Cooler Laptops, a G4 Recording Studio, a Fast Unicode Text Editor, and Phantom Email
Charles W. Moore - 2007.12.03
Cooler Running Laptops
From Russell:
Really liked your article on cooler laptops [The Case for a Quiet, Cooler Running, Low
Powered MacBook]:
I guess I missed it when it first came out.
I am wanting a laptop and have been considering the 17" 1.67 GHz G4s, as the eBay price is down to
between $800 and $1,000. I found some first edition Core Duo 17" for about twice the price.
The thing I have always said about laptops is "how much power do you
really need in a laptop? what are you going to do with it?"
If you need massive rendering power for computer generated graphics,
then send it over to your muscular desktop, no need to burn out the
laptop doing that kind of stuff!
As you mention there are other needs for a genuine Laptop. I will
admit my only working Mac, a PowerBook
3400, spends little time on my lap, but it rarely gets warm, the
fan has only come on twice, even with a 20 gig hard drive and 144 megs
of RAM.
However it is just too slow for everyday web use, can barely play
web videos, and has a hard time doing anything when playing MP3s in
iTunes in the background, (though this is solved by using Winamp, which is less resource intensive I
guess).
Anyway, enough agreeing with you, here is my question:
What about Intel's much hyped SpeedStep technology? It
is supposed to be able to lower processor speed to less than 1/2 and
even turn one core off if not needed. Doesn't this help in the heat
department? Could it be a power management problem in OS X rather
than anything else? The Core Duos make half the heat (and take half the
watts) of the previous Pentium 4s. Are there additional power
management utilities available for OS X?
I wonder if for the heat and battery issue I should lower my desires
and get a 1 GHz 17" PowerBook and save a couple hundred dollars in
the process? The main problem here is that savings would quickly be
used in buying a larger hard drive and more RAM (which is quite
expensive for older machines).
Thanks again.
Russell
Hi Russell,
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed the article.
Yes, the 3400c was a great machine in its day
("fastest laptop on the planet" for a few months in 1997, before the G3
revolution hit), but its day - and that of any pre-G3 machine - is
pretty much past.
You have a point about the reduced processor speed
option in the OS X Energy Saver preference panel, and I should use
it more than I do, as it does cut down on heat generation, and even a
1.33 GHz G4 is well in excess of my needs for processor power much of
the time. Too bad there is no button in the menu bar that could
conveniently toggle reduced CPU speed on and off.
For example, at this point in time I'm running in OS X
10.5.1 Leopard, dialed up to the Internet, with "Reduced" processor
speed selected, and the PowerBook is running at a very tolerable
40° C. The trouble starts when I need the power for stuff like
dictation software - or in Leopard even checking and sending email with
Eudora, odd as that seems.
Based on my own anecdotal experience with this 17"
PowerBook, I can highly recommend it. It's decently powerful and has
been completely trouble-free. I would encourage you to go to at least
1.33 GHz (I've seen some in the $700-800 range), and if I were buying a
G4 PowerBook now, I think I would want a 1.67 GHz unit. The newer
models also came with more RAM and higher-capacity hard drives, and, as
you note, older RAM types can be pricey.
Wegener Media has
some decent prices on MacBook Pros right now, with 2.16 GHz 17" units
starting at $1,459.99, and 1.83 GHz 15" models from $1,179.99.
Personally, I would not be inclined to go for either a 1 GHz 17"
PowerBook or a Revision A Core Duo MacBook Pro, and prefer to hold out
for the bugfix Revision B version (which is what my 1.33 GHz 17"
PowerBook is) or later iterations.
My 2 cents anyway.
Charles,
Thanks for the response and advice about the first generation
PowerBook 1 GHz and MacBook (or of anything - including OS X 10.5
apparently!)
40°C is pretty good for a modern laptop. It is interesting
reading about the new generation of 45nm Intel processors; they
evidently use about half the power to make the same speed (although
they will probably sell it as "twice the power" at the same blistering
temperature!)
Hi Russell,
Yes. Even the second generation of Leopard (OS X
10.5.1) is proving to be a mighty buggy customer, alas.
So far I haven't noticed any appreciable slowdown
running the PowerBook in Leopard under reduced processor speed mode,
and the temperature has been staying pretty consistently in the 40°
neighborhood, which isn't bad, as you say - but of course I'm not
getting modern (or even middling obsolete as in this case) processor
speed either. Seems more than adequate for word processing and Web
surfing, though.
Charles
My G4/OS 9 Recording Studio
From Eric:
Hello Charlie,
I first wanted to tell you that I enjoy reading your columns on
OS 9. I really appreciate people still having an interest in that
OS.
I wanted to tell you about a project Power Mac G4 I'm putting together for a budget
recording studio.
