yay burritos!

Geek Christmas comes early

Hey all, just wanted to give you a heads up, I will be a little off over the next 2-3 days. I am am in the midst of setting up a new faster computer system and we all know how that goes. You’ve gotta transfer files, reinstall things, get everything running.. good times for sure.

Before we get into a heated Mac versus PC debate, let me start by saying I have been building boxes for close to fifteen years now. I have always used Windows, and like you, more times then I can count I have encountered the blue screen of death.

My last Windows system was a Pentium 4 2.8 with a gig of ram, nothing spectacular but it got me by, it did what it needed to do. It died about a year ago out of nowhere, not sure if it was the power supply, the mother board, the ram, a combination of everything… I was so screwed. I had to chose, either rebuild the box not knowing what it was, which could get pricey and in the end, I’d end up replacing everything… or I could chose to go to the dark side. Apple.

My girlfriend was on Apple with her Macbook she had, she LOVES it. Apple just works, hate it if you like, most PC fanboys were on an Apple once and they think that somehow gives them reason to hate Apple.  Apple changed everything with the introduction of Leopard, it’s just a fact. If you’ve never used Leopard for a day or two, sorry, your opinion doesn’t count, it is worth nothing.

I couldn’t afford to go crazy, so I bought an entry level mac Mini. Not the most manly of computers…  but I knew it would run OS-X as well as Windows XP Pro so to me, it was a good choice.

Mac Mini 2.0 Core Duo 2 with 4 gigs of ram, OS-X and XP Pro

I could do both, so this would work… but what I didn’t count on was falling in love with Apple. heh. I mean, I knew Apple rocked, I’ve always told people to get an Apple, but seriously.. until you use one over and over… you just don’t know what I am talking about.

The Mini believe it or not was a HUGE speed jump from what I was using before. I expected it to suck balls, but no, it rocked. It comes with a gig of ram, I upgraded that to 4 gigs of ram and booya, bob’s your uncle.

Over time, I found the limitations and I found myself wishing, wanting, needing to upgrade once again. This is what geeks do, if you’re a geek, you get it. It was time for a new system.

Mac Pro 2 X 2.8 Quad Core Xeon with 2 gigs of ram, OS-X + Vista Ultimate with 30” Cinema Display. 320gig Main drive, 2 1 terabyte drives in bays 2 and 3 (system can handle up to 4 terabytes of drive space). New ram will be here Wednesday, bringing me up to 10 gigs of ram. Mac Pro has 8 ram slots as opposed to most PC’s that have 2-4 slots. This thing is a MONSTER.

I decided if you’re going to do it, do it right. This system is like owning a Ferrari to go get groceries. Doesn’t make much sense, but you have the ability to get things done FAST. Productivity will increase, that means more moola. B was snapping pix of me unwrapping things, here’s one she liked… she walked in when I was fucking the 30” Cinema display. I previously had a 24” Samsung 244T (best screen I’d ever owned, before now that is).

Once everything is set up and what not, cleaned up, I have gotten the new system set up with software/etc.. I will post more about it.  I’ve got to get Vista set up, I haven’t heard the greatest things re: Vista but some people I know like it and I do need to be in Windows as well and since XP can only see 2 gigs of ram, I need to go Vista 64 bit. i could go XP 64 bit but it sucks I have heard.

So there ya go… oh yeah… geek stats from Geekbench.ca If you don’t know your system’s Geek bench score and you’re wondering how fast your system is or how large your e-penis is, head over to www.geekbench.ca and download the software for free. Test your system, these numbers will make more sense then. This screen grab shows my original system from four years back that I used up until last year, then the Mac Mini. I also included test scores from my girlfriend’s iMac she had. Her system was faster then my Mini and then some.

(click for larger)

As you can see, my original base score was 1429. Then with the Mini.. with the base 1 gig of ram and upgraded ram. Ram doesn’t change system score, it’s all about your processor. My girlfriend’s iMac was faster, and then, my bitch… the Mac Pro.

I could have got a 3.0 or 3.2 Mac Pro but truth is that’s an extra $800 to go to the 3.0 and another $800 to jump to 3.2! All for 11% speed increase? Nah, I’m good. I won’t be able to use the speed I have now. I am getting into HD Video shortly with some of the girls I work with, as well as a lot larger processing of images etc. I’ll use the speed and my productivity will soar!

I’ll post more later, like I said, when things are messy as hell right now.

(click for larger)

The old screen (24” Samsung 244T) is going to a friend of mine that wanted it. The mini will get formatted and we’ll move it out to the living room to run the plasma.

One thing I can tell you in closing… FUCK ME this machine is fast. Installing software over and over, that part sucks. I’ll be hit and miss over next few days, so my postings might be somewhat scattered.

2 Responses to “Geek Christmas comes early”

1. kelidus Says:
   October 12th, 2008 at 9:49 am

   So…if you have both Windows and OS X on the same Mac…which one do you use primarily? OS X until you need to do something only Windows can? Or do you just use Windows all day?

2. eltardo Says:
   October 12th, 2008 at 12:45 pm

   Because I am used to using Windows for so long and I have habits from windows, when I had both Windows and OS-X on my Mac Mini, I’d use Windows I’d say 90% of the time.

   With the Mac Pro though, I am going to basically make it so going to windows is an emergency only option. Benchmark scores show that the Mac Pro runs Vista faster than a PC does, so I know it’ll fly… but OS-X is so much more secure, and the fact that at a touch of a button I am in terminal (bash in unix) able to debug anything on my server before I push it live etc.

   OS-X is where I’ll be 99% of the time I suspect. It’s nice not having to click here, click there, do this, do that to get something to run or work, it just works/runs perfect right out of the gate. If you google, a lot of longtime Windows nerds flipped to Mac and they will never go back. It’s a hard pill to swallow at first, you have to unlearn the difficult Windows lessons you’ve taught yourself almost… but then it just makes sense. It’s like before I was using a TRS-80 (old school, yo) and I just got a supercomputer. Would you go back to the OS of the TRS-80? Not if you can avoid it. heh. When I need Windows, I click and I can run Vista64 at the same time, side by side, within OS-X via Parallels or VMWare. I can use bootcamp like I’d used in the past, but I’m not sure I see the point.

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