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From: Gwynne Harper on 24 Jun 2010 14:56
John B <nospam(a)nospam.please> wrote:

> >If you've got a metal catch from a floppy disk and a sturdy table knife, you
> >can open it in about a minute without making a mark on it:
> >
>
> Many thanks, I will certainly give this a try.

This is the way to go - after reading about it here I gave it a whirl
and was in the machine within 10min first time. Be prepared to
sacrifice the metal thing - it gets bent about a bit.


Gwynne
--
My real email is net, not line.
From: John B on 24 Jun 2010 15:35
On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:56:30 +0300, g.harper(a)gmx.line (Gwynne Harper)
>This is the way to go - after reading about it here I gave it a whirl
>and was in the machine within 10min first time. Be prepared to
>sacrifice the metal thing - it gets bent about a bit.
>
>
>Gwynne

As soon as the machine arrives (should be early next week), I'll order
some memory from Crucial and give this case opening method a go. I've
got a box of 3.5" discs which I meant to bin.

From: Jaimie Vandenbergh on 24 Jun 2010 16:16
On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:11:12 +0100, Andrew Hodgkinson
<ahodgkin(a)rowing.org.uk> wrote:

>Good grief, what are you all doing with your machines to call 4GB merely
>"okay"?!

I've got a VMware WindowsXP machine running often on mine. That's a
bit tight on 2gig, fine on 3gig and above.

One fun thing is that OSX expands to take advantage of available
space. Boot up with 1gig, OSX uses little caches and works pretty
frugally. Boot with 2gig, OSX sees a little more room, and takes it -
so you don't seem to have won very much in terms of free memory.

3gig is the point where OSX goes "Okay, I'm sated - have all the rest
yourself!", but most people have 4 rather than 3.

I've got 6 in this iMac thanks to some spare 1gig sticks I had from an
earlier upgrade, and almost never go over 3.5gig committed.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
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more things than someone who hasn't. -- Mark Twain
From: Rowland McDonnell on 25 Jun 2010 03:13
Andrew Hodgkinson <ahodgkin(a)rowing.org.uk> wrote:

> Rowland McDonnell wrote:
>
> > Optimum? Certainly not! 4GB is /okay/ - adequate - for my needs. I'd
> > want at least 8GB if I could have it, and in a few years from now I
> > expect to find myself wishing for 16GB.
>
> Good grief, what are you all doing with your machines to call 4GB merely
> "okay"?!

<puzzled> What do you mean? Nothing remarkable; I thought I'd made
that obvious. 4GB is the minimum RAM for using MacOS X 10.6 from my
point of view - although 2GB is perfectly usable, it's not good enough.

>Personally I would cut all those numbers in half.

On what basis? What I see now running 10.6.3 is:

Free 94.6MB
Wired 1.05GB
Active 1.87GB
Inactive 1016.9MB

Used 3.92GB

Nothing that uses a lot of RAM is open, 22 (I think) assorted GUI apps
open - just the usual Firefox (16 tabs), MacSoup, Mailsmith, Vienna,
iPLayer Desktop, and a few more that use not much RAM at all each
(EasyFind, DragThing, XMenu, SMARTReporter, TextEdit, TeXShop, do I have
to type them all up?).

> The only time
> I run into significant RAM constraint on my 2GB early 2006 MBP is when
> building large panoramas from numerous 8Mpixel source images. Otherwise,
> it's fine;

Here, you can see from the above figures that 4GB is only just enough
RAM for unremarkable use; it's an annoying small amount of RAM when I'm
working with big scans.

> even with large numbers of Safari tabs. Runs Logic Studio
> nicely with lots of soft synths; large photo editing seems fine; HD video
> editing is CPU bound; you get the picture!

Not really.

> I'm genuinely intrigued about this - your opinion on required RAM seems
> increasingly the norm - you're definitely not alone in this - yet despite
> running some very heavy duty applications, I find 2GB "okay" and 4GB
> plenty for anything other than the most demanding tasks.

<shrug> Oh.

Well, I rather liked my high-snappy 2.5GHz 4G5. This 3.06GHz C2D iMac
is lesser in that line - and part of the problem is obviously the lack
of RAM. The old 4G5 is the first OS X Mac I'd used that was as snappy
as a MacPlus or SE/30. The replacement Intel jobbie ain't. That's
disappointing.

I don't see why I should have to wait for my computer at all, really.
Why waste human time waiting for the machine when one can have a machine
that works adequately quickly?

>But by that
> point, the CPU and (discrete, in the MBP's case) graphics capabilities
> have usually long since become the limiting factor - an early 2006 Mini
> would hit this wall even sooner.

I don't see that myself.

> If we're all piling in more RAM just to avoid swapping,

Which is not what we're doing, so why propose it?

>SSDs may make
> this much less of an issue - if the prices ever become sane! - since
> swapping to a (reasonably competent) SSD is a far less painful process
> than to a typical HDD. Putting an SSD into a platform with a low maximum
> RAM chipset limitation could make a huge difference if your applications
> are typically RAM bound.

<shrug> Could do - more plain RAM makes more sense and is sure to be
cheaper, although I see you're talking about Macs which can't be
expanded to a decent amount of RAM.

Rowland.



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From: Rowland McDonnell on 25 Jun 2010 03:13
Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote:

> Andrew Hodgkinson <ahodgkin(a)rowing.org.uk> wrote:
>
> >Good grief, what are you all doing with your machines to call 4GB merely
> >"okay"?!
>
> I've got a VMware WindowsXP machine running often on mine. That's a
> bit tight on 2gig, fine on 3gig and above.
>
> One fun thing is that OSX expands to take advantage of available
> space. Boot up with 1gig, OSX uses little caches and works pretty
> frugally. Boot with 2gig, OSX sees a little more room, and takes it -
> so you don't seem to have won very much in terms of free memory.

I'm aware of this - that RAM usage Makes It Go Faster, and they need all
the speed help they can get running MacOS X, do Macs.

> 3gig is the point where OSX goes "Okay, I'm sated - have all the rest
> yourself!",

Not so sure about that.

[snip]

Rowland.

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