12"PB with faster HD, what a speed!

[Rod Rod]

mymemory, I'm glad to hear you're using your external for your capture scratch and renders. but if you're VJing, isn't it easy to bring an external with you? I've seen video-djs do that.

I'm curious....what drive/drives are you using? I'm about to purchase the exact same machine & I'm looking for a good external to do my film work as well.

NP3, I have a Wiebetech DuoGB with two 200GB/7200rpm/8mb Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9s, RAID 0 (striped) with Apple Disk Utility.
http://www.mymac.com/weeks/duogb_9.8.03.shtml
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/duogb.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20030915/mobile_storage-11.html

I have the FW400 model. It's been replaced with a FW800 model, which has a completely different case.
http://wiebetech.store.yahoo.com/wiebetech/duogb800.html

I was pleasantly surprised when I got the 4 no-render streams of DV. You can crop and resize each stream and maintain the green bar. Once you add drop shadows, feathered edges and blur filters and so on, you start to get into orange and red bar territory.

The DuoGB800 is a great alternative to LaCie's big disk. I recommend buying it bare and adding your own drives. I saved a lot of money doing that.

 

[m.r.m.]

for the price one pays (especially for the 15" and 17" models) one could expect not having to replace the harddrive with something better, but rather have the best pre-installed. now i understand that it isn´t possible to pack 400gb into a powerbook, but all other spec could at least be up to the mark. same goes for the video card.

 

[QCassidy352]

now i understand that it isn´t possible to pack 400gb into a powerbook, but all other spec could at least be up to the mark. same goes for the video card.

Same goes for the video card? What exactly do you want beyond a mobility Radeon 9700 with 128 RAM?

I have the same machine as mymemory (rev. B 12")... you all are making a fast external drive sound very tempting...

 

[m.r.m.]

i have a geforce4200 go with 32mb ram (rev. b 12" pb). at the time no other card was available for the 12". i'd have liked the option of being able to choose the video card as well (f.e. pay $1xx more for a radeon 9700...). what i mean is, bring out basic models, but allow users to order extras like the backlit keyboard f.e. for all models.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

i have a geforce4200 go with 32mb ram (rev. b 12" pb). at the time no other card was available for the 12". i'd have liked the option of being able to choose the video card as well (f.e. pay $1xx more for a radeon 9700...). what i mean is, bring out basic models, but allow users to order extras like the backlit keyboard f.e. for all models.

That would be a good idea, at least for PowerBook users...too bad Apple's probably NOT going to implement it, due to their wish to "differentiate" their products from each other...
<EDIT>Started a new thread on this topic here.</EDIT>

 

[Ajmbc]

That would be a good idea, at least for PowerBook users...too bad Apple's probably NOT going to implement it, due to their wish to "differentiate" their products from each other...
<EDIT>Started a new thread on this topic here.</EDIT>

That's probably why the 12" iBook doesn't have the superdrive bto option and the powerbook does- not because the machine can't handle it, but purely so the iBook won't compete with the powerbook.

 

[fingers]

I fitted a TravelStar 7k60 to my TiBook 667 (not dvi)

I can't say that I noticed a great deal of difference. Maybe this being to the IDE bus speed in my model? There is a little speed increase but not dramaticly so. I expect later PowerBooks to reap a greater advantage from the drive.

I have just bought a new PB so I am gonna take the 7k60 and put it in a firewire external case. (Rather than replace my internal 4200 80gb with a 60GB)

That way I figure I can use the external drive when working on my audio projects. I haven't had any probs recording to audio on the 4200 int drive yet. I have run about 8 tracks so far in GarageBand - I haven't had time to push it to it's limit yet.

My day to day stuff seems to run fine on the 4200 - it's very quiet. So I am quite happy with it.

 

[rand()]

Let's see the numbers

At this point, I'm not even sure mymemory's even reading this anymore. But if he ->shift speech -> you are, I'd really like to see the numbers.

So grab Xbench and run the test on both your internal, then your external. Then you can come back with some substantive proof... "It feels 2x slower" just doesn't smack of consistent trial-and-timing testing that justifies the "craptacular" rating.

That said, I believe you. A 4200rpm internal probably is slower than a Firewire ext., which is likely equiped with a bit more buffer and faster spinning drive.

I'm guessing that the real problem is the access time; a 4200rpm drive is going to get to the data a touch slower than a 5400 or 7400rpm. Basic file i/o does lots of random reads; in other words, the access time has more effect on the Finder than the total transfer speed where browsing is concerned.

If you're going to be working with video from the internal I'd recommend finding a 7200, with an 8MB cache (if those are available on 2.5" drives?) and a low, low access time. That's gonna boost those Finder numbers, as well as give sweet transfer speeds for DV. It would still be better to be using the video from an external, but that's more of a stability and consistancy argument than a "can the drive handle it" argument.

I'm not going to comment on your web design, though.

-rand()

 

[QCassidy352]

i have a geforce4200 go with 32mb ram (rev. b 12" pb). at the time no other card was available for the 12". i'd have liked the option of being able to choose the video card as well (f.e. pay $1xx more for a radeon 9700...). what i mean is, bring out basic models, but allow users to order extras like the backlit keyboard f.e. for all models.

ah, ok. thought you meant on the bigger 'books. I agree with you on the 12". But I'm not sure it's apple being stubborn - I doubt that they are currently able to fit a backlit keyboard in the 12", and I think they use the 5200go because it generates so much less heat than the Radeon 9700. And at least they do offer a 5400rpm HD option now, though 7200 would be nice (and i wish I could have had the 5400rpm HD option when I got my rev. B).