Jan 31st, 06
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AnandTech: Apple Makes the Switch: iMac G5 vs. iMac Intel Duo. Well, it might seem like a no brainer to get the new iMac, but a couple of great points this article makes:
* The Intel Duo is an interim chip for the desktop Macs. There is a new chip “Merom which is the desktop version so putting them into iMacs is just to get them out. The chips are pin compatible, so presumably the MacBook is going to be longer term and shortly in 2H06, the desktops will get much faster.
* Apple has ported their core applications, but not their professional ones. Microsoft and Adobe have announced but haven’t shipped their applications, so most of the time you are running in binary translation mode which means sloooooww.
* The industrial design of the iMac is amazing. it is only 1.5 inches thick and with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse looks incredible.
* If you buy one, then upgrade right away, it uses notebook Ram so there is another 200-pin DDR2 SO-DIMM slot (this is standard notebook memory), slam another 512MB right away to really improve performance.
* It uses a standard 3.5″ drive, so you can upgrade that to anything you want. Comes with 160GB standard.
* Having dual core doesn’t seem to improve responsiveness very much. This is unlike Windows which gets much better with a dual core system.
* Performance compared with a 1.9Ghz G5 vs. a 1.8GHz Intel Duo isn’t a blow out. The 1.8GHz Duo is 30% faster on a few native tasks like video encoding, but for things like Keynote (their version of PowerPoint), it is more like 10%. So don’t expect an amazingly 4x faster Macintosh as suggested by the hype. This just shows that the overall system is what matters and that since Apple has switched over to mainly PC parts (standard drives, memory, video) it is going to have similar performance.
* Running PowerPC applications is just terrible. Applications double in memory size and they get 50% slower if they don’t crash.
As a final caveat, these applications aren’t tuned and use the gcc compiler, not the Intel tuned compiler, so while the new Macintoshes are exciting, they aren’t the true revolution. Longer term though, they are going to be more mainstream as they use a high volume chipset and then there are the ergonomics of the OSX. It puts things on a more level playing field.
Jan 31st, 06
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DailyTech – Editor In Chief and CEO of Tom’s Hardware Both Step Down. Tom’s Hardware started as a great site and it is a good example of the speed of the web. I too noticed about two years ago the quality had diminished and switched to reading “Anandtech”:http://anandtech.com.
Apparently, the rest of the world noticed too…
Jan 31st, 06
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Stanford GSB ‘87 Alumni News. Well it took a year, but I finally updated the GSB alumni swebsite. Gosh, you really can fall behind.
Also, I’ve got “Madison Park Trail”:http://madisonparktrail.org, for the group of folks who are trying to get a trail from the new SR-520 bridge which will hopefully have a bike lane to have a spur that leads to Madison Park. Now that would be asesome!
Jan 30th, 06
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Yahoo! Search blog: Firefox Toolbar: Beta no more!. One of the nasty things about the yahoo search bar in firefox is that it silently and completely resets default search. Here is how to get back to the default where google is used:
# Type about:config in your location bar. This will display a list of configurations for your browser. The bolded ones have been changed from the default.
# Right click on the ones that have the Yahoo url in it and set it to “reset”. This will get you back to Firefox default settings
# 3. Close browser window and open new one. You should be all set.
Jan 30th, 06
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SkiWashington.Com. Amazing conditions in the last 48 hours. First, it snows 15″ at Crystal and an amazing 16″ at the Summit (it is only 2500′ there!). Then it starts to rain like crazy.
Who would have every thought that The Summit would have 129′ of snow. That’s over 10 feet!
Larry’s “forecast”:http://www.skiwashington.com/powderwatch.php is for more snow at the 2000-3000 foot level for ythe whole week. It means an incredible weekend coming. Sign me up for Crystal this Saturday!
Jan 30th, 06
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TEN Technology flexibleDock Adjustable Car Dock and Charger for iPod | iPod Accessory Review. So on the cheap, get this plus the Sony cassette adapter and you are set. $50 from the apple store.
Jan 30th, 06
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Well, now that the case decision is made, the main question is how to charge in the car. It works fine to charge my iPod nano with a generic USB charger, but my 4G ipod doesn’t work correctly.
* Griffin Technology TuneFlex Auto Charger and Flexible Docking Cradle for iPod nano | iPod Accessory Review
Jan 29th, 06
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Well, I ordered the OCZ PC4000 Gold 2GB Kit, but in the mean time, I thought I’d just tweak up the single stick of OCZ PC 4000. Interesting to see how to get the settings right. Basically, I got the thing with memtest to be stable at 238MHz FSB 1:1 with very tight 1T 2-2-2-6 timings running at a modest 3.2V rather than a barn burning 3.4V. Windows also booted, but Prime95 failed on one core after a few minutes. In general, I’m finding that having two cores both going full bore, is much more stress and you have to really turn down the clock rates on the processor. Hopefully 235MHz will be stable.
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Jan 29th, 06
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AnandTech: USB Flash Drive Roundup – 10/2005. A good review of 1GB USB flash drives. The main message is that all drives are not completed equal. For $90 premium Lexar JumpDrive Lightening and Kingston DataTraveler Elite use fany high speed memory that means it will be much faster to write.
Read the reviews though, most of the drives sold haved absolutely miserable performance. Even the Transcend Jetflash I got just three months ago is now middle of the pack, so a good implementation and better NAND memory make a difference.
Or if you want to save some money for the next level down, the Corsair Flash Voyager is about $70 but writes noticibly slower, but not a bad tradeoff if you aren’t writing every day. OCZ Rally is about the same price but is the reverse, fast read, but slow writes, so those are runner ups if you don’t want to pay or you think (like me, you’ll lose the little drives 
Jan 28th, 06
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Maui accomodations and lodging details – Napili Kai Beach Resort Maui. Asa swears by this spot on Maui. It is far from the big condo complexes and is just two stories and has its own beach. I normally think of Maui as gigantic resort heaven, so this is a good option with snorkeling outside, etc.
