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Kenshirou
Jan 6, 2007

j.HP, c.Mp xx Flash Kick
Wavering on checkout with a stock Mini Server and a trackpad... I have an MBA 11in and a gaming rig, but to be honest I've wanted to get a Mini for years and this one is on par enough with my Sandy Bridge PC that I wouldn't miss down the road. Debating over the models, though, because the 2.5GHz i5 might not be so bad despite the difference in multi-threading and L3 cache on the server. Wish there were more benches, but it's too early to tell I guess.

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Corb3t
Jun 7, 2003

I've only had my MacBook Air for the past 6 months and I've already ordered a Sand Bridge model. It's definitely worth trading up for.

Mex
Nov 23, 2004

by Fistgrrl

CDOR Gemini posted:

I'm not sure if this is a software question or a hardware one, but here goes:

At some point, are refurbished MBPs going to start coming with Lion pre-installed? I know you get a download toke, but that's not practical for my sister, who is looking into getting one soon.

Does she have any problems accessing the app store? Other than the couple of hours wait, Lion OSX upgrade is seriously, retarded easy. I think you have to click Accept like 3 times and you just wait 30 minutes. It's honestly very smooth.

Kalix
May 8, 2009

Corbet posted:

I've only had my MacBook Air for the past 6 months and I've already ordered a Sand Bridge model. It's definitely worth trading up for.

Have you sold your Air yet? What did you have and what are you replacing with?

I've got an ultimate 13" and I'm not sure exactly how much processor speed boost we're talking here.

I also wonder if I should just wait until next cycle since I got this right when the Pros came out this year.

Star War Sex Parrot
Oct 2, 2003

Kalix posted:

I've got an ultimate 13" and I'm not sure exactly how much processor speed boost we're talking here.
A lot, especially under load when Turbo Boost kicks in.

Kalix
May 8, 2009

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

A lot, especially under load when Turbo Boost kicks in.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see the Anand review when it comes out.

I also just realized they're doing 4GB Ram stock.

I'm jealous of the idea of Thunderbolt + the Display for awesome docking (not that I have the funds right now to do that).

I wonder how much I would get if i sold my Air, anyone have any ideas?

Star War Sex Parrot
Oct 2, 2003

Kalix posted:

I wonder how much I would get if i sold my Air, anyone have any ideas?
Value sunk a bit with the refresh. You'll have to see where prices settle on SA-Mart, Craigslist, and eBay.

Fists Up
Apr 9, 2007

Definitely buying one of the new Macbook Air's now. Seems they've addressed some of the small issues I had which held me back a bit before.

The base 13" seems like the perfect specs for what I'm after.

Now to decide if 128GB is enough for me which I think it should be seeing as its becoming a lot easier to store files online nowadays.

Gunjin
Apr 27, 2004

Om nom nom

Astro7x posted:

Carrying over discussion from the other thread about the new Cinema Display.

So if I wanted to hook up my 2008 Mac Pro to it, I would just need to get a Thunderbolt to DVI connector, correct?

I find it weird that if there are currently no Mac Pros out there that support the Thunderbolt Cinema Display that they show it next to a Mac Pro on the product page: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC914LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ&mco=MjMzOTYzMjc&s=topSellers

Click Enlarge Image, then there are photos of the display next to all the Macs.

Apple still sells the non Thunderbolt display as well.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC007LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ&mco=MTkwMzc1NDA

It's the one that is shipping in 24 hours, the TB display has a ship time of 6-8 weeks.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

A lot, especially under load when Turbo Boost kicks in.

100% for the 13" and 150% faster for the 11", as far as Geekbench scores go.

frumpsnake
Jan 30, 2001

The sad part is, he wasn't always evil.

jink posted:

I too have used this without issues in Lion.



I did this the other day to enable TRIM:

code:
sudo perl -pi -e ‘s|(\x52\x6F\x74\x61\x74\x69\x6F\x6E\x61\x6C\x00).{9}(\x00\x51)|$1\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00$2|sg’ \
/System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage

sudo chown root:admin /

sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel

sudo kextcache -system-caches
Works fine, and does a proper find-and-replace rather than hex offsets and/or copying over older pre-Lion versions of the kext like TRIM Enabler does.

frumpsnake fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Jul 21, 2011

Kalix
May 8, 2009

Bob Morales posted:

100% for the 13" and 150% faster for the 11", as far as Geekbench scores go.

What about Relative to the 2.13ghz?

japtor
Oct 28, 2005

Kalix posted:

What about Relative to the 2.13ghz?
Just over 3000 for that vs 5000-6000 (according to the pic on the last page) for the 1.6-1.7ghz models...close enough to 100% basically, albeit in ideal conditions for both.

Haggins
Jul 1, 2004

The LCD on my 2008 15" MBP is hosed. It just shows a bunch of gibberish. This problem has been intermittent since last winter; usually showing a garbled screen when I wake the computer up from sleep/screen saver. It usually went away in a few seconds, so I never bothered to fix it. Now it's staying garbled for longer.

