no fran, if you haven't gotten the point after that huge post I posted and still think I'm complaining because I need something to complain about, then you either just don't get it, or you're to stubborn to admit, that to some people, it might be an issue.
No, I fully admit that it is an 'issue', but I'm saying it's being overblown. My point is that it's not like you can't have an external drive to serve the same purpose.
My thought is that if you added in another expansion bay, you'd have to find another way to cool the parts of the system and the added cost wouldn't be worth it in the long run.
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Needless to say, a 30$ mouse doesn't equal a 250$ external drive, nor are there any internal mice.
You're really missing the whole point...no actually you're ignoring it.
Well, this sort of confuses me, but my point really was that you can configure your system with the features you want, but it's going to cost you more money. That's a fact of life when dealing with Apple. If those drives aren't going to fit inside the tower, you have to find another way to go around it, and that solution is to buy an external drive.
It's not like an iMac, iBook, eMac, or PowerBook where you can't upgrade the graphics card, add more than 1 GB of RAM, add a second hard drive or optical drive, or have any expansion at all (except for the PowerBook's PCMCIA slot).
Yes, I guess my perspective is different since I own a PowerBook and none of my Macs have really been that expandable.
Going in order: Apple ][GS, Mac Performa 575, PowerBook 1400, iMac G3/233, PowerBook G3/500 (Pismo), iMac G3/500, and finally my PowerBook G4/1 GHz.
For reference, my brother has a DP G4/500 tower and he put in a 2nd Hard Drive, Sound card, 2 GB of RAM, and a Radeon (32 MB), so I'm not entirely a stranger to expansion.
Your point is that you want everything inside the case because it's cheaper and easier to lug around.
My point is that as long as you can get everything you want, even if it is outside the case, what's the problem?
Does a DJ need a G5 Tower to play music off of CDs? Sounds like a stretch.
I've got to agree with you buckeye, DJ's use laptops... because they have to go places. And on top of that DJ's are usually using vinyl or mp3 via final scratch.
I've got to agree with buckeye, now that's not saying I wouldn't find use for a second drive bay, or that a lot of pro's wouldn't, it's just not a fatal flaw...
It was a perk really, not a necessity. I'd be more upset about having to find a way to use my extra 2 HDs if I had them than going to an external optical drive.
I wouldn't doubt it if we will see a high end workstation model down the road.
A G5 2.5 ghz. dual with three optical bays, 6 PCX slots, an internal raid drive bay all in a nice 3 ft high liquid nitrogen cooled tower with 15 fans and two ear plugs.
Seriously, A more expandable high end workstation is a definite possibility... for probably around $3999.
Clearly from your posts you don't understand my logic because you clearly don't understand the needs of the PRO user.
Once you get into the REAL WORLD where you rely on your equipment to perform your job, you might begin to understand.
Unfortunately, your lack of maturity in a professional atmosphere will hurt you much more than your lack of knowledge.
clearly from the posts ripping your stance apart throughout this thread you have no idea what you are talking about and clearly from your resfusal to defend your stance you have admitted you have no idea what you are talking about.
If they made the towers bigger to accomodate more expansion, then there would be those that would complain about the size of the tower, and probably the added cost.
You just can't please everyone.
I am a pro user and I just deal with it.
Remember when they went from 6 PCI slots to 4? Man was there a lot of bitchin' going on then too, but people adapted.
Sure, one can buy external Firewire HDs and optical drives, but that's not the point. The whole idea of a tower is to have a computer that can house all of one's drives. AIOs are designed to use external drives, and that's fine.
With external drives, you have the disadvantages of:
1. Clutter and less space.
2. Extra cost relative to internal drives.
3. More difficult to move.
I think it's most important to have a second optical drive bay. Direct disc to disc dupes should be possible with any tower, especially a high-priced tower like the Powermac. Sure, it's not necessary, but neither is a G5. It's a luxury, just like the rest of the computer.
Extra HD bays would be nice, but with serial ATA, these towers can house up to 500 GB of storage--that's more than the 4 HD powermacs. Still, at least 3 bays would be nice.
The thing to remember is that this is a "pro" tower, it's supposed to have everything in excess. You can argue that it doesn't really NEED a whole lot of things, but that's not the point. Pretend it's a BMW and imagine how it should be spec'd. Does a BMW NEED heated seats? No. How about a 250 hp engine? No. Leather seats? No. You get the idea.
the thing is that they CAN add them... they just have to make the tower a bit taller... room for one more Optical and 2 more HDs... just double the 4th zone...
how much bigger is this tower then the old ones?
would it still be able to be rackmounted?
