<strong>Just ripped a clapton CD, 160VBR, steady 11X. Is that good or bad? Using combo867 12" with only 256MB of RAM for now.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Sounds pretty normal. My dual 500 ripped 192VBR at around that consistently, though it did get up to about 15x or 16x at times. That was with 512 MB of RAM. I'll have to try importing a CD on my iBook, see how fast that goes.
<strong>Just ripped a clapton CD, 160VBR, steady 11X. Is that good or bad? Using combo867 12" with only 256MB of RAM for now.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Much better than the 3X I get on my G3 iMac DV 400
My -- er, I mean our MiniBook has made it to Anchorage at last report by FedEx. It's in the U.S.!
iBook 800, 640 RAM, 160VBR, went between 5x and 6x most of the time.
A friend of mine had a dual 867 and it encoded over 20x. Now he has an Athlon XP2200+ and it encodes at over 40x.
Feh. I have all my music imported anyway, so it's not a major concern for me. No real bragging rights, but on the other hand, he can't take his computer with him can he?
Battery life is easily 3 and a half to 4 hours. Conservative use, say, just the word processor, should put you close to 5. I've still got 55 mins showing despite watching a bit of U2 on DVD, ripping a whole CD, farting around with iPhoto and word test drive, and alternately making the display as bright and then as dim as possible.
In a slightly dim ambient, 2-3 bars are completely readable, the display gets very very bright at maxx brightness, nice. Just typing on a white back-ground, you can get away with one tick.
I forgot to mention, the physical installation of airport extreme is a little frustrating. maybe I was just too afraid of fvcking something up, but I guess once it's in there there's no need to touch it again.
I decided to throw something a little more compicated at it. 112-224VBR highest quality. This time I used so more intricate acoustic guitar with african vocals. The first track takes a couple of seconds for the rate to climb up... 2...3...4...5..6..7,8,9,10 and again it levels off between 10-12X fluctuating a bit more than the previous one.
Playing freshly ripped Annie-flore Batchchiellilys at full balsy. I must say the sound is excellent for a laptop, and quite loud for a laptop, not "loud" but very nicely balanced.
Gotta say a few words about the iTunes encoder. at 112-224VBR (highest quality) it deals with the intricacies of voice and guitar quite well. Seems like a very solid encoder to me. Mebbe there's better out there, and some of it has to be the balance of the PB speakers -- they're eminently listenable for what they are -- but I'm surprised that MP3 is as listenable as it is. I'm gonna ripp a 320 highest quality track or two to see if it rises to the level of CD quality. I'm very surprised.
I've still got 19 mins of battery life left.
I can drain this thing and leave it to charge over night, yes?
Still cool too. Mild, I mean mild, warmth from the left palm rest. I wonder what some of the heat-scare mongers were babbling about? Theres an even distribution of similar warmth across the left 2/3rds of the machine. Hardly even warm, I don't see how some could describe it as hot, no way.
Does it come down to drive speed, basically? iDunno, just asking.
I can't say enough about the sound system. It's really really good. For such a small machine it's incredible. Voices come off it great, particularly female voices. I have it cranked out on the desk in my room and while it isn't loud it fills out the small room nicely. big noise would overpower it, but you could definitely get by in a quiet workspace with just the internals for some background music or to kill the din of florescent lights, vents etc etc.
So far it's very quiet, and still hasn't gotten hot or even really warm eiher. very nice. When my new mac apps get here, I'll do a performance review.
played with iCal, I don't find it that intuitive, and it's a little odd/buggy.
But I'm a total OSX newbie really, and I suppose I have lots of lingering windows habits to overcome first.
<strong>Does it come down to drive speed, basically? iDunno, just asking.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Set the encoder to the lowest possible bitrate, that'll result in the fastest encode times. Encode a song from the CD, preferably the last track on the disc. That should tell you how fast your drive is for DAE...
Sounds like a beauty! The latest review on Apple's website says this model doesn't have fan?! That true?
Any chance of Matsu posting some pics?
Mac Os X is cool when you get down with her.
(There is a Free MacAcademy 'X' training CD with a back issue of Macworld. Taught me one or two things about 'X' I didn't know and what Apple's intentions were...)
