933 or dual 1000?

[SPG]

My vote is for the dual 800. Dual is better, but 800 is cheaper...best of both worlds. Use the extra to get a good lens. Buy more drives, 7200 RPM IBM's are my call on that side if you're working with DV. Monitors? Flat panel is nice for show, but reality is a 19 and a 17 crt combo...works fine and it's cheaper. I work at home on a 400 single with two monitors and a MS intellimouse and I like it just fine. I cut 30minute shorts and promo spots on it all the time. Save the money where you can and spend it where it will make the biggest difference. A used dual is better than a slightly faster single for FCP.

Most bang for the buck? $40 Intellimouse set up like this:
left = click (duh)
right = a (resets from any tool to the arrow)
left side= home (back to the beginning of your clip or sequence)
right side= space (play/pause)
scroll = right/left arrows (single frame advance)
push&scroll = up/down arrows (next&previous clip)

Try this setup and you can edit twice as fast as the keyboard peckers, and with one hand. I set up every suite I put together like this and all my buddies have adopted this standard too, everyone loves it for pure cutting speed.

 

[AmbitiousLemon]

SPG: that is the worst advice ive ever heard. a dual 800? i seriously doubt he can get a dual 800 for as good a price as he can get a dual 1000ghz with an education discount (remember if he buys used no education discount and he will likely pay for extra bto options he may not want, apple ram for instance). you have to remember he can buy a dual 1ghz (also remember that the 933 and dual 1ghz are the new apollo, its not just about mhz even a dual 800 apollo (if they made one) would be 30% faster than a dual 800 non dual) for $2600. now maybe you can get a dual 800 for about $2000 but id say that $400 difference isnt worth the drop in speed. especially considering how long he will likely be using this machine. students typically want to get 4 -5 years out of their machines since this is the amount of time we spend in college, in order to make sure your system is usable 5 years from now you need to get todays bleeding edge. as for teh advice about the mouse and monitors, probably good advice (as long as he has room for a couple of crts), but SPG ive heard you mention your intellimouse like a dozen times, get over it alright.

 

[video activist]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
SPG: that is the worst advice ive ever heard. a dual 800? i seriously doubt he can get a dual 800 for as good a price as he can get a dual 1000ghz with an education discount (remember if he buys used no education discount).

I agree Lemon,

I think I've finally settled on my machine:
DP 1GHz Steve wants me to
512 RAM + 512 RAM 2-2-2 from Transintl.com
80 gig HD
zip drive
speakers
Intellimouse
$3063
I'll suffer with my ViewSonic until I come up with $250 for another monitor. And tackle drive space when I need it.

As Lemon said, I do expect this machine to last 4+ years. If I went with the 933 I'll be outdated with the next major proMac release (G5) while the DP 1GHz will last a few more speedbumps down the road.

The tip about the Intellimouse and the CTRs is spot on though, thanks. Your intellimouse setup is dripping with efficiency - love it. Cheaper and better than a FCP keyboard.

No Lemon, I don't have room for two huge CTRs but I'll improvise.

For future reference, which drives are better:
Western Digital Caviar IDE
Seagate Barracuda ATA IV IDE (best price/gig ratio at Trans Intl.)
IBM Deskstar
Other?

Monitors?

 

[blakespot]

Originally posted by madamimadamtimallen
The dual 1GHz would be SOOOOO good but, realistically, wouldn't it be better, if you have no more than $3000, to get more RAM and more HD space... esp. if you want to do a lot of video editing. Those HDs sound HUGE but you know just as well as I do that once you start doing video work it looks tiny all of a sudden. Also, the 933 is MORE than capable of giving you nice speeds for FCP.

Lets think realistic not "man, I would LOVE one of those"

I think the Dual 1GHz is the better route. It will be more than twice as fast for your FCP3 processes.


blakespot

 

[blakespot]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
you have to remember he can buy a dual 1ghz (also remember that the 933 and dual 1ghz are the new apollo, its not just about mhz even a dual 800 apollo (if they made one) would be 30% faster than a dual 800 non dual) for $2600. now maybe you can get a dual 800 for about $2000 but id say that $400 difference isnt worth the drop in speed.

I've seen no real data to backup any sort of same-MHz speed increase on the Apollo vs. the G4 used in the DP 800. There was speculation based on RC5 generation speed, but that was simply applying basic math to numbers that didn't really exist. Not convincing.