I saw that there was a recall on the graphics chip that my MBP uses. The symptoms of the defective chips sound similar to my own problems (except it works fine with an external display, which is what I use now), so I had Apple check it out. The guy at the genius bar thought it might have been covered under the recall, but after letting them diagnose it for a week, they said it was the LCD. They offered to fix it for $300, but I passed.

Now that it's acting up bad, I'm thinking about getting it fixed finally. Doing some googling I found this service on ebay that says they will fix it for $190 shipped. They also sell the LCDs by themselves for about $115 shipped. I'm pretty handy with electronics (I used to solder for a living and I changed the HD in the MBP a couple times) but I don't know how hard it is to replace the LCD. Should I give these guys a shot, go with Apple, or DIY?

Corb3t
Jun 7, 2003

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

A lot, especially under load when Turbo Boost kicks in.

What's the general consensus on i5 vs. i7 in terms of performance? I didn't get it, so I guess it doesn't matter much to me, but my buddy just ordered a decked out 13" MBA with the i7 and 256GB SSD.

Star War Sex Parrot
Oct 2, 2003

Corbet posted:

What's the general consensus on i5 vs. i7 in terms of performance?
There is no consensus, really. i7 might eat a little more juice, but will probably be a smidge faster. It probably won't make a significant difference either way, but for $90 I'll probably snag the i7.

We'll find out more when reviews come out.

Corb3t
Jun 7, 2003

I really hope Dell utilizes ThunderBolt with DaisyChaining in their next refresh of displays. While that feature is great, it's definitely not worth $1000 to me.

TobyObi
Mar 7, 2005
Ain't nobody Obi like Toby ;)
Oh crap.

Having an Apple store on campus means that I'm getting an 11" MBA.

drat. My poor credit card.

Doctor Zero
Sep 21, 2002

Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Haggins posted:

Should I give these guys a shot, go with Apple, or DIY?

These guys have a youtube video on how to do pretty much anything you can think of. Here's an LCD video. you may have to search around for the other videos to get the machine to that state. That should give you an idea on how hard it is to do yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbAkoxjViho

cbirdsong
Sep 8, 2004

Commodore of the Apocalypso
Lipstick Apathy

Mex posted:

Does she have any problems accessing the app store? Other than the couple of hours wait, Lion OSX upgrade is seriously, retarded easy. I think you have to click Accept like 3 times and you just wait 30 minutes. It's honestly very smooth.

She is in the boonies on satellite internet with a 200MB/day cap.

DigitalChaos
Aug 18, 2003
anyone have suggestions for a benchmark utility that will give IOPS? I have played around with xbench, quickbench, etc. They are great but none of them specifically list IOPS.

Beeftweeter
Jun 28, 2005

OFFICIAL #1 GNOME FAN

DigitalChaos posted:

anyone have suggestions for a benchmark utility that will give IOPS? I have played around with xbench, quickbench, etc. They are great but none of them specifically list IOPS.

Iometer seems to have an OS X version, but I haven't tried it personally.

Haggins
Jul 1, 2004

Doctor Zero posted:

These guys have a youtube video on how to do pretty much anything you can think of. Here's an LCD video. you may have to search around for the other videos to get the machine to that state. That should give you an idea on how hard it is to do yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbAkoxjViho

Hmm, I could probably do it but it may just be worth the $75 to have someone do it for me. I'd really hate to gently caress up my computer worse than it is now.

japtor
Oct 28, 2005

Corbet posted:

I really hope Dell utilizes ThunderBolt with DaisyChaining in their next refresh of displays. While that feature is great, it's definitely not worth $1000 to me.
Note that if you're wanting a 27-30" you'll probably be looking near $1000 anyway.

Coldrice
Jan 20, 2006


So I'm looking into new laptops, and thought I can' afford one yet I am considering a macbook. The question is which. Portability is a huge factor, so I am really attracted to these new macbook airs. The challenge is I need to do light photoshop work. Also, I want to play wow. Right now I play it on lowest settings on my crap acer, what would it look like on a macbook air?

appropriatemetaphor
Jan 26, 2006

Coldrice posted:

So I'm looking into new laptops, and thought I can' afford one yet I am considering a macbook. The question is which. Portability is a huge factor, so I am really attracted to these new macbook airs. The challenge is I need to do light photoshop work. Also, I want to play wow. Right now I play it on lowest settings on my crap acer, what would it look like on a macbook air?

What's a "crap acer"? I used to play WoW when it first came out on my old PowerBook G4 12 incher soo. Also I can run Photoshop just fine on the 2ghz C2D I have now so it shouldn't be an issue on any of the new Airs.

Coldrice
Jan 20, 2006


appropriatemetaphor posted:

What's a "crap acer"?

acer 5532, amd athlon t-20, 3gb ram, ATI Radeon HD 3200.