Still, nothing you couldn't pick up yerself over time.
Nice to hear Matsu finally joined the 'X' club.
Enjoy.
Lemon Bon Bon
Now...if only I can get a 970 'POWER'Mac from Apple...
I'm waiting for some software to arrive before I give some detailed performance impressions later.
I was going to wait untill the next day to run over tomy dept and pick up the book because I didn't think I could make it there before close ad I don't have a key. But at the urging of Murbot I sped through Toronto rush hour traffic, meaning I waited in frustrating stop and go wondering if I was just wasting my time.
Well, I got there with people weorking late, so no problems. While there I ran into a work buddy who had to buy my Newton and we needed to finish up some stuff, thusly, my baby was booted up for the first time at the local pub. Our booth had a plug, so no biggie. I still haven't set up the all the internet profiles.
I will need to connect to:
-home wireless, as soon as my brother installs the linksys.
-home wired cable
-2 libraries, both wireless and wired
-work wired (WTF? why can't we get airport? Actually, I think my boss is getting it for his own use, which means I can probably leech it if I'm close enough.
Does OSX do all this automagically? I assume different connection profiles are easy to manage. I'll get it sorted (at least at home) tommorow. Still haven't even put this baby on the internet yet, but wireless or no, I'm gonna go online, register and install 10.2.4. I did however take some time to put all my contact info back into the machine, by hand, and I tried to post my schedule into iCal, which I find a little buggy and weird. MUST GET MOUSE. Trackpads are OK, this one is good, but I need a mouse. I wish I could get wireless Bluetooth job, but Apple may or may not work with this yet??? What's up with that? Meh, I'll get something cheap and wired.
You must exuse the very crappy photo: bad camera plus bad light plus bad photographer...
Comments
<strong>Matsu, how's the backlight on the keyboard?</strong><hr></blockquote>
He's got the 12" so there is no backlit keyboard.
Congrats, Matsu! Welcome to the mini-fold.
<strong>Just ripped a clapton CD, 160VBR, steady 11X. Is that good or bad? Using combo867 12" with only 256MB of RAM for now.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Pretty damn good for a laptop!
Edit:
Oh yeah, and congrats/ welcome, too !
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/cancer.gif" border="0" alt="[cancer]" />
[ 02-20-2003: Message edited by: FormerLurker ]</p>
<strong>Just ripped a clapton CD, 160VBR, steady 11X. Is that good or bad? Using combo867 12" with only 256MB of RAM for now.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Much better than the 3X I get on my G3 iMac DV 400
My -- er, I mean our MiniBook has made it to Anchorage at last report by FedEx. It's in the U.S.!
Slower drive though.
A friend of mine had a dual 867 and it encoded over 20x. Now he has an Athlon XP2200+ and it encodes at over 40x.
Feh. I have all my music imported anyway, so it's not a major concern for me. No real bragging rights, but on the other hand, he can't take his computer with him can he?
In a slightly dim ambient, 2-3 bars are completely readable, the display gets very very bright at maxx brightness, nice. Just typing on a white back-ground, you can get away with one tick.
I forgot to mention, the physical installation of airport extreme is a little frustrating. maybe I was just too afraid of fvcking something up, but I guess once it's in there there's no need to touch it again.
Gotta say a few words about the iTunes encoder. at 112-224VBR (highest quality) it deals with the intricacies of voice and guitar quite well. Seems like a very solid encoder to me. Mebbe there's better out there, and some of it has to be the balance of the PB speakers -- they're eminently listenable for what they are -- but I'm surprised that MP3 is as listenable as it is. I'm gonna ripp a 320 highest quality track or two to see if it rises to the level of CD quality. I'm very surprised.
I've still got 19 mins of battery life left.
I can drain this thing and leave it to charge over night, yes?
Still cool too. Mild, I mean mild, warmth from the left palm rest. I wonder what some of the heat-scare mongers were babbling about? Theres an even distribution of similar warmth across the left 2/3rds of the machine. Hardly even warm, I don't see how some could describe it as hot, no way.
I have a 6400/G3 400 and can rip to MP3 at 6x+: huh? Must be the L2 cache?