Can you point to other data?



blakespot

 

[SPG]

Wow, stepped on the landmine there. Okay, I skimmed past the post with the educational discount...you're right the price is really good. I've seen some good deals from people dumping machines to have the latest greatest so without the educational discount it's a good route to go, and besides aren't we all waiting for a G5? (SPG ducks to avoid the flyimg lemons)
Intellimouse a dozen times? Hmm, maybe three times and each one was for someone looking to set up an edit system and I still think it's good advice and if anyone else asks I will say it again...INTELLIMOUSE!!!! (or at least any multibutton mouse or edit controller)

 

[Choppaface]

right now I believe the western digital caviar has been reviewed to be the fastest ATA drive...not to mention its huge-120 gb. price per gigabyte isnt as important as speed IMO....
either the caviar or the deskstar...you can see some comparisons at http://www.barefeats.com

of course the drive situation will probably totally change when youre ready to upgrade

if you do get a dual 1ghz, try waiting until they put the geforce 4 Ti in them next month. from what I read its a *lot* better than a geforce 4 mx.....

 

[AmbitiousLemon]

SPG: sorry i went so over the top there. im glad you saw past my insanity to see i had something to say. and sorry about teh intellimouse, i think i had just read a couple other posts about it and then was already venting at you so i just kept on plowing ahead.

videoactivist: as far as hard drives go id have to say pat attention to brand name. western digital is known (much like maxtor and whoever makes those crappy que burners) for making very cheap and shoddy hardware. sometimes this doesnt matter, so often i will reccomend a cheap drive for someone if they dont care much about the data on it and dont mind that it may spontaneously break down. its sometimes worth the risk considering the cost. ibm in my mind is the best (and usually most expensive) hardware manufacturer. i say "in my mind" because there are some other good manufacturers out there i havent had too much experience with. seagate is one of these, to my limited knowledge on seagate, they make very nice hard drives. choppa face is very right about speed vs price. especially on these large drives you will want something that can easily access and transfer large amounts of data. so again maybe the western is the best choice depending on how much risk you want to put into this drive. personally id go with an ibm or seagate, but i often buy maxtor (or some other low quality cheap manufacturer) when i want another extra drive for overflow sometimes (but i also have 4 or 5 other drives so im not too dependant on the cheap ones). for your first external you will probably want quality and dependability over price. however the speed issue can complicate things if the western outperforms the ibm and seagate drives (im not sure this is true).

 

[AlphaTech]

AmbitiousLemon

I have several Maxtor hard drives, and have never had a problem with any of them. I bought one back in late 99 and it has been working wonderfully ever since. I also purchased one for my G4 desktop a while back (over a year ago) and it performs better then the 27GB drive that came in the G4.

While they might have made a bad batch a while ago, and I am sure that people have gotten defective drives, I wouldn't bash the entire company over it. From my experience, they stand behind their drives 100% (provided it is still under warranty, which is about all you can ask from any company). I had to call them about two weeks ago since we had a Quantum drive go dead (fried controller card, litterally). They shipped out a replacement drive that arrived a few days later (called on Friday, drive arrived before Wednesday).

I am also using my second Que burner (QPS Que-Fire 24x10x40). I sold my 12x10x32 to a person at work, after I upgraded their beige G3 with more memory, a larger hard drive, a USB card and a FireWire card. I used the drive for over a year with never a bad burn. I have just started using the 24x10x40 drive, but expect it to perform just as good.

 

[AmbitiousLemon]

AlphaTech: i wont argue about the maxtor. you might be right, i could have just been dealing with a bad batch for about 6 months everyone who bought a maxtor had it break down within a year and have maxtor refuse warranty.

but que is another case. que has always been the cheap and shoddy and i will stand by that. personally i think que is one of the worst things to happen to macintosh since... hm i dunno but lets just say its really bad. que is the ONLY burner you can find in most major computer retailer so people buy them. then mr peecee watches his friend with his cute lil que have problem after problem and says "macs suck." ive seen it a hundred times. que drives have serious overheating issues so have just a couple burns it will misburn without fail. ive never gotten more then four consecutive burns out of a que drive and that was on a good day. in fact que drives overheat and misburn quite often after a single burn. im surprised to hear that you bought a second one because i have never heard of anyone buying two. in fact quite a few nonsavy people i know just didnt buy another burner because they didnt even know there were any. they woudl rather go without then shell out more money for a cheap que burner.

 

[cmoney]

acard IDE RAID?

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
AlphaTech: i wont argue about the maxtor. you might be right, i could have just been dealing with a bad batch for about 6 months everyone who bought a maxtor had it break down within a year and have maxtor refuse warranty.

heh, i'll argue that maxtor! i've got three dead maxtor drives sitting on my shelf arguing that point!

anyway, has anyone heard anything the ACARD AEC-6880M? It's an IDE RAID controller that works with Macs, even OS X. it's got two ATA/133 channels both of which can control two IDE drives, and can stripe the drives also. sounds like it should make for a very fast setup...

http://www.acard.com

 

[AmbitiousLemon]

Re: acard IDE RAID?