The Power Mac G5 is 8.1 x 18.7 x 20.1 inches (wide x deep x high). The Power Mac G4 is 8.9 x 18.4 x 17 inches. Handles are included I believe. 60% of the Power Mac G5 volumes looks to be dedicated to the 970 CPUs, 970 heat sinks, 970 fans, and 8 DIMM slots. Wow! I bet the Power Mac G4 CPU and memory volumes is somewhere around 25%.
For the prices, I think Apple could have and should have made the PMG5 10% bigger in all dimensions to make it 8.9 x 20.6 x 22.1 inches. This would have added the 2 inches necessary for 2 5.25" enternal bays and 4 3.5" internal bays, and maybe enough for a 4 PCI slots.
Apple can make all of our complaints go away be simply making the proposed G5 mini in the Future Hardware thread. 1 1-1.4 GHz 970, 4 DIMMs, 1 AGP and 1 PCI both 7 inch length max, 1 SATA drive bay, 1 optical bay, and charge $800 to $1500. The Pro towers could be 1800+ with 1.6+ GHz processors.
I'd keep eMacs (<$900) and iMacs (<$1300) as lower cost products...
I think it's most important to have a second optical drive bay. Direct disc to disc dupes should be possible with any tower
Do you think that when steve talked about copying the full contents of a DVD in one second if it was in the RAM is his way of saying that you don't need a second drive to copy discs? That just having lots of RAM and HD space is enough?
good luck creating that DVD disk image and not falling asleep while doing so.
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No, I fully admit that it is an 'issue', but I'm saying it's being overblown. My point is that it's not like you can't have an external drive to serve the same purpose.
My thought is that if you added in another expansion bay, you'd have to find another way to cool the parts of the system and the added cost wouldn't be worth it in the long run.
Of course you can have an external drive serve the same purpose, but you can also do that on a bloody 799$ iMac.
Cooling is not a Problem at all, in fact moving to 2x5.25" bay height would allow for an even larger (and thus even slower-speed) fan, further reducing noise, while maintaining or even improving airflow
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I think it's most important to have a second optical drive bay. Direct disc to disc dupes should be possible with any tower, especially a high-priced tower like the Powermac. Sure, it's not necessary, but neither is a G5. It's a luxury, just like the rest of the computer.
My opinion exactly and there's one more sad fact: There is no readily configured PC system that doesn't have at least a DVD Drive and a Burner in the same case. Some are even starting to ship with DVD+RW Drives and Combo Drives. Really ever classical "discounter PC" that you can buy at your local electronics or Hifi shop here in Switzerland comes with a case that has at least 2 5.25" bays.
After all I'm not asking for 4 of them, or 6 like that ugly PC tower under my desk, I'm just asking for 2 and 4 HDs, so I can at least have the same setup I have with my MDD now.
We're really not asking for miracles here, rather for something that I take for granted for something that costs 2999$ and is considered a Pro machine.
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Extra HD bays would be nice, but with serial ATA, these towers can house up to 500 GB of storage--that's more than the 4 HD powermacs. Still, at least 3 bays would be nice.
Actually that's far less than the 4HD Powermacs.
Take the now shipping 300GB Maxtor drive, multiply by 4 (yes, even though it's only ATA 100/66, you can use drives larger than 127GB) and realize that 1200GB is more than 500.
But that is not the point. I don't need 1200GB of storage, in fact even 500 is more than enough. The point is, that you don't always buy the biggest drives when you upgrade, and that you might also want to keep the old drives, instead of replacing them, because it's probably a damn pain in the ass to replace a OS X boot harddisk (for people who work with their machines for a living anyway).
So, assuming I buy a G5 now, with 160GB of storage. Turns out that storage is filled faster than you can say "divx", so you buy a second drive, with another 160GB, because the 250GB drive is too expensive. After another year or so, both drives are full. Now you need to somehow move the files from one HD to the new, now afforadble 300GB drive that you just bought...however, how do you do that? put in the 300GB drive into the third (non-existant) harddisk bay is impossible, connecting the serial ATA disk to the DVD drive connector is impossible too. so you end up doing one of the following 3 things:
-you install a SATA controller card in a PCI slot, and somehow put the HD into the PCI bay, in order to copy thigns over and then replace the 160GB drive with the new 300GB drive. Point is, you can't leave the tower open, because it doesn't boot when the plastic cover isn't put in place, for overheating protection reasons (see www.xlr8yourmac.com).
If you have the PCI slots all filled with PCI cards, because you happen to be a sound professional or something like that, you're out of luck, that option is a no go for you
-you install the SATA harddisk into another SATA capable Mac (as of now that is a G5 only) and copy the files over Ethernet. Even using gigabit ethernet, that is going to take about twice as long as a disk to disk copy would take. Plus you need a damn second mac, and as we all know, these don't fall off trees.
