Classic Still Useful, A Cooler Running MacBook, Panther vs. Tiger for Text Editing, and More
Charles W. Moore - 2007.11.19
Classic Isn't Dead Yet
From Robert Snell:
Hi Charles,
I, for one, am not pleased with the death of Classic. In particular,
I use FrameMaker, which I run
in Classic, since the snobs at Adobe never released a Mac OS X
version. The alternative is to buy a version that runs under Windows
(yuck!!). This will also be the reason that I will always need to own a
PPC Mac.
Cheers
Robert Snell
Hi Robert,
I think there are a lot of us in the same boat.
Lots of avant garde minded folks are celebrating the
removal of "dead code" (like Classic mode support) from Leopard. But it
wasn't dead yet to me or you or a lot of others by a long shot.
Charles
'I Will Determine When Classic Is Dead'
From Christopher Laspa:
Hi Charles,
I too haven't been jumping for joy and breaking out the champagne on
the finalization of Classic. I still use it. And like it. One of
the things I have really liked about 10.4.x is how smooth everything
works within each other. It is sad to see Apple not continue support,
and I sort of understand the business reasons, but in the end, as I
move forward, I will determine when Classic is dead - not Apple or
anyone else.
Regards,
Christopher M. Laspa
Hi Christopher,
Yes, I like Tiger, but Classic is still a lot smoother
performer. I love the positive feel of Classic apps. running in Classic
mode. Also fast! OS X has always seemed a bit ragged by
comparison.
I still like Classic too, and it won't be dead
to me for a long time yet, because I intend to keep using Tiger on my
Pismos indefinitely.
Charles
Tiger vs. Panther Performance for Editing Text
From Sumeth Chaochuti:
Hi Charles,
Thank you for your valuable time responding to my
question. The reason I asked is because I had a little problem
installing Tiger, and I would have to find a workaround if it's doable
on my machine. Should the performance suffer a bit as a consequence, I
would still do it, as I had done upgrading from 7.5.5 to 8.1 in the
past.
Since you mention the graphics card, I looked up mine and found this
info in System Profiler:
- ATY,RageM6:
- Type: display
- Bus: AGP
- Slot: ATI
- VRAM (Total): 16 MB
- Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
- Device ID: 0x4c59
- Revision ID: 0x0000
- ROM Revision: 113-XXXXX-125
[BTW, the board is the replacement for the original defective one
when it was still under warranty],
With this specs of hardware, do you think I should go ahead and find
a way to install Tiger anyway? Actually I have a second partition
prepared for this where I also have OS 9.2.2 installed. If it's working
fine, then I'll just swap partitions with Panther, moving the latter to
the same partition with OS 9 and Tiger to the first partition as
the main OS.
Your time and courtesy on this is greatly appreciated.
Yours,
Sumeth
Hi Sumeth,
My pleasure.
Your iBook has
an ATI Mobility Radeon graphics processor with 16 MB of dedicated
graphics memory and AGP 2x support, a slightly less powerful card than
the Radeon 7500 with 16 MB VRAM in my
700 MHz iBook. It should support Quartz Extreme in Panther
and Tiger.
I would definitely go ahead and install Tiger if it
were me. Tiger runs great on my G3 iBook, and I like its performance
and features better than I did Panther on that machine. As as you say,
you always have reliable old OS 9.2.2 as a backup.
Charles
Hi Charles,
Thank you for your mailing, it's a pleasant surprise to find it in
my mailbox this morning :) I had gone ahead and installed
Tiger on my second partition before hearing from you. Surprise!
Surprise! Things are generally lively, as you had said, but TextEdit
1.4 is crawling instead of running. Reverting to 1.3 was a little
better, but not much.
Finally, I had resorted to writing my manuscript on Mail.app, which
is much faster than the aforementioned apps. BTW, I have tried nearly
all the free text editor apps and found them to be as slow as
TextEdit.
So for my writing (actually translating crime novels from English to
Thai), I have to go back to Panther. I'll keep Tiger and play with it
when I have time, but for now I'm behind schedule already and deadline
is not that far ahead. Thank you again for lending advice.
Cheers,
Sumeth
Hi Sumeth,
You do what must be very interesting and rewarding
work on your iBook. Are you in Thailand? A neighbor couple, old friends
of mine here in the little Nova Scotia community where I live, spend
half their year working in Bangkok, and my daughter spent a month there
in 2005.
I rarely use TextEdit, so the sluggishness you are
noting isn't something I anticipated.
