soon-to-be PC convert with memory questions

sleze

(if you don't want to read the story, just skip down to -MAIN QUESTION-)



My laptop blew up(literally) today and now I am forced to purchase a new one. I am caught between the practicality of buying another PC(0 learning curve, 0 new software to purchase) and the excitability of getting a powerbook.



I went to the local apple store and was allowed to download a large file of mine to work with in photoshop so I could see performance differences between the powerbook(w/512MB RAM) and my home PC. Despite the very annoyed look that developed from the friendly smile when I told them what I was doing, they allowed me to do so.



I started by opening the large pic and repeatedly pasted it into a 30x20 inch/180 DPI new image. After about the 4th paste, it started to slow down. After the 9th paste I tried to do a feathered erase and it said "no" and that it was out of memory.



-MAIN QUESTION-

I thought OS 10 solved the apple virtual memory issues. Was I mistaken?



-SECONDARY QUESTIONS-

What is the battery life of your 17" or 15" powerbook?

How well do apple's work with microsoft networks?

Is there anyway to have an RS-232(serial port) on a powerbook?



PS - remember that I am seriously considering purchasing a powerbook and not trying to start a PC vs apple flame war

kickaha

Quote:

Originally posted by sleze

I thought OS 10 solved the apple virtual memory issues. Was I mistaken?

Nope. OS X does indeed have a very robust virtual memory system.



Photoshop uses its own, and bypasses the one in the OS. *shrug* Don't look at me, look at Adobe. It made sense in the OS 9 days, and it's just legacy code now. IMHO, they should ditch it, but...



That being said, *any* VM system will have hiccups from time to time if you need to swap in a lot of stuff at once. But you should never see an 'out of memory' error in MacOS X unless a) you're out of disk space (in which case you have bigger problems), or b) you're using an app like Photoshop that bypasses the OS's VM in favor of its own scheme.

Quote:

-SECONDARY QUESTIONS-

What is the battery life of your 17" or 15" powerbook?

How well do apple's work with microsoft networks?

Is there anyway to have an RS-232(serial port) on a powerbook?



PS - remember that I am seriously considering purchasing a powerbook and not trying to start a PC vs apple flame war [/B]

Battery: About 4 hrs of somewhat heavy use. Just over 2 watching a DVD, I can push it to just under five with networking off and screen dimmed a ways.



MS networks: very well.



Serial: You can get a USB -> RS-232 adapter from many sources, for $12-25. The Keyspan line is good, I hear, but I haven't any hands-on experience.

kraig911

Quote:

Originally posted by sleze



-MAIN QUESTION-

I thought OS 10 solved the apple virtual memory issues. Was I mistaken?



-SECONDARY QUESTIONS-

What is the battery life of your 17" or 15" powerbook?

How well do apple's work with microsoft networks?

Is there anyway to have an RS-232(serial port) on a powerbook?



PS - remember that I am seriously considering purchasing a powerbook and not trying to start a PC vs apple flame war

Personally you're going to have to add more memory or hook up an external drive and set it as a scratch disk, to be doing stuff like that. With the ease that photoshop of OS X makes. Even on windows with that much ram and that much work you're asking for trouble.

fotns

Since you are converting to the Mac world, I think you would more appropriately be called a Mac convert, not a PC convert.

randycat99

I didn't think an application could still invoke its own VM system within OSX, but I guess everything's gotta way.



I only wanted to add (or extend upon the question) to the effect that could single applications still have some limit to how much memory they can access, even though the OS has more to give? Isn't it something like 2 GB (usually well before that, when troubles arise) where a Windows application will invariably croak, regardless of available physical or virtual memory? Would Mac applications have a similar hard ceiling in an OSX environment?

sleze

Quote:

Originally posted by Randycat99

I didn't think an application could still invoke its own VM system within OSX, but I guess everything's gotta way.



I only wanted to add (or extend upon the question) to the effect that could single applications still have some limit to how much memory they can access, even though the OS has more to give? Isn't it something like 2 GB (usually well before that, when troubles arise) where a Windows application will invariably croak, regardless of available physical or virtual memory? Would Mac applications have a similar hard ceiling in an OSX environment?

The reason why it shocked me was that I used to rag on my mac friend because of how my crappy windows 95 was SOOO much better than his os (7?) at VM. Well he was more than pleased to shove it in MY face when Mac OS finally figured it out.



It is a concern because the only time I have ever ran out of memory in PC land was when I was out of HD space. So I must assume that the demo laptop at the store must have been loaded up with lots of crap on its hard drive.

ichiban_jay

You also have to understand, the floor models in the store are the bare minimums. Those computers probably have the basic 256 mb of RAM and whatever HD comes default with the computer.

thunderpoit

no, they have the actual "good better best" configs up as demos, if a config was spec'ed to have 512MB ram, its demo counterpart would aslo have as much.

as far as photoshop complaining about ram, there is a setting in the prefs for photoshop CS that lets you specify the maximum percentage of ram that photoshop can take, the default is 50%, so you were only letting photoshop use 256mb of real ram for a rather large task.