Speeding things up using slower hardware

Today I have recorded a small video of a computer with very low performance and how it can get to boot A LOT faster than your new and shining computer/Mac.

How is that possible? First, you need to get rid of your hard drive and use some pretty fast Compact Flash card to locate the OS. This is not very easy, since not all the CF cards can stand up for the job. You will need a damm fast one and as trusty as you can pay.
In my case, money limits storage to 4Gb, but if I were richier I could go up to 16gb for a moderate amount.

Second, I am using a very cheap computer, runing on an AMD Geode LX800 at 500Mhz wich provides very little processing power, but, if you are careful with what you demand at the same time, it can do the job surprisingly well. Of course it is not the king of multitasking, but you will have no trouble watching xvid o divx movies (do not think of high definition) or surfing the web, or using openoffice.

Despite the cpu is not very powerful, it is also not hungry of electricity, allowing an absolute zero noise when operating. Of course, it also does not heat up, running between 35º and 40º with warm temperature (24º) in the room.

It also has 4 USB ports and many other interfaces to keep conected.

So, that is about the talking, let's see the video:

24hrs with a MacBook Penryn

Wednesday evening brought a nice surprise, I would be able to configure, use and test an Apple Mac for my first time. Sure I have seen them everywhere, read a lot about them, even used them a little to find out I had not a clue how to the simplest things, but until two days ago I have never had the chance to open a new Mac myself and put things up and running.

The experience has been interesting, with a quite a few surprises, despite I thought I already knew everything I could know about Macs, but you know, blogs and tech sites all around the internet suck, because everybody says how good or how evil are Macs, but they do not really telll how does it feel to have a Mac in front of you for the first time coming from Windows and the challenges you will find.

First of all, this mac is not mine, it is from a friend of a friend who thankfully thought of me to help her installing everything. She is a professional photographer and art student.
She told me Leopard needs to be reinstalled, because it comes from appleland using 14gb of space, and she has heard it can be less if you reinstall it and choose a couple different options during the process.
Ok, let's do it I reply, since I have no idea about my way in a Mac I cannot say if it is right.

Ok, we put the Leopard disc 1 on the tray and ask the mac to wipe the hard drive and reinstall Leopard in all its glory.



The interface of the process si quite simple, everything done from a graphic interface, you do not seen an old blue screen like when you install windows on a pc.

The process itself is very straight forward, there is not any important decission to make really and thus, is easy, a lot easier than installing windows xp or vista.



What is best is you do not need to fool around looking for drivers or waiting for the "integrated drivers from the manufacturer" to install after installing the operating system, that means once you have leopard installed, you have a beautiful machine with everything working, but you have spent two hours, and best of all, you did not even need to be near the computer.
With these new mac, it comes iWork (trial) and iLife bundled with the system, so you can almost do anything from the begining. Of course it cannot play xvid or divx out of the box, but installing vlc -for example- is not difficult, at least if you know how to install aplications in a Mac.

Because if you come from Windows and its .exe world, how in hell do you get an application installed? Good question.
First thing to do is find the application in the web and have it downloaded. It is saved in the folder "downloads", and there it is an executable. Coming from the other side, firs thing I think of is double click.
Done, well, not yet. It opens a box whith a big icon an arrow and a big "A".
mmmm, what is this???
let me think.... double click again?
Done; Vlc just opens in front of me. I tell myself: "Is it really installed?" It has been easy, but it has not given me any proof, maybe macs do not need proof of installations, they just work....
I drag and drop a video to the player and plays flawless, ok, it is working!!! I close the program (well, only the red button on the upper left corner of the window).
I install some more applications and after a while I choose to restart the computer. My sixth sense is telling me I am wrong at some point.
When I reboot, I find an unpleasant surprise, I cannot find VLC player anywhere, not in the dock, nor the Applications folder, where the hell has it gone?

