New Computer Question

[Corny]

speed for what?
office and the likes? ram.

 

[Heliostat]

Processor speed isnt the huge limiting factor that it used to be. In fact, faster clock speed (MHz/GHz) wont necessarily give you faster performance - there are lots of other variables in play. I'd say get fast RAM, and a good amount of it. Still, you can get a good quad core processor for less than $200. (the processor part itself)

Edit: Also if you're into gaming or video editing, be sure to spend money on a video card - dont get something cheap.

 

[Corny]

I am not sure what you mean with hidden mode .. but I guess just "minimized"? Or like on mac systems where you "close" it, and it's still running in the background. You still don't mention what kind of applications you are talking about.
For a browser, office, a picture viewer and maybe a mediaplayer - 2GB are sufficient. If you do video editing or photoshop work and similar, you can add more. Or just to be prepared take 4GB, the price difference is ridiculous at the moment . Processor speed doesn't matter (except you do video rendering/editing), just take one of the core2 duo processors (or comparable amd). Addtionally I would ensure to have a fast hard drive with some extra cache - usually that is something that you don't get in off the shelf systems.

 

[GlamPunkCouple]

Depends what you're using the computer for. If its your everyday office applications and email exchange, you can buy the cheapest PC they have. If you plan on making, editing videos and music or doing some 3D rendering, then you should look at the more expensive models that offer both plenty of ram and processor speed.

 

[Yooper]

I'm still trying to figure out this "hidden" thing....

This is what I get when I asked about it: Something I don't use.

Switching between applications
You can quickly switch between open applications by pressing Command-Tab to open the Application Switcher. The Application Switcher displays the icon of each open application in the middle of the screen. The icon for the active application is at the far left.

Press and hold the Command key, then press Tab to view open applications.
Highlight an application by pressing the Right Arrow key (or by pressing Tab) to move to the right. Press the Left Arrow key (or press `) to move to the left. Press Home to move to the far left, or press End (if available) to move to the far right. You can also use the mouse to point to the application you want.
To hide a selected application, press H.
To quit a selected application, press Q.
To switch to a selected application, release the Command key or press Return.
To leave this view without switching applications, press Esc or the period (.) key.
To switch between open windows of an application, press Command-Accent (`).

To view each application's windows while switching between applications, press F10 to view the current application's windows then press Tab to view another application's windows. Press F10 again to switch to the application whose windows you see.

You can quickly switch from the current application to the last application used by pressing Command-Tab (and releasing the keys).

If you have a Mighty Mouse, you can assign a mouse button to open the Application Switcher. You set this in the Mouse pane of Keyboard & Mouse preferences.

 

[andysayshi]

The "Hidden" mode in Mac OS is no different to minimizing - it simply hides the application from the desktop. The process is still running, the RAM used by the process is still in use. If you launch a movie in Quicktime and then Hide it, the movie will continue to play despite only being visible in the Dock (application bar at bottom of screen). Thus, it will use CPU cycles, hard drive access and RAM, despite being hidden. If the system is low on RAM, hidden applications will have their memory requirements paged to the hard drive, just like minimized applications on a Windows machine.

Johan, as you are a Mac user, I presume you are going to buy another Mac. Portable or desktop? If you are buying a portable (like a MacBook) then consider switching to a 7200rpm hard drive, rather than the standard 5400rpm drive. Desktop iMacs have 7200rpm drives as standard.

4GB of RAM is more than enough. If you're comfortable with a screwdriver, RAM is cheaper when purchased from a third party vendor rather than direct from Apple. Many dealers will sell and fit third party RAM for you when you buy.

None of your suggested uses require a particularly high spec machine. You'll get plenty of power from a lower end Mac with 2 or 4GB of RAM. I'd suggest your money is better spent on an extended warranty, especially if you're buying a portable machine.

 

[andysayshi]

You are correct that idle applications won't use much, if any, CPU time. But being hidden doesn't really change much. My example was Quicktime whilst playing file - hidden or not, the file is still read from the drive and decoded for playback. The reason Firefox creates CPU load while idle is because web content is dynamic: my animated avatar on this page, for example, takes CPU cycles to display each frame, although minimal. A more complex Flash or Java based webpage with animation will pull even more cycles.

