Prius Owners and Mac Users

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ScubaX\";p=\"99243)</div>

I've always liked the quote I heard from a Mac owner about Steve Jobs (said with affection):

"Yeah, he's a crazy bastard... but he's our crazy bastard!" :mrgreen:

(I went to Reed College just about when Jobs left; guess I had a better experience there than he did back then, and a real symbol of the campus.)

 

[font=Comic Sans MS:3109fbe7a8]What's really interesting to me is the (almost) 50:50 split between Win and Mac users. In the greater world [what's that?] the Mac may have as much as a 15% market share. In most places you have to choose to use a Mac, it's Win by default.

With the even split, it seems clear there is some difference in Prius owners. Will all of us Mac owners start demanding a better Prius OS? We all talk about the "stupid" backup beeps and "pointless" nav/phone in-motion defeats...

I have a feeling that Toyota, like most companies, is Win based, but a large number of their Prius customers would prefer them to take a more Mac point of view.

[/font:3109fbe7a8]

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bookrats\";p=\"99505)</div>

I believe, if you read between the lines, it has something to do with the DRM intel will be including for Apple.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26\";p=\"99477)</div>

Actually, on my HP Athlon 3400, the system usually runs so cool that the fans will shut off. The CPU, if you enable it in power management, will throttle itself down to 700mhz if you're not pushing it, and at that speed, it runs very, very cool.

Intel runs hot, Yes. AMD does not.[/b][/quote]

That's because the critical temps for Athlons are ~85c just as they are for P4. The normal range for that CPU is 60 to 70c. Under load the hottest I have seen my P4 3.2 is 68c. At this moment it is running a nice 62c. Mine too will shut its fan off. But I have disabled that and used a super quiet fan instead. If you throttle any CPU down to 700mhz it will run cooler. My laptop shuts itself down to 700 also to save power and then the fan goes off on it too. They run in the same temp ranges and wattages. Should I underclock mine just to lower the temp, don't think so.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ScubaX\";p=\"99562)</div>

Who's underclocking? The setting is enabled, and it ramps up when it needs to. This: Produces less heat, requires less cooling, reduces energy consumption, and probably keeps the room cooler.

I'll bust the P4 out when I want inferior performance at a higher clock speed and more heat.

 

Temps and power consumptions are similar. Its in the physics and you can't have it your way. It IS inferior to lower the clock speed to keep your system cool enough to run. Running it at 700mhz automatically does not dismiss the fact that it is under clocking. The power savings of a few watts means nothing in a 400 watt or more system. My laptop has to do the same thing to save power for the batteries, it is not used on AC. I disabled that function because it does cause poor performance. If the AMD has to do this to run, well whatever it needs.

Don't you even wonder why it has to do this? Or do you just accept this as it must be a better solution? Why is this usually only done on laptops?

I run a P4 on an Asus P4C800E-D MB, 2GB ram, and ATI Radeon Pro, and 8 hard drives equalling 1.5 terrabytes, 2 DVD burners, a Matrox RTX100 Capture and a SB sound card. The box sits at 47c, the CPU at 62c, and the MB at 38c. You can dream that your HP generic is a good system. I built mine with some of the best equipment available for video edit - including a 36gb Raptor 10,000rpm OS drive that is removable and exchanged with another Raptor for day to day work. Video editing is very demanding on a system. AMD's can't even run this capture board and HP's use generic parts - so I know yours won't. The only HP's that meet the minimum system requirements are P4's and Xeon - no AMD's - they lock up!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ScubaX\";p=\"99634)</div>

First of all, I've never had any of my Athlons lock up.

Second of all, you're thinking locally. If you've got a large number of computers, and you're running them all... like maybe, do not know, an office, and you can save a few watts per computer, the overall savings are ENORMOUS. You cut down on the AC and cut down on the power required by both the AC and the Computers.

Why won't you admit that everyone and their brother (tech sites at least) shows that the Athlon64 is leagues ahead of anything Intel has to offer?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26\";p=\"99662)</div>

First of all, I've never had any of my Athlons lock up.

Second of all, you're thinking locally. If you've got a large number of computers, and you're running them all... like maybe, do not know, an office, and you can save a few watts per computer, the overall savings are ENORMOUS. You cut down on the AC and cut down on the power required by both the AC and the Computers.

Why won't you admit that everyone and their brother (tech sites at least) shows that the Athlon64 is leagues ahead of anything Intel has to offer?[/b][/quote]

I said they lock up with that video capture card, they don't work with it. That is not me saying that, but Matrox and users who have tried.

We were not discussing an office. Techy people like to OC the processor and play games. Businesses buy Intel and Intel MB's because they do run rock solid. I hear Linux works better than Windows too, but I am not about to go out and deal with all the difficulties of installing and getting all my hardware and software to work with it.

