8 core Mac Pro impressions

First impressions installing a new 8 core Mac Pro (2 quad-core CPUs).

Design:

Of course, it looks nice. That's what you expect from Apple anyway. But the internal design is really great and surprised me. Since 2 GB of Apple RAM cost a ridiculous amount of money (around 600 USD or 450 Euros!), I had 2 Kingston sticks to insert. I was not very confident about how this would go. I still remember some insane old Mac from the nineties, where you had to remove the disks, power supply and motherboard so that you could add some RAM! Yes, that was around the time when it seemed Apple would go bankrupt with it's terrible hardware and completely outdated OS. I also remembered an ibook from a few years ago, where getting at the hard disk was so difficult that I gave up. I hope things would have improved, but was still pleasantly surprised at how much things have changed. There is a latch at the back to open the side of the machine (no screws). Then there are 2 cards which can be just pulled out (still no screws), and that's where you put the RAM. The cards slide back easily into place, being guided by plastic rails on both sides. Really cool. While the case was open, I noticed that adding hard drives would be just about as easy. In short, the hardware design is great.

Power:

Obviously, 2 quad-core CPUs suck a lot of power: around 160-170 Watts without doing anything. But the bad part is that even switched off (not in Sleep mode, but shut down), it still uses around 40 Watts! That's a lot for a machine you think is off. That is over 28 kWh per month for a machine doing nothing. Better remove the power cord when you switch off.

Install:

The intsall absolutely obnoxious, but fortunately it is quite quick. There is nothing you can do to avoid the horrible Star Wars welcome messages except looking away, but fortunately you can turn off the sound with the keyboard. Despite the insistence of the machine on trying to get your name, phone, email, sexual preferences or whatever, and trying to enroll you in Mobile Me or whatever, you can avoid all these pitfalls with a few smart clicks on the right buttons. After that, the resulting system is rather cleaner than a new HP or Dell with all the crapware they pre-install. That's it for now. Let's configure this Mac now...

Thinkpad X300 first impressions

Just received a new Thinkpad X300. Unfortunately, it's not for myself, so it will be gone again after I have set it up.

A few months ago, there was a lot of hype about the Macbook Air, mainly due to the traditionally excellent Apple marketing (after all, there had been small and light notebooks for years like the Toshiba R500 or the whole Thinkpad X series, so I failed to see what was so special about the Air other than all the things it was missing).

The Thinkpad X300 looks like the Air (almost) done right: DVD drive, Gigabit Ethernet, 3 USB ports and VGA out, all things missing from the Air, should make it a quite usabe machine. However, just like the Air, it still seems a special purpose machine, not a standard notebook for everyday use. Other than being overly expensive, it has a few serious limitations like a very small (solid state) disk of 64 GB and unlike it's older brothers no Firewire port or Compact Flash reader built-in and no PCMCIA or Express Card slot. On the other hand, it does have a DVD drive which the other X series are missing.

Installing Debian seems a bit complicated for now to have everything working right. But the notebook came with an XP Professionnal CD to replace the pre-installed Vista.

A suivre...

(Another rant about the Macbook Air: http://www.irishurls.com/blog/2008/01/16/macbook-air-rant/)

Noisy Plextor PX-810UF external DVD burner

I needed a new DVD reader/burner, so I choose this Plextor unit. Previous Plextor CD or DVD drives I had (or installed for other people) never failed, and were consistently able to reliably read discs which other readers had trouble with.

So I hope this drive will prove as reliable as the other Plextors I have used.

This I will only find out with time, but there is one little annoyance which I can warn you about now: the drive has a quite noisy ventilation. It sits on my desk next to a very silent X31 Thinpad, and I have to turn it off when not using it. Well, I guess that turning it off is good for the environment...

This model has both USB 2.0 and Firewire connectors, and unlike a previous unit, you don't need to manually select which you are using. It automatically detects whether it is connected through USB or Firewire.

It is also supposed to be dual layer capable, but I haven't tried this yet.

The power supply is unfortunately external, but they all are as far I know.

Update: At my great disappointment, it turns out this is not really a Plextor drive. Apparently, they stopped manufacturing drives and this one is in fact a LG GSA-H44N, according to a detailed review on CDRLabs. I found this out while searching the net to solve problems I had with the drive. However, I don't know whether the problems are related to the drive itself or to my system or software.

The fan sometimes doesn't rotate smoothly, and produces a terrible noise. That would probably be covered under warranty, but of course warranties tend to be useless for things like these since it's just too much trouble to claim it. (At least here in europe, where I guess the drive needs to be shipped abroad, after getting an RMA, making a package, filling customs forms etc. and usually paying VAT and/or customs when the replacement returns).

A nice little switch

There is not much to say about the ZyXEL Dimension ES-108P: it's just a normal 10/100 Mbps switch. But it has one rare and very nice feature for this type of switch: an internal power supply. No power adapter needed. Just a normal 2-wire power cable like the dozen you probably already have lying around. And it is also fan-less, which means silent. If you don't need Gigabit, that seems to be an ideal little switch for home or just for adding a few ports somewhere.

Thinkpad X60

First impressions with (ex-IBM) Lenovo Thinkpad X60s.

• The machine is much lighter than my old X31. The docs. say it's 1.35 kg. That's probably with the power adapter, since I weighed it at 1.275 kg. (23% less than my 1.66 kg. X31).
• The power plug is non-standard. Instead of the usual barrel connector, it uses a propietary cylindrical connector with a pin inside. And the voltage is 20 VDC. So if you loose the AC adaptor, the chance of being able to use some other one instead while you get a replacement are about zero.
• The battery is different from the X31 batteries.
• After the initial install, comes the first bad surprise: the machine is over-loaded with software that keeps jumping at you with windows to encourage you to whatever... It goes so far as to prevent access to the standard Windows defragmenter. When you select a drive to defragment, Diskeeper Lite jumps at you, asks you to agree to some license or something, offers a helpful link to let you buy the full version, and finally fails to defragment with some obscure error!

To be continued...

... A year and a half later...: It turns out I never continued this review, but I hear the machine is still doing it's job. As is my own soon-5-years-old X31. If you are really still interested in a review of this old model, there is one here.