There's no argument or objection here from me - your workflow is very practical and logical: keeping your applications active but hidden is the fastest way to access them when you need them, without having them clutter up your workspace. I work exactly the same way.

The latest range of Apple iMacs are great machines, and all the 24" models have 4GB RAM standard. Personally, based on what you've described your needs to be, I think the $1499 24" model would be more than adequate. If you can afford it, the $1799 model will give you a faster CPU and much better display card. The top-of-the-line model would be overkill unless money is no object.

 

[andysayshi]

^ Fair question - I'm not sure either! Perhaps it comes down to the application's design. Safari (being an Apple product) may be specifically instructed to stop drawing/processing any content whilst the application is hidden. Firefox might not have the same instructions available to it.

Only guessin' of course!

 

[andysayshi]

I've no definitive answer on the Firefox CPU issue - perhaps it just comes down to code efficiency in the application's design? But hiding an app is simply removing the windows from display view - the application RAM usage won't change between visible and hidden.

Unlike Windows, where each application resides in an individual Window, Mac apps can have multiple windows open at any time. That's what makes the Hide function valuable - it's a fast way to open and close multiple windows in an instant.

8GB of RAM is a lot, but if you can afford it it can't hurt. I always recommend extended warranty to people buying computers, so perhaps you could factor in Applecare before deciding for certain on 4GB vs 8GB.

Remember that the computer will have all RAM slots filled when you buy it. So if you plan to buy a 4GB iMac then purchase the RAM elsewhere, you'll need to buy 2 x 4GB RAM sticks, because they'll have supplied you 2 x 2GB sticks in the machine, and it only has 2 RAM slots. So be sure to weigh up the economy of buying separate RAM vs getting the iMac built to order. Some dealers will "buy back" the 4GB of RAM if you purchase the 8GB from them.

I'm always game ... ask away!

 

[Corny]

Anyway, when a specific application is being hidden, where does it go? Is it being stored in the RAM?

An application's runtime data is ALWAYS stored in the RAM when it's running.
(yes yes .. before any fellow geek gets started on this: I do know that there are exceptions, but we are talking about the common circumstances and programs here )

One nice thing with hidden mode is that whole applications can be hidden—not just individual windows, as seems to be the case with "minimizing". So if you have ten windows open in Safari, the whole thing will be hidden rather than having ten windows in the bar, using acres of space.

This can work in windows the very same way, it's just that mos applications don't utilize this function.

I've no definitive answer on the Firefox CPU issue - perhaps it just comes down to code efficiency in the application's design? But hiding an app is simply removing the windows from display view - the application RAM usage won't change between visible and hidden.

Correct. But I guess this is not about code effiency but about program design. Firefox runs on a lot of systems, I doubt they built in an extra "suspend all activity if you happen to run on a mac and get minimized" function.

Unlike Windows, where each application resides in an individual Window, Mac apps can have multiple windows open at any time. That's what makes the Hide function valuable - it's a fast way to open and close multiple windows in an instant.

Nonono ... any windows application can have multiple windows open, and *that* is something that *many* apps use.

 

[andysayshi]

Nonono ... any windows application can have multiple windows open, and *that* is something that *many* apps use.

I stand corrected, but I'll clarify my meaning with the fact that, in XP at least, multiple-window apps must be minimized individually, and each window appears as a button on the task bar. On the Mac, just press Cmnd-H and every widow in the current application will be hidden/minimized instantly. Perhaps there's a "Minimize All" shortcut in Windows too? In which case, the distinction between OS's is not a distinction at all!

 

[Corny]

there is a "minimize group" functionality which would minimize all windows of one application together. how and if and which windows appear in the task bar depends on how the programmers designed their program. as i said before it is possible to create programs which will not even show up in the task bar. it's just not the common thing to do that.

 

[Corny]

As for the RAM disk - I don't know how this worked with the old macs, but you cannot boot from a ramdisk your ram is empty when your machine is switched off. But of course you can write the ramdisk to a file and read it during boottime. Windows was never good at that, and this is where you are right.
But this is something that is working really good in Linux (of which much from MacOS is based on), and a feature where windows is really missing out.

Back to 1999: some Macusers would get stellar, rapid speed by installing the OS onto a striped RAID. (This technique was widely suggested by Mac book writers for those who really wanted the speed). Now, my question is: would this ploy work with OSX? Could you boot up in the striped RAID, getting those same stellar speeds that was possible then?

