[X4U] Negligible speed bumps...

[Zane H. Healy]

At 10:37 AM -0400 3/8/09, Wayne Clodfelter wrote:
>Zane H. Healy wrote:
>
>>The best two things I can see about the new Mac Mini are the FW800 
>>and the 4GB of RAM.
>
>I presently have a 2002ed (2001 w/2002mobo) Quicksilver with a dual 
>1.8GHz processor and lots of HD storage inside and out. I don't like 
>iMacs and don't need the Mac Pro, so what I'd like to see is a 
>Less-Mini that offers more expansion.
>What surprises and disappoints me about the latest Mini is the FW800 
>instead of eSATA. Seems kind of late in the game to provide FW800 
>when eSATA is in and FireWire appears to be on the way out. eSATA 
>has it all over FW800 in terms of data transfer speed.

I'm rather disappointed by the lack of an in between model as well, 
and have been for years.  People have discussed this to death on many 
forums.  It really doesn't make a lot of sense for why Apple doesn't 
offer something like this.  At the same time, I'm starting to feel 
the need for much of what the Mac Pro has to offer, and want my next 
machine to handle Photoshop CS5 when it comes out eventually with 
ease (I plan to skip CS4).

As for the FW800 vs. eSATA, correct me if I'm wrong, but you can 
daisy-chain FW800, but not eSATA can't you?  I thought FW800 was a 
nice option for people that have Firewire devices (I have both video 
and audio devices that use FW400).  I felt leaving Firewire totally 
off of the new MacBooks was a mistake.

I do plan on adding a eSATA and/or Multilane card to the Mac Pro 
fairly soon after getting one (I hope to get one before Summer is 
over), as my plans for setting up my disks are starting to change, 
and I want to do a RAID for speed for my photo drive.  As a result 
I'm going to need fast external drives.

Zane


-- 
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
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