If a business is required to use a certain board or software that does not work with an AMD, they are not going to buy it. On the other side of the coin, they would not buy Intel if it did not work. But that just does not happen. I know lots of tech people either working for major companies or startups here in Silicon Valley, they all use Intel based machines and usually that means the MB's also.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jkash\";p=\"99052)</div>

Jeff -- just been screwing around with Disk Utility, and I now understand exactly what you mean. Thanks very much for the tip!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26\";p=\"99560)</div>

I believe, if you read between the lines, it has something to do with the DRM intel will be including for Apple.
[/b][/quote]

There have also been some quotes from various camps that a lot of it came down to non-technological issues (at least, in terms of who Apple would turn to, Intel, AMD, or Freescale) -- i.e., "bidness".

$$, and time to delivery.

 

iSync and BT

G4/933 - Tiger (OS X 10.4.1) is a dream.

Has anyone used iSync with the:
Moto V551 or V635
Sony-Ericsson T series or K700(i) or 710
Nokia 6230

Prius 2005 with BT and Nav system.
Cingular service provider
------------------------------------------------------
P.S. ~$30 Moto BT adapter for Moto V400 does NOT work in car or with 10.4.1

 

just out of curiosity. anyone try Verizon's EVDO broadband access over the cell network on their Mac yet?

 

I'm a PC user; my first computers were Apples, followed by Macs, but when I used my first PC, I just found it much better. And I literally never get spyware/viruses/trojans. I have gotten one exactly once in my life, and it was through using Internet Explorer; a website had malicious code that exploited a bug in IE to install some crap on my computer, though it wasn't difficult to remove. Anyway I use the Mozilla browser now and have not had a single bad program get installed on my computer.

There are other programs besides the IE-exploiting one I encountered that can install themselves on people's machines in certain conditions, but they're rare and short-lived usually; the overwhelming majority of viruses people get they willingly install and run themselves, after being easily fooled by e-mail spam or ads on websites.

In other words, people are stupid.

 

Been a Mac user for about 7 or 8 years, and now Im a Prius owner too! (as of 7/2/05)

Current Mac is a G5 iMac (rev. A)

 

potential buyer. you have a point there, the # 1 way for hackers for hackers to get info isnt high level computing. they simply ask for it

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Potential Buyer\";p=\"103678)</div>

I would be very careful with that statement.

There are lots of ways into a windows box that doesn't require you to do much of anything. I think the time that it takes a new XP install to be infected with something, from just sitting on the internet, is 12 minutes.

That's 12 minutes of being on the internet but doing nothing. Just having connectivity is enough to get you infected.

Yes, SP2 will help, and almost eliminate the problem. But how long do you think that will last? Yes, using a hardware firewall (your router) will help.

But you're not totally safe. And while you may be prepared to write this risk off as small and acceptable, remember that when someone grabs your password info out of a browser cache, or via a process dump, and goes to town.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26\";p=\"104300)</div>

I can demonstrate that in our development PC lab very easily.

I install a "vanilla" image of Windows 2000 (SP 2 I think) on a lab PC. If I hook it up to the company network, without applying a higher patch level on it, a worm will take control of it within 10 minutes.

As Jonnycat says, XP SP2 will help, as will hardware firewalls. But it's a nasty world out there for Windows PCs.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sid\";p=\"104234)</div>

Hi Sid,

Question: have you encountered any instances of your G5 iMac fans going full blast at odd times? Any problems with overheating?

I'm helping my dad shop for his next Mac, and I've been somewhat concerned about reports of overheating G5 iMacs (as reported at Macintouch.com, etc.)

My Dual G5 PowerMac has been whisper-quiet, but the cooling system for the PowerMac is considerably more expansive than that of the iMac. Frankly, it's amazing what they managed to get into the G5 iMac!

 

i have a G4 powerbook and because it has wireless broadband access through the verizon cellphone network, i network it to my home setup for the much faster bandwidth it provides so its on a lot and it gets real warm and i have had no issues with it. in fact it gets so warm i cant hardly put it on my lap with shorts on (i use a small couch pillow)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bookrats\";p=\"104326)</div>

Hi Sid,

Question: have you encountered any instances of your G5 iMac fans going full blast at odd times? Any problems with overheating?

I'm helping my dad shop for his next Mac, and I've been somewhat concerned about reports of overheating G5 iMacs (as reported at Macintouch.com, etc.)

My Dual G5 PowerMac has been whisper-quiet, but the cooling system for the PowerMac is considerably more expansive than that of the iMac. Frankly, it's amazing what they managed to get into the G5 iMac![/b][/quote]

Hi bookrats,
I have the 20", 1.8GHZ model with 1GB of RAM and have performance set to Automatic. (received it in Nov. 2004)
Normally the fans do not run at full speed even when dabling in Photoshop or having several apps open while surfing the 'net. I've noticed that playing the iTunes visualizer at full screen mode will raise the temp, but I've never had a shutdown due to overheating.

If you buy a new iMac now, it will be a rev. B, which as I understand it, has some improvements over the rev. A.

FWIW, I recommend the G5 iMac, it's an amazing machine (like the Prius )