPU, video card, hard drive, and memory if you ever need to. (One
thing I have added to mine is a USB 2.0 card for compatibility with
the newer iPods and faster printing to my color laser printer.)
Welcome to the low-end Mac life. :-)
Dan
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.