I use Tex Edit Plus
($15 shareware) for 95%+ of my text-based work, and I can affirm that
it works really well on the iBook in Tiger, or, if you really want to
fly, run the Classic version of Tex Edit Plus in Classic mode. It has a
few less features, but is extremely lively.
Charles
The Case for a Quiet, Cooler Running, Low Powered
MacBook
From D. F. Stein:
Great
article. Makes too much sense. We see the same thing with digital
cameras. How about a quality, quiet, even single focal length camera
for advanced amateurs. Will never happen.
Hi DF,
Thanks!
Good suggestion about the camera too.
Charles
Best CPUs for Portable Computing
From Yuhong Bao:
Comparing the heat that a Core 2 Duo generates with the heat a G5 or
Pentium 4 Prescott generates, the former is much better. Also
don't forget the ULV and LV version of the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo.
Yuhong Bao
Hello Yuhong Bao
Good points.
Of course, Apple was never successful in getting the
G5 to run acceptably in a PowerBook prototype due to heat.
Charles
From Yuhong Bao
"it is to be hoped that Intel will be able to produce
a modern CPU for portables that runs relatively cool and doesn't
require batteries with the potency of nuclear fission to power it."
It is already there. It is called Pentium M, Core Duo, and Core 2
Duo.
Yep, the G5 and Pentium 4 Prescott generated so much heat that no
one put them in portables.
Yuhong Bao
Hi Yuhong Bao,
I haven't seen any reports of what temperature range
the latest Santa Rosa
MacBooks run. The early Core Duo models ran at about 70-80° C,
which is hotter than I really want to live with.
My G4 PowerBook is
bad enough, with the fans cutting in (frequently) at 58.5° C.
My ideal criterion for "acceptable" is if the cooling
fans only spin up on very hot days in the summer, as with my Pismo and
iBook, which means running heat in the 40°s and low 50°s it
seems.
Charles
From Yuhong Bao
But guess how much heat a notebook based on a P4 Prescott or a G5
would have been generated. Also guess how many people need a notebook
with the power of a G5.
Yuhong Bao
Hi again,
Oh, absolutely, which is kind of my point. I'm
definitely willing to trade off some power for quieter, cooler running
and longer battery life.
Charles
Buffalo G54 WiFi Card Great with Pismo
From John Black:
Charles,
I read one of your email
discussions about the use of Buffalo WiFi CardBus adapters in
Pismos. I found the version you
mentioned getting from Wegener (WLI-CB-G54A), but mine came from eBay.
The price was great, and the Buffalo works perfectly, showing up as an
AirPort card with its Broadcom chipset. I've only tried it so far on
our home network, but I hope sometime to check it out on one of the
WiFi networks at retail locations.
Thanks for the reports that help those of us who don't have all the
tech savvy you possess.
John Black
Hi John,
Yes, you're having the same success with the Buffalo
card as I am, and I can report that it works perfectly in our local
library's WiFi hotspot, which is my only access to broadband within 50
miles.
The PowerBook thinks it's AirPort.
I dunno about tech savvy. I can't claim a whole lot.
Just a bunch of trial and error experience - and being fairly
well-informed.
You can read
my review of the Buffalo G54 802.11g Wireless PC CardBus Adapter on
Mac Opinion.
Charles
Moving Word Files from 800K Floppies
From Patrick:
Mr. Moore,
![Mac Plus]()
Thank you for writing about the Mac Plus. I have about 25 floppies
from my old Mac Plus purchased in November 1987 and am desperate to
find someone who has the hardware and expertise to transfer my files
(old MSWord docs) onto a modern medium I could access via my PC. Do you
know where I might turn for such help?
Thanks,
Patrick
Hi Patrick
First you need to find a Mac with a floppy drive that
can read your old Mac Plus floppies (hopefully the data hasn't
deteriorated - floppies are no archival storage). That may be a bit
tricky these days, but there must be someone in your area who still has
old Macs around. You may well be able to pick up a machine yourself at
a yard sale or on eBay for less than $50 that would do the job for
you.
If there is a local Mac users group, you can probably
find someone there who would help you out.
Ideally, it would be great to also have a copy of MS
Word 5.x available, in which case the best solution would probably be
to just open and save all your old files in either RTF or plain text
format. Then format floppies in DOS format on the Mac floppy drive and
use them to transfer the converted files to your PC.
Tex Edit Plus and presumably other text editors can
open Word 3, 4, and 5 documents, albeit without formatting preserved,
and save them as plain text, which would salvage the contents for
you.
The shareware application ICWord
can read and translate Word 5 documents into RTF and Text formats.
Hope this helps.
Charles
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