Thanks for the review
----------------
Just for comparison's sake:
On my Dual 1gig/1gig Ram, 160VBR, SuperDrive, 19 song CD.
1st song started out in the 12's
Song 19 maxed out at 24.0!
Congrats on your new Book. That's a great machine.
Chas
I can't say enough about the sound system. It's really really good. For such a small machine it's incredible. Voices come off it great, particularly female voices. I have it cranked out on the desk in my room and while it isn't loud it fills out the small room nicely. big noise would overpower it, but you could definitely get by in a quiet workspace with just the internals for some background music or to kill the din of florescent lights, vents etc etc.
So far it's very quiet, and still hasn't gotten hot or even really warm eiher. very nice. When my new mac apps get here, I'll do a performance review.
played with iCal, I don't find it that intuitive, and it's a little odd/buggy.
But I'm a total OSX newbie really, and I suppose I have lots of lingering windows habits to overcome first.
<strong>Does it come down to drive speed, basically? iDunno, just asking.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Set the encoder to the lowest possible bitrate, that'll result in the fastest encode times. Encode a song from the CD, preferably the last track on the disc. That should tell you how fast your drive is for DAE...
[ 02-21-2003: Message edited by: Eugene ]</p>
<strong>OSX is so new to me. I really don't knwo how to do anything in OSX and will take a little time to get used to it.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You are going to be satisfied, I tell you.
Sounds like a beauty! The latest review on Apple's website says this model doesn't have fan?! That true?
Any chance of Matsu posting some pics?
Mac Os X is cool when you get down with her.
(There is a Free MacAcademy 'X' training CD with a back issue of Macworld. Taught me one or two things about 'X' I didn't know and what Apple's intentions were...)
Still, nothing you couldn't pick up yerself over time.
Nice to hear Matsu finally joined the 'X' club.
Enjoy.
Lemon Bon Bon
Now...if only I can get a 970 'POWER'Mac from Apple...
[ 02-21-2003: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>
I was going to wait untill the next day to run over tomy dept and pick up the book because I didn't think I could make it there before close ad I don't have a key. But at the urging of Murbot I sped through Toronto rush hour traffic, meaning I waited in frustrating stop and go wondering if I was just wasting my time.
Well, I got there with people weorking late, so no problems. While there I ran into a work buddy who had to buy my Newton and we needed to finish up some stuff, thusly, my baby was booted up for the first time at the local pub. Our booth had a plug, so no biggie. I still haven't set up the all the internet profiles.
I will need to connect to:
-home wireless, as soon as my brother installs the linksys.
-home wired cable
-2 libraries, both wireless and wired
-work wired (WTF? why can't we get airport? Actually, I think my boss is getting it for his own use, which means I can probably leech it if I'm close enough.
Does OSX do all this automagically? I assume different connection profiles are easy to manage. I'll get it sorted (at least at home) tommorow. Still haven't even put this baby on the internet yet, but wireless or no, I'm gonna go online, register and install 10.2.4. I did however take some time to put all my contact info back into the machine, by hand, and I tried to post my schedule into iCal, which I find a little buggy and weird. MUST GET MOUSE. Trackpads are OK, this one is good, but I need a mouse. I wish I could get wireless Bluetooth job, but Apple may or may not work with this yet??? What's up with that? Meh, I'll get something cheap and wired.
You must exuse the very crappy photo: bad camera plus bad light plus bad photographer...
Inaugural bar pic:
Finally gets home:
Relative scale next to CD jewel case:
Next to brother's killer gateway:
[ 02-21-2003: Message edited by: Matsu ]</p>
Where did u get if from?
Also u may want to check out Digital Prototypes, great store, (shitty location though), cool guys, etc...
(www.dpimac.com)
My friend @ work here ordered his 12" from Vistek, and he supposed to pick it up next week.
:-)
I just checked their website, and they have it in stock!
[ 02-21-2003: Message edited by: piwozniak ]</p>
<strong>
He's got the 12" so there is no backlit keyboard.
Congrats, Matsu! Welcome to the mini-fold.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Oh, I thought both the 17 and 12" had the backlit keyboard.