How does a striped raid help if you are running your system from a ramdisk as you praised before ? Apart from that - what is "stellar" speed? The only thing that a striped raid speeds up is HD data transfer. Seek times stay the same. So if you really want to profit from that you need something that reads or stores a lot of data. Watching a video would do that - but current harddrives are fast enough to handle HD video data without any problem. Video capturing (or massive audio capturing) at the moment would be the only thing where I would say a striped raid would make sense (and I wonder much why a write should use it ... ). Also note that a striped raid puts you at a higher risk for data lost, because you have two HDs that can fail, and if one does the other one is useless.

JL .. where do you get all this stuff? You shouldn't believe everything so unreflected or uninformed ..

 

[andysayshi]

Well, Andy, I hope you will pardon for a rather long post.

I was a Macuser in 1999, with Mac OS 8 and 9. Despite the inherent flaws in those platforms, there was a few good things that ordinary Windows users didn't have. For example, it was de rigeur for most Powerbook users to fit their whole OS in a RAM disk, along with a couple of vital apps (usually one browser and one word-processor app), and boot up in that disk, making the entire thing run on RAM-only, effecting lightening speeds, even for that day and age. (I understand Windows users could do the same thing, but this tweak was really in the purvey of an expert user; ordinary Joe Schmoe wouldn't have the savvy to do it. In fact, the first I heard of a Windows-user doing it was in Hacker Magazine.)

Unfortunately, despite the vast superiority of Mac OS X over its previous versions, it is simply just too big to fit into a RAM disk, and besides, I don't know if we could ever boot up into that RAM disk anyway. One valuable tweak was lost.

Back to 1999: some Macusers would get stellar, rapid speed by installing the OS onto a striped RAID. (This technique was widely suggested by Mac book writers for those who really wanted the speed). Now, my question is: would this ploy work with OSX? Could you boot up in the striped RAID, getting those same stellar speeds that was possible then?

I've been a Mac user since 1999 as well, but a Windows user since 1992, so I have a sense of all worlds I hope!

I'm not aware of a Mac or Windows OS that can exist entirely in RAM these days. Both OS's are far more bloated than in 1999. There are a few Linux versions that can load from a USB stick or CD, but that's about it.

Hard drive speeds are exponentially faster today than in 1999, so there is no specific advantage to installing a system disk on a RAID today. Mac OS and Vista both offer software RAID options, which are functional if you are pulling HUGE files off drives (if you work with uncompressed video files in real time, for example) but there is litle advantage to having your OS installed on a RAID. Modern SATA drives are really really fast compared to any 1999-era drive - more than fast enough to cope with any modern OS, including Mac, Vista or Linux.

 

[Corny]

Corny, booting from a RAM disk circa 1999 was a certainty. You had to configure the RAM disk on which the OS was written to "save" on reboot.

So you did boot from an image. You cannot boot from a ramdisk. It's physically impossible.

As I said before, Powerbook users did it all the time because it saved oodles and oodles of energy, making their batteries last quite a bit longer. (In those days, the primary energy drain on the battery was the hard drive.) The big plus is of course that it was infinitely faster, the whole thing being run under RAM.

Yes of course it is That's why people still do it today - under Linux I don't know about mac os, but I trust andysashi to speak the truth

The striped RAID ploy derives directly from my memories of 1999; Mac book writers were actively suggesting it. As strange as it might seem today, some people did boot up from striped RAIDS for the speed, but as has been pointed out, hard drives have changed a lot in character since then, and this ploy will no longer work.

The boot process could be a bit faster (but certainly not "stellar"). But other than that for *writing* I would be *very* surprised if you noticed a significant difference.

Corny, I was asking if it would work nowadays because I didn't know. If I knew the answers, I wouldn't have to ask the question, would I?

The mechanics or technology of all this have not changed

 

[andysayshi]

Actually, I should have mentioned this before:

If speed is your number one concern, look into solid state hard drives. They are much faster than conventional drives - almost as fast as RAM. And much more expensive!

http://solidstatecentral.com.au/store/?gclid=CIysoY6C7pkCFUcwpAodBE75RA

 

[Corny]

^ did those become ready for every day use? how high is the number of overwrites that you can have on a sector nowadays?