Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

If you can justify the extra cost, go for it but don't buy the Apple ones, they're old technology and too expensive. The Intel G2 SSD is getting raving reviews and the Crucial branded ones are pretty good value.

If you think about getting a faster 'normal' harddisk, be aware that those at 7200 RPM or even 10'000 RPM are going to be a lot noisier and suck more battery power out of your laptop. There are even some 5400 rpm hard disk which are faster than 7200 ones. Stay clear from anything with 'Seagate' written on the label - horrendously high failure rate.

I have a really small (16gb) 2.5" SSD which i used to replace an HDD in my old laptop. Compared with a 5400 rpm drive, the speed bump is massive. I'm using linux as it's just my "i can't bothered to get of the sofa to surf the net" machine so i can't really comment on using big apps (photoshop etc).

Cheers for the input, it seems like RAM is the best bang for your buck at the minute in terms of upgrading (especially at crucials prices). I got until wednesday to make the final decisions.....
Apple are fuckers with their costsings, at most i could afford 128gb Solid State which could cost £240 if I bought the bottom end spec 15" MBP or £135 if I got the high end spec... and even though i keep my Laptop fairly clean (storage wise) 128gb is gonna fill quick up with software let alone projects. It just doesn't seem worth the £££'s at the minute... jeeze. Maybe I should just get the 13" MBP and get the 14-24mm 2.8 Nikkor lense i've been dreaming about... but that's a whole n'other thread.

That's the thing, it's for a Laptop and not my "Main" (desktop) computer. It's for field use and on-site results, which is, for me Image transfer/tweaking (Photoshop), Basic Footage captures and edits (Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Studio Pro), and some basic Audio production (Logic). The hardcore stuff can all be done on the desktop. I can see the benefits of Solid State as getting more out of the battery and being durable not having moving parts. But the longevity (could be) and cost (definitely) is a big negative.

Don't use a SSD drive on a PC that you use to post on here as that MTBF rate will be about 3 months for you ;p

:)

I'm getting fibre connection straight into Vb's swervers too..

Wikipedia has a section on degradation. Another article mentions 0.5 to 1.2 MTBF for SATA drives (1.5 for SCSI).
I suppose it comes down to what you want your drives to do.
I run 5,200 SATA drives, as the network is my bottleneck, and 5,200 is cheap and quiet.

"With current technologies write endurance is not a factor you should be worrying about when deploying flash SSDs for server acceleration applications - even in a university or other analytics intensive environment."

His Worst Case Scenario test done 2 years ago where you write to one block over and over results in 51 year life.

It's not a concern for me. I'm not running mission critical servers anyway.

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

I cannot find the article (because I have not looked) but recall reading that it is far cheaper to buy the base Mac Book and then purchase upgraded parts and stick them in, rather than paying the Apple Tax on hardware upgrades.

Just take it nice and easy when cracking the laptop open.

I've used both - not a massive difference with a decent amount of RAM. RAM is faster than any hard disk, and so with a decent amount your hard disk will not be a bottle-neck. Get a traditional disk now, upgrade in a year or two when it becomes much cheaper, is my opinion.

I cannot find the article (because I have not looked) but recall reading that it is far cheaper to buy the base Mac Book and then purchase upgraded parts and stick them in, rather than paying the Apple Tax on hardware upgrades.
Just take it nice and easy when cracking the laptop open.

You don't need an article to tell you that..
We looked at scan.co.uk, say £540 for 256gb ssd
Apple website was, £650 or something

The bum flaps flip open on the mac laptops (some) to expose the hdd for swapping yourself. No need for apple tax.

I've used both - not a massive difference with a decent amount of RAM. RAM is faster than any hard disk, and so with a decent amount your hard disk will not be a bottle-neck. Get a traditional disk now, upgrade in a year or two when it becomes much cheaper, is my opinion.

You still need to load the files from the disk INTO the RAM. I'd rather do this at 200Mb/s than 50Mb/s.

So, HDD speed is still very important, again, especially if you have apps like visual stupido constantly writing dlls to your asp.net temp folder, for example.

Can use SSDs in a RAID configuration?

Quick Google:
http://www.youtube.com/v/96dWOEa4Djs&hl=en_GB&fs=1&

Can use SSDs in a RAID configuration?

Yeah, check the video of the 24 SSD drive array..

Wikipedia has a section on degradation. Another article mentions 0.5 to 1.2 MTBF for SATA drives (1.5 for SCSI).

I suppose it comes down to what you want your drives to do.

I run 5,200 SATA drives, as the network is my bottleneck

you have over 5000 drives WoW that is an impressive music/porn collection....... ;p

Its a shame you can't buy a Mac without Ram or a Hard Dive then buy the rest yourself, a nice drive spinning at 5200 with a decent cache, at least 8mb should be ok not sure if they are making drives with larger cache's though.

Behold this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/16/tower_of_power/

If anyone has the set, I'd be massively grateful!
Cheers.

Are these Intel based ones?

no the old type.

www.lfgssandnerdhelpdesk.com

pretty much what i use this place for nowadays.
sad ain't it?
i have however got 4 macs, of which 2 work, and 2 don't.
I feel i could sell them after 'i've sorted out the issues with one and reinstalled the second...
then i could go skiing!
yay!
plus, my work has chucked me in at the deep end and i'm just lost all day.
still working right now...
its a bit shit.

Just had a look and no disks for the older Mac's I thought I had some ;o(

I've got a set of discs for a non-pro, non-'power', non-intel G4 ibook - OSX 10.3.2, software restore and hardware test discs. Any use?

(It was the 12" white plastic model with an 800MHz Power-PC chip.)

I think you mean G4 powermac? Macbook's inc pro's have all been intel...
I have a few for g4 macs kicking about somewhere, give me a PM if you have no luck elsewhere and I will hunt them out... (might take a bit....)

I think you mean G4 powermac? Macbook's inc pro's have all been intel...
I have a few for g4 macs kicking about somewhere, give me a PM if you have no luck elsewhere and I will hunt them out... (might take a bit....)

I'm a fuck up. Fully aware that if it gets past 11pm I should not post on the forum.

I've got a set of discs for a non-pro, non-'power', non-intel G4 ibook - OSX 10.3.2, software restore and hardware test discs. Any use?

(It was the 12" white plastic model with an 800MHz Power-PC chip.)

cheers, not sure it will work, will trawl the net.

right, lets see, i'll have a little root about for my discs, all the ones offered will work though. I think g4's will run up to 10.5 or .4 at least...
I have somewhere discs for an eMac, an iBook and a couple of Macpro's, think all will work, i'll see what I can rustle up this weekend...