Does it make sense to wait for the G5 powerbooks?

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 5:10 pm

jasefos wrote:
tokyojoe69 wrote: Having more than one WinXP to boot into can be a lifesaver for many reasons. There's nothing more frustrating when you've got work to do and the only solitary Windows XP boot partition you have suddenly decides to no longer start.

I still think that this is a ridiculous idea. Why not just partition your disk drive and store all of your personal data on the second partition? That way, when windows gets nuked, you can just reinstall over the 'c' drive. Besides, if something really severe happens (ie, boot loader getting corrupted as happened to me a month ago), you'll most likely have to reinstall anyways.

Ideally, you could partition the drive and use RAID mirroring to keep the two images synced, but I don't know if windows is capable of booting off of a RAID partition...

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 5:16 pm

sqook wrote:
jasefos wrote:
tokyojoe69 wrote: Having more than one WinXP to boot into can be a lifesaver for many reasons. There's nothing more frustrating when you've got work to do and the only solitary Windows XP boot partition you have suddenly decides to no longer start.
I still think that this is a ridiculous idea. Why not just partition your disk drive and store all of your personal data on the second partition? That way, when windows gets nuked, you can just reinstall over the 'c' drive. Besides, if something really severe happens (ie, boot loader getting corrupted as happened to me a month ago), you'll most likely have to reinstall anyways.

Ideally, you could partition the drive and use RAID mirroring to keep the two images synced, but I don't know if windows is capable of booting off of a RAID partition...

It's not a ridiculous idea if you wish to multipurpose your music dedicated computer for general purpose use. I'd have more Win XP partitions if I felt like losing more space out of my shared partition (I've only got a 60Gb internal drive in this system).

Perhaps:

C: WinXP Music (Live mission critical system)
D: WinXP General Purpose Use
E: WinXP Trash partition for testing/evaluating software, drivers, etc
F: Shared Data partition

Would be nice to slip in a Win98se partition even for a few applications which never made the transition to WinXP compatibility.

I agree however that I could get away with a single WinXP and Shared data partition if I was not multipurposing this system.

Cheers

jasefos

drush · Post by **drush** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 5:18 pm

further and further off topic, but btw it's also a good idea to make your C: drive the minimum size possible (i think mine is 8mb). because your optical drive generally defaults to D:, your XP installation will then be on E: -- the only thing that goes on C: are the boot files.

doing this means that if everything goes to shit you can at least boot into something, it keeps that precious boot info away from the XP cruft, and a lot of viruses etc are written to look for XP on C:... this way they can't find it.

or you can just use OSX.

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 5:19 pm

in all honesty.. i use 1 partition. for music and web. running Norton Corporate and Ad-Watch Pro SE. they take no CPU and a total of about 30MB of ram. i do alot of collaborating with a friend via FTP and messenger so it is important that i don't have to boot in and out of an internet partition.

i've never had a problem with it, i keep all the definitions up to date, defrag regularly, error check regularly, use web based email instead of outlook, and firefox instead of IE, back up my data to two sources including this machine on a regular basis. all that and i dont have to dick around with partitions, and i've never had a stability, reliability, or security issue.

i think its all about piece of mine when it comes to security. you feel piece of mind with multiple partitions just as he feels piece of mind with a mac, and i feel piece of mind with 1 partition and working with certain security apps and backup procedures.

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 5:23 pm

jasefos wrote: C: WinXP Music (Live mission critical system)
D: WinXP General Purpose Use
E: WinXP Trash partition for testing/evaluating software, drivers, etc
F: Shared Data partition

Would be nice to slip in a Win98se partition even for a few applications which never made the transition to WinXP compatibility.

Ever used vmware? This tool would probably save you a lot of time...

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 5:25 pm

sqook wrote:
jasefos wrote: C: WinXP Music (Live mission critical system)
D: WinXP General Purpose Use
E: WinXP Trash partition for testing/evaluating software, drivers, etc
F: Shared Data partition

Would be nice to slip in a Win98se partition even for a few applications which never made the transition to WinXP compatibility.
Ever used vmware? This tool would probably save you a lot of time...

I'm all ears .... (even though we're getting way off topic)

Does vmware play nicely with DAW applications ?

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 5:41 pm

jasefos wrote: I'm all ears .... (even though we're getting way off topic)

Does vmware play nicely with DAW applications ?

Bah, topic, shmopic. =)

But yeah, vmware is great... indispensible if you do any type of system programming/hacking. I know that vmware has support for sound, but I think you'd be hard pressed to get something like live working under it. The power of vmware comes in it's potential, not it's performance. It is an emulator, so you're not going to have the benefit of being able to process directly on hardware with your guest OS.

However, the last time I really used vmware was in college about two years ago... looks like they've already gone through 5 minor version releases since the last time I used it, and I would suspect that these probably include optimizations for things such as those.

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 5:45 pm

jasefos wrote: Would be nice to slip in a Win98se partition even for a few applications which never made the transition to WinXP compatibility.