-you backup 160GB of files to DVD-Rs first which requires roughly 37 DVD-R discs, thus costs around 110$ for the media alone (basically the cost for another harddisk) and taking about 750 Minutes of time to complete, assuming you take about 20 minutes per disk and have no coasters.
Then you yank the 160GB drive out, install the 300GB drive and copy the files back, taking another 360 Minutes or so, hoping that no disks are unreadable.
last but not least you can also buy another ATA harddisk with at least 160GB storage, for another 100$, install that in the DVD bay and use that as a workaround.
Eitherway, you see, this limitation is more than just a problem to people who use a lot of storage, but it's also a problem to people who want to keep their mac for longer than a year, and having large volumes of data that is growing every day.
as of now, there are no external SATA cases to connect over Firewire, afaik, so that additional 150$ option falls away as well.
You see, I could do that on my MDD and I actually did do that on my Beige G3: there are 3 hds in that thing and only because it had enough space to fit them all at once was I able to simply install the drives and have more disk space instantly, rather than copying gigabytes of files over a horribly slow PIO mode interface at 16.6MB/sec (granted the old WD harddisk only pushes around 6)
I think it's most important to have a second optical drive bay. Direct disc to disc dupes should be possible with any tower
Do you think that when steve talked about copying the full contents of a DVD in one second if it was in the RAM is his way of saying that you don't need a second drive to copy discs? That just having lots of RAM and HD space is enough?
um... do you understand what he was saying? i don't think so. Because you certainly won't be copying DVDs to RAM in 1 second.
clearly from the posts ripping your stance apart throughout this thread you have no idea what you are talking about and clearly from your resfusal to defend your stance you have admitted you have no idea what you are talking about.
PRO user.... my God... you're in denial
Scroll up, there are equally as many posts that share my view about the lack of optical drives and internal storage.
I speak from experience, not hypotheticals. If you don't believe me turn on your television or go to the movies. I'll give you my name and you can see it in the credits yourself.
I am not going to waste my time trading insults with you. I thought this forum was for open discussion, not arguinig with teenagers.
PS - I just looked at your website. You are in serious denial if you consider YOURSELF a pro user.
After all I'm not asking for 4 of them, or 6 like that ugly PC tower under my desk, I'm just asking for 2 and 4 HDs, so I can at least have the same setup I have with my MDD now.
This, to me, seems to be the crux of the issue: It's not even so much the capacity as the downgrade in capacity. The same complaints were voiced when Apple killed the 9600.
If someone really did grow into the potential of a QuickSilver, or an MDD, and they're now in the position of figuring out which PCI card and which drives get the boot, that's an understandably frustrating position - even if Apple has mooted several of the reasons for PCI slots with the latest suite of I/O connectors, they might not have mooted your reasons.
Yes, this is about particular custom configurations for a few people. That's exactly what the Mac professional market has looked like for years. So even if Apple basically decided (as with the 9600) that so few people were using the extra bays in the MDD that it wasn't worth the trouble of engineering them into the G5, let's have some sympathy for those few people. It's not like they have a lot of options for the time being.
um... do you understand what he was saying? i don't think so. Because you certainly won't be copying DVDs to RAM in 1 second.
So exaclty what was Steve saying shen he talked about copying a DVD in 1 second once it was in the RAM? Copy it to where?
I was thinking that maybe with the extra band width and massive RAM, etc of these new machines copying a DVD using only one drive would be almost as fast as from one drive to another. But I'm probably way out in some field somewhere lookin for some kind of grail like object. \
Applenut, I enjoyed your posts much more before you became a moderator. You actually used more than 5 sentences and words with more than three syllables in your remarks.
um... do you understand what he was saying? i don't think so. Because you certainly won't be copying DVDs to RAM in 1 second.
So exaclty what was Steve saying shen he talked about copying a DVD in 1 second once it was in the RAM? Copy it to where?
I was thinking that maybe with the extra band width and massive RAM, etc of these new machines copying a DVD using only one drive would be almost as fast as from one drive to another. But I'm probably way out in some field somewhere lookin for some kind of grail like object. \
he made his statement to provide a sort of example of how much bandwidth is available.... what was it 6.4GB or something? to relate that to something he used a DVD.
Copying a DVD will still only be as fast as the DVD Drive..... very slow.
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Applenut, I enjoyed your posts much more before you became a moderator. You actually used more than 5 sentences and words with more than three syllables in your remarks.
Are you just too busy right now?