Originally posted by cmoney


heh, i'll argue that maxtor! i've got three dead maxtor drives sitting on my shelf arguing that point!

anyway, has anyone heard anything the ACARD AEC-6880M? It's an IDE RAID controller that works with Macs, even OS X. it's got two ATA/133 channels both of which can control two IDE drives, and can stripe the drives also. sounds like it should make for a very fast setup...

http://www.acard.com

good to hear actually. i wasnt sure if my experience with maxtor was an isolated event or not and for the moment i was willing to trust alpha.

 

[AlphaTech]

AmbitiousLemon

I had burned over 200 disks with my first QPS burner, without incident. There were days where I was burning one after another, although I wouldn't need to do more then 6 at a shot. I have actually had better results with my Que burners then with the superdrive inside the 733MHz G4 (pre-QuickSilver) at work. I only use Toast to burn cd's and not Apple's burning software. I prefer Toast since you can stop the verify where you have no such option under Apple's version.

I don't know which Maxtor drives you guys have been having problems with, but they must be different then the ones I have. I actually picked up a pair of the 40GB ATA100 drives about 6-8 months ago, and have had no issue with them. Maybe it's because I haven't purchased anything over the 40GB drive, although I did put a 60GB into another system, and it has been running no problem either. I also have a 20GB drive that I picked up over a year or longer ago that is running fine. Back in 1999, I picked up a 13.5GB drive, and it's still running.

 

[AlphaTech]

On a similar note, I have a cousin that used to build computers for a living and he used Maxtor drives all the time. He only had one give him issues, and Maxtor replaced that within a week or so of him reporting it. It was in one of the computers he built for himself, not a customer. They have about 5 or 6 computers at his house (at last count) and I believe that all of them have Maxtor drives of various sizes in them.

Maybe Maxtor has a problem with a few of the drive sizes. I would like to know which size Maxtor drives you guys are having problems with and how long ago you picked them up. All the ones that I have purchased, have a 3 year warranty on them. They are also the 7200 rpm Diamond Max drives in ATA66 and ATA100 interfaces.

I have seen more dead Quantum, Western Digital, IBM, and even a few Seagate drives then I have Maxtor drives. I have had a few 9GB Cheetah's go dead on us at work, where they simply refused to work any longer.

 

[SPG]

You can point fingers at every drive maker and everyone has heard the saying "It's not a question of if a drive will fail, but when."
I had a western Digital go down after only two weeks, have a maxtor that I abuse the hell out of, swapping it from machine to machine and it still works fine after two years.
IBM has always been the benchmark of reliability, but then a few months ago they put out a bad batch of 80gig drives.
So who knows? Is there anyone putting up a MTBF benchmark based on real world applications?

 

[morrisonmuzk]

just purchased g4 Dual

Last night, I ordered my first desktop upgrade in 4 years - a new G4 PowerMac Dual 1 gig, with an extra 512mb installed, for a total of 1 gig of memory!!! Very cool, but I don't get it until tomorrow.

As I saw some people posting prices, I'd thought I'd mention where I ordered mine as I felt I got a good deal. I went to MacSolutions (yes, Apple Authorized - http://www.macsolutions.com)

$2999 - g4 dual 1 gig, with extra 512mb memory added (no install fee) and free Fed-ex 3 day shipping

 

[Jookbox]

i'm not sure why everyone's recommending the dual system to a student on a budget. that's such horrible advice. like i said, get the 933 + camera accessories. spending your entire budget on that dual system is approaching stupidity.

 

[madamimadam]

Originally posted by blakespot



I think the Dual 1GHz is the better route. It will be more than twice as fast for your FCP3 processes.


blakespot

What good is that when you run out of HDD space and a lack of RAM is hindering the ability to do many simultanious actions?

 

[Onyxx]

when you consider the amount of ram that comes with the machine, i think it is more than adequate for running fcp (i wouldn't run too much more than that at the same time, but fcp alone will be just fine). When buying a machine you have to take into consideration that there are things that can and cannot be upgraded.
ram can be upgraded
hard drives can be upgraded
video cards and monitors can be upgraded
the processors in your machine cannot be upgraded (yes i know that there are upgrades but a dual upgrade is never cost effective)

That simple fact coupled with the ultra low cost of hard drives and ram today make the choice an odvious one.

Go dual now, upgrade later.

 

[Onyxx]

not to mention that once he has upgraded the dual 1ghz machine will crunch a heck of a lot more data than the single 933 (especially under osx, don't forget the os that is involved)