[X4U] RAM/MacBook Pro question

[Stroller]

On 23 Jun 2006, at 02:48, jwarms at mac.com wrote:
> ...
> But I completely disagree with the poster who hollered that 512MB was
> unusable and that Apple was somehow committing a no-no. Not true.
> The MacBook is a great machine, even at 512. It runs 10.4 very nicely,
> with occasional annoying delays but nothing near crippling.

I disagree with Mr Healy, but not completely.

As I said before, I have 512meg in my MacBook and it is quite usable  
as my secondary machine.

My mother has had only the stock 256meg in her Powerbook 12" since  
she bought it new 12 months ago - that seems to be suffering more  
spinning beachballs in the last 6 months (perhaps because of Tiger or  
the current iPhoto?) but is still usable by a pensioner and I found  
it quite usable, too, until recently.

But I agree with Zane in that I do think it's somewhat misleading of  
Apple to have more RAM in their display models than their basic  
configuration.  I suppose this is a compromise - if the base model  
carries 512meg then show-room demonstrators with 1gig is better than  
ones with 2gig!! But the showroom models will mostly only be played  
with one application at a time - "ooh, isn't the keyboard nice? look  
how fast iPhoto is!" - whereas the customer is more likely to have  
several apps running when he gets home after buying a machine with  
only half as much RAM!

> I'm going after the second 1GB board and the faster drive next.

I'll probably buy more RAM sooner, but for a hard-drive I'm hoping to  
hold out for those hybrid drives promised next year which will be  
fitted with onboard flash memory - this will be used as cache, and  
will ensure especially that paging to swap is faster and consumes  
less battery. Really, I hope it'll be nearly like having that much  
extra RAM in your machine.

Seagate & Hitachi both have models planned - Seagate's first model is  
to have 250meg of flash, but the way flash-prices are falling it  
should be economical for manufacturers to fit 2gig. The question is,  
of course, how much of a premium they'll charge consumers for this -  
the technology that is built into the drive, caching intelligently  
and making the flash invisible to the o/s is surely the clever-part.  
Will early adopters pay for it?

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/marketing/po_momentus_5400_psd.pdf

Stroller.