I use for the first time the search engine, Spotlight, with no luck, it only finds the installer I first downloaded.
Once more, I put into work my windows experience, if it is not working after a first installation, let's do it again and catch the problem.
I repeat the process and this time, after installing and opening the program I close it using command+Q, (equivalent to Alt+F4).
Obviously, the program disappears completely again.
This time I still have the installer opened with the big box with the vlc icon, the arrow and the big "A".
Let's try a different approach: "what if I had never used a computer before and I do not know what is double click?" "what if I read the box whitout the computer that surrounds it?"
I still have the "applications" folder opened in the background so I finally get the epiphany I was waiting for: I just need to drag and drop the big VLC icon (which does not even look like an icon or something you could drag&drop) to the applications folder itself -yes, the crazy way- and voilà, I have my first application installed in a Mac.

I have to tell the truth: I felt stupid, it was so easy, BUT, I am sure it has happened to most of the people who came from windows. They just forget to mention it when they talk about switching to apple (or they feel so fooled that cannot say something was tricky being this absolutely easy).



Once I had these step under control -there were some applications that did install themselves by double clicking in the installers- and get use to the "mounting images" feature that keeps new disk units popping on the desktop I move forward to the next level.

Because Leopard is very nice, but after twelve years in the windows world, being this slow doing EVERYTHING is too painful, I needed some Microsoft Windows -never thought of that, did you?-
So, let's bootcamp it. I do not find it on the applications folder (what is the point of that folder if it has not all the applications?), so I use Spotlight to find it.
I still have not a clue of where it is, I simply look for it with spotlight and opened it.
Opened, and followed the instructions, it asks me for a windows xp disc. After some problems with special versions of windows, I finally find the windows SP2 disc that bootcamp likes.



Reboot and install windows xp -the mac owner wanted xp, not vista-. I felt a lot more comfortable, since friendly fire(windows) is a lot easier to avoid that enemy(mac) fire(fury).
Once xp is installed, I put the leopard disc on the drive to end the xp installation: sound rather wrong, but it is what bootcamp said.
Ok, and this is what you get:





So in the end I have managed to install a bunch of applications in Leopard and also managed to install windows.
When using windows, the first thing I noticed weird is the keyboard: where the f*** are the Del, av pag, prnt scr keys?????
Well aparently they aren't anywhere on this mac, so I check the bootcamp for dummies documentation. Fn+Backspace equals Delete, and the others are even more complicated, and does not help there is only one Fn key on one side of the keyboard, using those keys is always way too hard.

Talking about user experience on windows has another drawback: RIGHT BUTTON. Apparently, it is not needed since it is supposed to be done puting two fingers on the single touchpad button. Definetely I am too stupid, because there is no way I can get that to work.
After playing a lot with the computer, I mean doing nothing productive, only try everything and see how everything works, I decide I am ready for the next step of my quest:



Enabling an extended desktop. I am forced to use the d-sub15 adapter for the macbook since it is the only adaptor my friend has bought.
Configuring the bigger desktop is easy, but has some annoyances:
First, if the screens turn off for saving power, when you come back to the computer, the external display does not turn on automatically.
Second, It is very weird the way you can move windows around the desktop, te top bar stays ALWAYS on the main screen and therefore, you can only see one app at the time.
Third, when using multidesktop with windows, sometimes the macbook screen (not the external), flickers as if it was an old CRT screen with low frecuency rate, this is particularly scary and annoying. If you unplug the external monitor, everything comes back to normal.

Also I want to mention some details about this Mac:
The screen sucks!! Specially, the viewing angle, if you are not in front of the screen it looks washed and the bright is only OK.
And last, but not least, the cooling. It gets quite warm on the back, which is annoying if you are holding the computer on your legs, but at least the keyboard is not hot. The big problem is if you are making the mac sweat with CPU intensive activities, then you suffer a level of noise which does not match the minimalism and zen looks of its white design.

It is true that my everyday machine is a more expensive Sony Vaio AR, which is now two years old, and was noticeably more expensive and bulkier, they play in completely different leagues, but, the macbook does not look any attractive to me now.

Maybe the MacBook Pro, we'll see.

PRO:
-Slim and compact design.
-Good battery life.
-Easy to begin using.

CONS:
-keyboard with fewer keys than pc's.
-screen sucks.
-graphical performance sucks.
-single button for the touchpad.
-noisy
-doesn't feel faster than a two years old pc.
-no HD led, no power led.
-no card reader.
-leopard is not better, it is just different.