My refurbed Dual 2.5 PM arrived!!!!! :-)

[nihilisticmonk]

Hi Guys,

Some of you have helped me with my switching questions over the past few months as I've finally moved from a Powerbook & PC owner, to a full blown Powermac owner

So, as my way of saying thanks, here's some pictures of the new baby all set up for the first time!

I have to say, first impressions. This thing is fast...damn fast, it came with panther installed, but with a Tiger upgrade cd in the box. I ran Tiger and did a full format and install. On my powerbook (1ghz) this usually takes about 40 minutes, on this beast...umm....around 8 minutes start to finish!!!

I've installed my 120gb SATA drive from my now redundant PC, and an extra 1GB of ram from crucial, and things are running pretty sweet.

I've stuck photoshop CS 2 on, and it appears to fly. I'm still getting my head around how to set up scratch disks, and I'm sure I've read that there are other settings to change to really get the performance up there, but this thing is really quick!

So, have a look at the pictures, I've set some JBL Creature 2 speakers up as well now....I can c definately reccomend them as well!!!

So guys, just one more thing, as a new powermac user, what's all the newbie things I should do to get this set up. any tweaks...reccomendations on how I configure my hard drives? (ATM I have the 160gb, and an extra 120gb...both formatted osx journalled...is that the right way to do it?)

Any newbie tips will be greatly appreciated

 

[CanadaRAM]

Put your OS and applications on one drive, and your data on the other drive. This will help with speed. You want your OS and Photoshop scratch files on a different drive than your data files. Search for Raptor for some prior threads on the subject.

If you haven't already started loading your 2nd drive, consider making a partition on it to back up your main drive with Carbon Copy Cloner - a bootable 2nd drive is really handy to have.

Cruise versiontracker.com and macworld.com for ideas on the best shareware utilities to install. Something like Cocktail or OnyX for controlling the UNIX maintenance routines, Cache Out X for deleting caches, DeLocalizer for removing 900 Mb or so of other-language files. Other MR members will have ideas - search MR for "must-have" or "Essential" there are threads aplenty.

A good surge suppressor or battery backup unit is always good.

If you haven't already, a multibutton mouse can be a big timesaver.

 

[FFTT]

Very nice!

If you haven't installed the 10.4.1 update yet, be sure to set your system preferences / Energy Saver sleep settings to 'Never" before installing any OS software.

Just remember to repair permissions after you install anything new.

It's not a bad idea to set up a secondary "SUPER USER" account
for your daily functions leaving your administrative account for installs and maintenance.

I'd download Lil Snitch personal firewall from VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
You can also find a cool freeware application " Temperature Monitor there.
Adium is the best chat client and offers encryption.
The sys stat widget is great for letting you know what's going on with your system.

This Mac starter guide also come in really handy.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/132963/

Most of all

ENJOY!

 

[nihilisticmonk]

Put your OS and applications on one drive, and your data on the other drive. This will help with speed. You want your OS and Photoshop scratch files on a different drive than your data files. Search for Raptor for some prior threads on the subject.

If you haven't already started loading your 2nd drive, consider making a partition on it to back up your main drive with Carbon Copy Cloner - a bootable 2nd drive is really handy to have.

Cruise versiontracker.com and macworld.com for ideas on the best shareware utilities to install. Something like Cocktail or OnyX for controlling the UNIX maintenance routines, Cache Out X for deleting caches, DeLocalizer for removing 900 Mb or so of other-language files. Other MR members will have ideas - search MR for "must-have" or "Essential" there are threads aplenty.

A good surge suppressor or battery backup unit is always good.

If you haven't already, a multibutton mouse can be a big timesaver.

So, for example, I-photo...I should set the library to another drive for the max speed boost? Also, I-movie or final cut express...I should tell it to save files to the 2nd drive?

my mouse is a logitech MX900. Coming from the PC world, I just need the two buttons

 

[wdlove]

Very nice looking pictures, congratulations. I like the wireless look. You should have hours and years of pleasure. Did your refurb arrive in perfect condition? FFTT has a lot of great suggestions, very worthwhile information.

 

[nihilisticmonk]

Very nice looking pictures, congratulations. I like the wireless look. You should have hours and years of pleasure. Did your refurb arrive in perfect condition? FFTT has a lot of great suggestions, very worthwhile information.

Yeh, FFTT has given some great advice. Just scrolling through the newbie guide right now.
Glad you like the pictures

As far as buying apple refurbs.... I can certainly Recommend it! It appears everything apart from the actual powermac and the cd's is brand new. Never opened keyboard & mouse etc.

The unit is in impeccable condition. Not a scratch on it. Board had a tiny bit of dust on it, but that's it. It's been on since Thursday night now, without a problem!

In the UK, the 2.7 costs £1999. I've got a 2.5 (difference between them will be pretty minimal) for £600 cheaper than that cost!
My aim is now to keep this until the macintel powermacs come out.

Looking forward to getting more into the mac scene

 

[mak]

hi nihilisticmonk,

i have sent a PM in regards to your good deal on the powermac.

could you please reply to it?

thanks,

 

[Mac_Freak]

Congratulation man, nice setup too. When it comes PothoShop scratch disk, it is a good idea to have it on a separate drive than your OS's swap files.
That way you wouldn't be slowed down by computer accesing any information it needs. My advise, dedictae your first (like about 4-5GB space) partion on second drive, but then you will have to write and read your files from the first drive for fast opening and saving.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

Nice setup, yo! Congratulations on the new computer.

As far as Photoshop goes, I'm not exactly sure just how much this helps, but it's gotta help a little: Adobe has sort of a "default" for less than a gig of RAM. It has to do with how the images are rendered, and whether they draw smaller squares or bigger squares while applying filters, transformations, etc.

Check out this document: http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/331372.html

It's very easy to make the needed change, and it can only help performance.

 

[lopresmb]

congrats on the new setup, thats a nice compy...