Celestia Forums

Apple released the new MacBook Pro :

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

I'm on the verge of buying one. Maybe I'll wait till the next revision, in about 6 months.

Any thoughts on the new models and their NVIDIA graphics dual-chip for Celestia ? Da Woon ? Chris ?

I'm also interested to use a SSD (Solid State Drive), in place of the old rotating plattes HD technology.

SDDs based on flash memory still have a limited lifetime. Blocks fail after having been written many times. My understanding is that the current design workaround is to have *many* spare blocks available. It's best to have more than enough main memory so no paging file is ever written. Disk defragmentation programs should never be run on them, either.

selden wrote:Disk defragmentation programs should never be run on them, either.

Did you mean just for the Macs here, Selden?
Just curious... I run a defrag program on my Windows PC almost daily. Works very well, and keeps
my system both clean and fast.

Bob,

Disk defragmenters do many writes to a disk while they're moving pieces of files around. This isn't a problem for standard hard drives, which use rotating magnetic disks. It is a problem for solid state disk drives (SDDs) made with "flash memory". Current flash memory chips fail after having been written to several thousand times.

Defragmenting a disk is intended to improve performance by making all of the files contiguous. This minimizes the amount of movement of the read/write heads of a conventional spinning disk. Solid state disks do not have moving heads, so defragmenting doesn't improve their performance.

Cham wrote:Apple released the new MacBook Pro :

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

I'm on the verge of buying one. Maybe I'll wait till the next revision, in about 6 months.

Any thoughts on the new models and their NVIDIA graphics dual-chip for Celestia ? Da Woon ? Chris ?

I'm also interested to use a SSD (Solid State Drive), in place of the old rotating plattes HD technology.

My MacBook Pro is about a year and half old and has a GeForce 8600M in it. It's still a great machine and Celestia runs very well on it. The 9600M in the new MacBook Pros is a little bit faster and should also use less power. I don't think that both graphics chips will be used simultaneously: you use the 9400M (that's built in to the chipset) if you want better battery life, and the 9600M if you want better graphics performance. Celestia users will always choose the latter option, of course

As for the SSD, I'd put off buying it for now and spend the money on a new monitor instead. The extra disk space, CPU speed, and 256M of graphics memory on the $2499 15" MacBook Pro would also seem like a better upgrade than the SSD right now.

--Chris

chris wrote:As for the SSD, I'd put off buying it for now and spend the money on a new monitor instead. The extra disk space, CPU speed, and 256M of graphics memory on the $2499 15" MacBook Pro would also seem like a better upgrade than the SSD right now.

This is why I'll probably wait until the next revision in 6 months. SSD have some real advantages over the old rotating plates HD, but it's still pretty expensive and there's also the limited max number of writes (to be confirmed) which makes me nervous.

The graphics performances are extremely important to me, so I need to be sure that the NVidia 9600 is strong enough for Celestia and many large hires textures and large models.

I intend to use the portable mostly for Celestia in the classroom, in front of a large audience of students. So I need the addons to load *very* fast, without any noticeable lags and delays.

selden wrote:Bob,

Disk defragmenters do many writes to a disk while they're moving pieces of files around. This isn't a problem for standard hard drives, which use rotating magnetic disks. It is a problem for solid state disk drives (SDDs) made with "flash memory". Current flash memory chips fail after having been written to several thousand times.

As ever, Selden, thanks very much for the explanation for the Brain-Dead.
I fail to see why anyone would wish to BUY a Solid-State Disk Drive though. If the thing is guaranteed to fail after several
thousand uses, then why buy one in the first place?

Sorry, but you know how I am.
Thanks, Brain-Dead

BobHegwood wrote:I fail to see why anyone would wish to BUY a Solid-State Disk Drive though. If the thing is guaranteed to fail after several
thousand uses, then why buy one in the first place?

No moving parts = fewer things that can break. And they are much faster than a regular drive, while using less power. The downside is, more expensive per megabyte (a *lot more*), apart from the limited writes.

Besides, they are *tiny*. I carry one around on my keychain that has a total backup of my Mac?s User Folder (encrypted, of course). It is smaller than the biggest key on it.

Anyhow, Martin, i?d wait until the next version comes along. It isn?t far off, and it is bound to be a more refined machine. I never buy the first edition, new tech are always a little risky. I really want one, though

- rthorvald

rthorvald wrote:Anyhow, Martin, i?d wait until the next version comes along. It isn?t far off, and it is bound to be a more refined machine. I never buy the first edition, new tech are always a little risky. I really want one, though

I agree totally. But I need to resist the temptation to order one during the following weeks.