I've said enough in this thread and elsewhere. Read more.
Scroll up, there are equally as many posts that share my view about the lack of optical drives and internal storage.
I speak from experience, not hypotheticals. If you don't believe me turn on your television or go to the movies. I'll give you my name and you can see it in the credits yourself.
I am not going to waste my time trading insults with you. I thought this forum was for open discussion, not arguinig with teenagers.
PS - I just looked at your website. You are in serious denial if you consider YOURSELF a pro user.
I'm waiting for the name. I have time.
I never have considered myself a pro user and never have needed to. Nor have I implied it.
Open discussion? So anyone who criticizes you isn't worth arguing with? I see how you work. It seems as if you were just taken off guard that someone could consider you an idiot for making a stupid generalization aout "pro" users.
Suit yourself if you don't want to "argue" anymore. I think enough people here have ripped your argument apart and you just have nothing left to add.
I have been following this thread and have some comments to make:
1. I think the term "pro user" should be defined a little.
I do not consider myself a "pro user" even though 60% to 70% of my computer use is for business.
I think the term should be narrowed to people in the profesional media design industries, where speed and power are critical for their bottom line. For example: I use my 700 iMac to record music and do videos and that kind of stuff. I can see that some things cause me to wait while the computer "thinks" and that's OK with me. It generally does not bother me unless I am in a complete hurry. This is not my main function and therefore it is not a priority. I cannot justify paying big money for something that I do every now and then.
A pro user does these thing all day long and seconds here and there can save them a ton of time and increase production tremendously.
2. I don't see a pro user popping open their machines on a regular basis.
I would venture to say that most pro users stick to what they are good at and that is creating content. When their hard drive gets full or their machine becomes an anchor they get a new computer. They would most likely get the top of the line machine that will last as long as possible. I seriously doubt that how many PCI slots it has will even come up unless they plan to upgrade somthing specific in the future.
A pro user is making money and any additional storage needed is just and expense that most likely gets charged to the customer. Any time spent on tweaking their hardware setup is time wasted. The term "time is money" is not just an idle quip.
3. Apple as far as I can tell is usually far ahead of the rest of the computer industry.
I am sure that having three rather than four or six slots has been researched and is based on some kind of data. (by the way, I just installed a video card for a customer that wanted 4 monitors for one machine (pc) the video card took up one slot and is very cool.) Most devices needed are already on the motherboard.
ATA is so fast now and getting faster, that SCSI is just not needed on a workstation.
ATA Hard drives are getting exponentially bigger. I hear that you will probably be able to have up to a Terabyte of storage in one machine. Does it matter if you have 2 bays as apposed to 4? This is a workstation, remember. I personally have a 40 GB drive in my 1 yr. old iMac. I have yet to fill it up. I am thinking of getting an external drive, bit it seems that every day the sizes go up and the prices down. So since I am not full yet it is just a want.
Pro shops most likely have CD dupers that are way faster and more effective at duping than a direct disk to disk copy. I can see that the ability to do so would be nice but as stated, a pro shop has seperate equipment for that. I duplicate cd's all the time and the extra time is not an issue, once again, I don't do this all the time.
To sum it up, I don't think that most "pro users" will care much about the lack of slots or bays. They want it to work hard and be fast and reliable. That is exactly why they will rush out and buy this machine dispite the grumblings on this thread.
I finally switched totally to mac because of the reliability issue. I have had my iMac for 1 year now and have had no major and very few minor problems. I have lost no data! None. If had been still using my custom self-built PC (which I hand picked the components) I would have reloaded windows at least 3 times. Regular crashes and loss of data would have been the norm. Sure I could have installed as many drives as I could fit and expansion cards at will, but would it be stable? Who knows.
What I do know is, when I buy my next computer it will be an Apple and it will work. Be happy that Apple exists, because you could be recovering from your PC crashing instead of reading this.javascript:smilie('')
Comments
no fran, if you haven't gotten the point after that huge post I posted and still think I'm complaining because I need something to complain about, then you either just don't get it, or you're to stubborn to admit, that to some people, it might be an issue.
No, I fully admit that it is an 'issue', but I'm saying it's being overblown. My point is that it's not like you can't have an external drive to serve the same purpose.
My thought is that if you added in another expansion bay, you'd have to find another way to cool the parts of the system and the added cost wouldn't be worth it in the long run.
Needless to say, a 30$ mouse doesn't equal a 250$ external drive, nor are there any internal mice.
You're really missing the whole point...no actually you're ignoring it.
Well, this sort of confuses me, but my point really was that you can configure your system with the features you want, but it's going to cost you more money. That's a fact of life when dealing with Apple. If those drives aren't going to fit inside the tower, you have to find another way to go around it, and that solution is to buy an external drive.