DigitalChaos
Aug 18, 2003

amf5 posted:

Iometer seems to have an OS X version, but I haven't tried it personally.

i couldnt get that one working. it just complains about socket errors (probably Lion compatibility issues).

I just tried out this guy's python script: http://benjamin-schweizer.de/measuring-disk-io-performance.html
But if you though enough threads at it you will start to exceed even the theoretical speed limits of the drive and even the SATA bus.

Sasquatch!
Nov 18, 2000


Wow, the Mini is actually a contender for a "real" computer. I mean, a Core 2 in the Year of Our Lord 2011 was just dumb. But with an i5? Pretty tempting as a second / HTPC computer. Might even pick one up to try to transition music recording over to it from PC.

CommanderApaul
Aug 30, 2003

It's amazing their hands can support such awesome.

Coldrice posted:

So I'm looking into new laptops, and thought I can' afford one yet I am considering a macbook. The question is which. Portability is a huge factor, so I am really attracted to these new macbook airs. The challenge is I need to do light photoshop work. Also, I want to play wow. Right now I play it on lowest settings on my crap acer, what would it look like on a macbook air?

I played WoW on medium setting on one of the old 11" 1.4GHz Airs, and it ran fine. The new ones will probably be much better, it's not so much GPU limited as HDD/CPU/RAM limited.

eames
May 9, 2009

CommanderApaul posted:

The new ones will probably be much better, it's not so much GPU limited as HDD/CPU/RAM limited.

Huh, what? I was under the impression that the 1.2 Ghz HD3000 is slower than the old 320m. Not much, but still slower.
Relevant review/benchmarks: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4205/the-macbook-pro-review-13-and-15-inch-2011-brings-sandy-bridge/19

Either way, the air should be fine for playing WoW as long as you keep the settings low and don’t load a gazillion add ons.

Momonari kun
Apr 6, 2002
Yes, you needed video.
So my old 2.4 iMac and ATI 2600 would be destroyed by the new Mac mini, correct? I think if I can sell the iMac for $800-$900ish (inflated prices here in Korea) I can get the i7 Mac mini with the upgraded graphics and a monitor for only about $200.

japtor
Oct 28, 2005
The CPU will destroy it, and the GPU will hopefully have roughly 4x the performance...I wouldn't expect anything super great from it since it's still a low end card, but it should still be a decent improvement over what you have.

The HD speed is a liability as always, but going from an old computer drive to a fresh one could help, depending on the state of your current drive.

Jack's Flow
Jun 6, 2003

Life, friends, is boring
Watching all this new hardware roll out reminded me that my initial Apple Care is due to expire in a month. Time to purchase something from Apple (again). It also reminded me of the fact that I really love with my late 2009 quad core iMac. Best computer I ever purchased.

Pantsmaster Bill
May 7, 2007

Oh man, probably going to get a MBA in the next couple weeks, just gotta decide between the 11" and the 13". It's a shame my iMac is the pre-thunderbolt one, so I won't be able to use it as a huge monitor.

cowboy beepboop
Feb 24, 2001

Any word on using the new iMacs as displays for a windows PC?

dissss
Nov 10, 2007

I'm a terrible forums poster with terrible opinions.

Here's a cat fucking a squid.

Pantsmaster Bill posted:

Oh man, probably going to get a MBA in the next couple weeks, just gotta decide between the 11" and the 13". It's a shame my iMac is the pre-thunderbolt one, so I won't be able to use it as a huge monitor.

I thought you could use the Display port on iMacs as an input? Or is that not compatible with Thunderbolt?

ndrake
Mar 29, 2002

You know, this is a damn fine cup of coffee.
It sure doesn't look like it, but has there been any change to the exterior/size of the macbook airs?

There is no standard security lock port so I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to keep this from walking off while I'm at work. So far this tricky case seems to be my best bet.

Zwille
Aug 18, 2006

* For the Ghost Who Walks Funny
Being as light as it is, why would you leave it around?

There was a way to lock the curved Air but it involved sticking metal between the hinges so if you (or anyone else) closed the lid accidentally, you'd probably gently caress up your screen and/or the bezel in the process, not to mention the hinge. Here's a link and don't tell me it doesn't look retardedly risky. http://www.macgirl.net/reviews/Reviews/macbookairlockbracket.html

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ndrake
Mar 29, 2002

You know, this is a damn fine cup of coffee.

Zwille posted:

Being as light as it is, why would you leave it around?

There was a way to lock the curved Air but it involved sticking metal between the hinges so if you (or anyone else) closed the lid accidentally, you'd probably gently caress up your screen and/or the bezel in the process, not to mention the hinge. Here's a link and don't tell me it doesn't look retardedly risky. http://www.macgirl.net/reviews/Reviews/macbookairlockbracket.html

I'm a physician and it would be weird to bring a personal computer into exam rooms during clinic... And agreed that doesn't look ideal.

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