Cham wrote:

rthorvald wrote:Anyhow, Martin, i?d wait until the next version comes along. It isn?t far off, and it is bound to be a more refined machine. I never buy the first edition, new tech are always a little risky. I really want one, though

I agree totally. But I need to resist the temptation to order one during the following weeks.

Yeah, me too . . . My current MacBook Pro is perfectly fine, but I wouldn't bind a performance bump and a multitouch track pad.

--Chris

Here's a page showing clearly the differences between the new MBP and the previous one (LOTS of pictures) :

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08 ... k_pro.html

Warning guys, you'll want to get a new MBP way before going down the page !

Just bought the old (now) 15" with the 8600 in it (and the multi touch trakpad -> so cool!) and to me it's all good... So I guess a better graphic card will give perhaps a bit more confort but actually I'm fine with the one I have...

Cham wrote:Here's a page showing clearly the differences between the new MBP and the previous one (LOTS of pictures) :

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08 ... k_pro.html

Warning guys, you'll want to get a new MBP way before going down the page !

To me these photos just emphasize mere design details that so many people use as buying reasons instead of solid technological progress (which most don't understand anyway... ).

What do I care whether my next machine is 1.5 or 2 cm high or whether it is made of a block of solid aluminium or not? What rather counts is that the cover is REALLY rigid (mine is of carbon fiber ) to avoid imprintings of my keyboard on the screen etc

Fridger

t00fri wrote:

Cham wrote:Here's a page showing clearly the differences between the new MBP and the previous one (LOTS of pictures) :

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08 ... k_pro.html

Warning guys, you'll want to get a new MBP way before going down the page !

To me these photos just emphasize mere design details that so many people use as buying reasons instead of solid technological progress (which most don't understand anyway... ).

What do I care whether my next machine is 1.5 or 2 cm high or whether it is made of a block of solid aluminium or not? What rather counts is that the cover is REALLY rigid (mine is of carbon fiber ) to avoid imprintings of my keyboard on the screen etc

Size is critical if you're traveling with your laptop a lot--that half centimeter does matter. Building the machine from a single piece of aluminum can improve durability. One of the things I like about MacBook Pros is how solid they are compared to other laptops--no little bits of plastic breaking off.

A hundred little things right--though each may seem superficial by itself--contribute immensely to the overall enjoyment of using something. This is what Apple has done so well. Even the purely aesthetic things I don't dismiss as 'mere design details' if they make the hours spent on with my laptop more enjoyable. I'll happily pay a little extra money for that, provided of course that the computer is still good technologically.

--Chris

chris wrote:

t00fri wrote:

Cham wrote:Here's a page showing clearly the differences between the new MBP and the previous one (LOTS of pictures) :

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08 ... k_pro.html

Warning guys, you'll want to get a new MBP way before going down the page !

To me these photos just emphasize mere design details that so many people use as buying reasons instead of solid technological progress (which most don't understand anyway... ).

What do I care whether my next machine is 1.5 or 2 cm high or whether it is made of a block of solid aluminium or not? What rather counts is that the cover is REALLY rigid (mine is of carbon fiber ) to avoid imprintings of my keyboard on the screen etc

Size is critical if you're traveling with your laptop a lot--that half centimeter does matter. Building the machine from a single piece of aluminum can improve durability. One of the things I like about MacBook Pros is how solid they are compared to other laptops--no little bits of plastic breaking off.

A hundred little things right--though each may seem superficial by itself--contribute immensely to the overall enjoyment of using something. This is what Apple has done so well. Even the purely aesthetic things I don't dismiss as 'mere design details' if they make the hours spent on with my laptop more enjoyable. I'll happily pay a little extra money for that, provided of course that the computer is still good technologically.

--Chris

My travelling record is HIGH, indeed . My DELL Laptop is always with me in the plane. It fits perfectly into a small Samsonite rucksack, which would NOT be smaller if my laptop was a bit thinner. What matters perhaps more is weight. But I never had problems with it. As to stability, even DELLs use carbon fiber since some time, which is exceedingly stable without being too heavy.

If people want to spend their money for aesthetic roundings and solid aluminium housings, that's certainly fine with me. But the above kinds of images reminded me much more of ads for shaving lotions (except the latter tend to be more sexy besides being content-less )

Fridger