Also, a random thought occurred to me... were you aware that windows XP has "backwards compatibility modes" for executables? Check it out by right clicking on any .exe file -> properties -> compatibility.

jhs · Post by **jhs** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 8:32 pm

i've got an asus m3np notebook with a 1.6ghz centrino processor, 1gb of ram, and a 80gb 5200 rpm hd. and as an added feature you can use two batteries. the website quotes '10.5 hours' total battery time, but that could only be possible with a 10.5 hour notepad.exe session

realworld time is about 5-7 hours which is AMAZING for the amount of power the machine produces. i mention this in this thread because i had a budget of $1500 and was set on a little ibook, but the price of upgrading and the obvious power difference steered me towards a centrino laptop. I have noticed tho, I tend to only use audio in my final compositions. although with the addition of lives operator, i'm considering purchasing live as an all in one solution to turn my notebook into a portable funbox.

however.. every other week it seems i ask myself if i made the right move buying this PC notebook instead of a mac notebook. i have zero stability problems.. im not big on a ton of vsts.. only use reaktor really (probably explains the zero stability issues

) and i am extremely satisfied with this notebook, build quality, performance and all.. but it always feels like im missing something. like i should of went with the mac even tho it clearly performs lower than my current machine. I have the demo of live and it runs like a dream on my machine, with operator and everything.. not to start a debate, but outside of the GUI/community related with macs, what advantages does it have over my PC notebook, and more specifically, what justifies the ~$600 price difference?

I have used macs at work doing multimedia & i'm in love with the interface, however due to $$ and impatience PC always seems like the 'first' choice and macs seem like the 'justified' choice. please, someone with experience on both platforms using their notebooks on a day to day basis as their primary computer/DAW tell me thier view point on this. I would consider a powerbook, but to get it up to spec (fast hard drive and 1gb of ram) I might as well buy two pc notebooks.

P.S. i feel the need to state that i absolutely love using macs and this isn't a mac vs. pc style post. but when it comes to stuff for the studio im saving up for WEEKS to buy, price:performance is a HUGE factor.

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 8:39 pm

i had buyer remorse when i switched to PC too.
i soon found i was falling victim to the Apple marketing.
the whole "product line" is captivating. thats why their stock went up 8% even after the announcement of meager speed bumped powerbooks and no G5s.

i felt like my iLifestyle was iNcomplete. it took me a while to get over it. being alot more productive certainly helped me get over it though.

LiveLong · Post by **LiveLong** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 10:25 pm

I guess this was asked before, but I would really like to know...

A mac processor and a PC poocessor does not perform the same at the same clock speed. Means that a 1ghz Mac will be faster than a 1.5ghz PC, or so.

I am not sure about the exact relation, and this has to do with the application also. As I know Live works better on pc, makes a better use of the computer power.

I have both, PC laptop and a Mac desktop, I use Live on the laptop and Logic on the desktop. However the Mac is my main computer for all the rest, net, etc. I find the OS way more advanced and stable (Yes, I hit the PC screen corners, looking for Expose every time...).
I have allot installed and working on the Mac, surf the net, and NONE AFFECTS THE MUSIC/ AUDIO APP PERFORMANCE (and no re-install the system every 6 monthes).
In the PC, the computer has to be dedicated to music app's in order to perform well. When XP is tuned for that, it works VERY WELL.
Any feel the same?

jhs · Post by **jhs** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 10:36 pm

i should note that a 1.6ghz centrino is about as fast as a 3ghz p4.

livelong, so for you, the interface is what did it? how come you use both a PC for live, was this just coincidence (already had the notebook, then bought live?) or was it a performance issue? I have considered getting the mac mini as I already have the monitor and accessories (theres apple marketing doing its thing

)

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 10:41 pm

I'm still using a 2year old Athlon 2200 laptop and the only time I've reinstalled windows was when I stuck my 7200rpm drive in it - and even then I think I used Norton Ghost and didnt reinstall. I've had hardly any problems with winXP since the start - and the only probs I did have were when it was a dodgy copy of XP Pro and that was becasue it wouldnt let me do windows update.

Like Adam was saying though, that Apple marketing machine does suck you in - I'm really tempted to think about one of those mac MINIs for a cheap Apple desktop

I do like OSX - I actually got one of the Apple tech training things thinking I would do it on my girlfriends speedbumped G3 Pismo 900 which only has jaguar, but I now find out they only do the course for Panther now

I dont know if it's bollox but I seem to remember hearing it only recommended I put Jaguar on it as it might not like panther - dont know if it's true

Has anyone got any feedback on the mac mini's yet - are they any good?

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 10:43 pm

yea panther is more altivec optimized so i'd go with jaguar

with that logic though, don't put Ableton on it either, lol

drush · Post by **drush** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 11:38 pm

this doesn't answer the question, but i use both. a G4 desktop, a 12" powerbook, and an HP AMD64 laptop.

i FAR prefer OSX. i'm comfortable with it, i know how to deal with it, in almost every case it works better for me. but i've been a mac guy forever. not an evangelist, just a consistent user.

and i far prefer the power of the AMD as it relates to ableton. once you're using an app, it's all pretty much same-same. i also appreciate how much $ that machine didn't cost me.

i love the HP laptop and i'm glad i have it... it gives tremendous headroom not available in Live on the mac. but that being said, my desktop G4 is hot-rodded enough such that it gives respectable Live performance and if i had to live with it i could, pretty easily. it simply comes down to workflow and work habits.

i've also debated having a PC/AMD desktop instead of the laptop and using the Powerbook anytime i might have the need to play out.. should that ever happen. the pb has no issue with handling a live set performance. it's just the real time synthesis stuff it chokes on.

there's also nothing at all wrong with XP and or PCs (esp, in my limited experience, the AMDs), and it's clearly where the bang-for-the-buck is. but it's not where my preference is, logically or not.