This Mac system will be 1.5 Gig RAM, Sonnet 1.4 Gig Proc on a
G4.
The reason I chose this system was the availability of what 10 years
ago was very professional audio hardware. Namely, a Digidesign 001
running Pro Tools 5.1, (2) Digidesign 32 voice/32 Meg Sample playback
cards, and a Yamaha SW1000XG card with a 64 voice/64 Meg integrated
wave playback system.
My goal: to put together a very powerful recording studio based on
the Pro Tools software with only an external mixer and keyboard to
enter MIDI information into Pro Tools. I've also got a good microphone
and preamps, so we'll see.
The end cost of this system will be approximately $850. 10 years
ago, the Digidesign hardware would set you back about $6K alone. I am
hoping to write a column about this when I'm done getting it up and
running and stabilized.
There is life in these old dogs yet.
Sincerely,
Eric Moore
Hi Eric,
Yes, there sure is, and one of the most seductive
things about using elderly computers is that you can get and utilize
stuff that was very high-end not that long ago for bargain basement
prices. If it will do what you need it to do, why not? I look forward
to reading your column on making it work for you.
My wife is still getting great service out of our old
WallStreet PowerBook running OS
9.2.2. She could switch to my G3
iBook, which is semi-retired these days and runs OS X 10.4
Tiger nicely, but the old WallStreet still works so well and has a much
better keyboard - in my estimation the best one Apple ever put in any
notebook.
The WS is actually quite speedy in OS 9, and for some
reason, Gmail in Web-based mode, which is what my wife uses, works
better (and substantially faster) on our dialup Internet connection in
old Netscape 7.02 under the Classic OS than it does with any of the
up-to-date OS X Web browsers on my faster machines under OS X
10.4 and 10.5.
Charles
A Fast Text Editor with Great Unicode Support
From Sumeth following up on Tiger
vs. Panther Performance for Editing Text:
Hi Charles,
Interesting stuff about Tex-Edit
Plus, I used to try it once but didn't keep it, as my need could be
filled with TextEdit as easily. I'll try it again to see if it runs
faster than most other applications I have tried so far; all seems to
crawl at about the same pace. English keyboard seems a little faster
than the Thai one, but I can type much faster than the text would
appear on the screen with my old external Apple keyboard. You must know
how annoying this could be when you have to wait for your text to
appear.
The classic version is out of the question, though, because the
implementation of Thai script is different. I believe Classic doesn't
use Unicode, and my editor would have a hard time opening my manuscript
with her MS Word for Windows. I'll try out the OS X version though
and let you know how it goes.
Cheers,
Sumeth
Hi Sumeth,
I'll be interested to hear how you find Tex-Edit Plus
on a second go-round.
In using it since the early 90s on machines from an
8 MHz 68000 Mac Plus on up, I don't
recall ever being able to out-type it.
TE+ can save documents in Word (text) format.
Charles
Hi Charles,
Just to update you on Tex-Edit Plus. Well, the reason I didn't keep
it was because it can't read Thai script, and that's the end of story
for me. Lucky for me, though; I found a pretty nifty text editor which
seems to fly on my G3 iBook no less. It's called Diamond Document Editor by
Geoffrey Alexander.
Granted that this app. has unusual UI and a few quirks of its own,
but it is very fast and knows where to wrap the Thai words nicely at
the end of the line. I have done a number of pages on my manuscript
using the app last night, and I think I'm gonna keep this baby, quirky
or otherwise.
Cheers,
Sumeth
Hi Sumeth,
I can understand how the inability to read Thai (I
presume no Unicode support) would be a deal-killer for you with TE+,
but I'm delighted to hear that you've found a satisfactory text
application.
I've never heard of Diamond Document Editor, but I'm
now curious to check it out. I like quirky stuff.
Charles
Re: The Case for a Quiet, Cooler Running, Low
Powered MacBook?
From Yuhong Bao:
Charles Moore wrote:
"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."
In fact, thanks to "performance per watt" you don't have to trade
much performance to get longer battery life. Of course, it will be more
expensive.
Phantom Email in Mail 10.3.9
From Lee Shartau
Hi Charles
I have a poser.
In Mail OS 10.3.9 I have an unread email. It says so on the top of
the pane, and there is a 1 in the red dot on the Mail icon in the Dock.
I can't find this mail.
If it is a phishing or pharming mail I would prefer not to include
it in a back-up (overdue) B&W G3 400.
What to do.
Thanks
Lee Shartau
Hi Lee,
That is a poser.
I don't use Mail myself, so I have no experience of
what any issues in the program might be that would cause this. Now if
it was Eudora.... ;-)
Hard to say if it's malware or just some glitch in the
program. I would be inclined to suspect the latter as being more
likely, but you never know.
Wish I could be more helpful.
Charles
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