It's not like an iMac, iBook, eMac, or PowerBook where you can't upgrade the graphics card, add more than 1 GB of RAM, add a second hard drive or optical drive, or have any expansion at all (except for the PowerBook's PCMCIA slot).
Yes, I guess my perspective is different since I own a PowerBook and none of my Macs have really been that expandable.
Going in order: Apple ][GS, Mac Performa 575, PowerBook 1400, iMac G3/233, PowerBook G3/500 (Pismo), iMac G3/500, and finally my PowerBook G4/1 GHz.
For reference, my brother has a DP G4/500 tower and he put in a 2nd Hard Drive, Sound card, 2 GB of RAM, and a Radeon (32 MB), so I'm not entirely a stranger to expansion.
Your point is that you want everything inside the case because it's cheaper and easier to lug around.
My point is that as long as you can get everything you want, even if it is outside the case, what's the problem?
Originally posted by buckeye
Does a DJ need a G5 Tower to play music off of CDs? Sounds like a stretch.
I've got to agree with you buckeye, DJ's use laptops... because they have to go places. And on top of that DJ's are usually using vinyl or mp3 via final scratch.
I've got to agree with buckeye, now that's not saying I wouldn't find use for a second drive bay, or that a lot of pro's wouldn't, it's just not a fatal flaw...
A G5 2.5 ghz. dual with three optical bays, 6 PCX slots, an internal raid drive bay all in a nice 3 ft high liquid nitrogen cooled tower with 15 fans and two ear plugs.
Seriously, A more expandable high end workstation is a definite possibility... for probably around $3999.
Originally posted by buckeye
Applenut,
Clearly from your posts you don't understand my logic because you clearly don't understand the needs of the PRO user.
Once you get into the REAL WORLD where you rely on your equipment to perform your job, you might begin to understand.
Unfortunately, your lack of maturity in a professional atmosphere will hurt you much more than your lack of knowledge.
clearly from the posts ripping your stance apart throughout this thread you have no idea what you are talking about and clearly from your resfusal to defend your stance you have admitted you have no idea what you are talking about.
PRO user.... my God... you're in denial
Everyone is wrong.... and everyone is right.
You just can't please everyone.
I am a pro user and I just deal with it.
Remember when they went from 6 PCI slots to 4? Man was there a lot of bitchin' going on then too, but people adapted.
With external drives, you have the disadvantages of:
1. Clutter and less space.
2. Extra cost relative to internal drives.
3. More difficult to move.
I think it's most important to have a second optical drive bay. Direct disc to disc dupes should be possible with any tower, especially a high-priced tower like the Powermac. Sure, it's not necessary, but neither is a G5. It's a luxury, just like the rest of the computer.
Extra HD bays would be nice, but with serial ATA, these towers can house up to 500 GB of storage--that's more than the 4 HD powermacs. Still, at least 3 bays would be nice.
The thing to remember is that this is a "pro" tower, it's supposed to have everything in excess. You can argue that it doesn't really NEED a whole lot of things, but that's not the point. Pretend it's a BMW and imagine how it should be spec'd. Does a BMW NEED heated seats? No. How about a 250 hp engine? No. Leather seats? No. You get the idea.
Originally posted by Paul
the thing is that they CAN add them... they just have to make the tower a bit taller... room for one more Optical and 2 more HDs... just double the 4th zone...
how much bigger is this tower then the old ones?
would it still be able to be rackmounted?
The Power Mac G5 is 8.1 x 18.7 x 20.1 inches (wide x deep x high). The Power Mac G4 is 8.9 x 18.4 x 17 inches. Handles are included I believe. 60% of the Power Mac G5 volumes looks to be dedicated to the 970 CPUs, 970 heat sinks, 970 fans, and 8 DIMM slots. Wow! I bet the Power Mac G4 CPU and memory volumes is somewhere around 25%.
For the prices, I think Apple could have and should have made the PMG5 10% bigger in all dimensions to make it 8.9 x 20.6 x 22.1 inches. This would have added the 2 inches necessary for 2 5.25" enternal bays and 4 3.5" internal bays, and maybe enough for a 4 PCI slots.
Apple can make all of our complaints go away be simply making the proposed G5 mini in the Future Hardware thread. 1 1-1.4 GHz 970, 4 DIMMs, 1 AGP and 1 PCI both 7 inch length max, 1 SATA drive bay, 1 optical bay, and charge $800 to $1500. The Pro towers could be 1800+ with 1.6+ GHz processors.
I'd keep eMacs (<$900) and iMacs (<$1300) as lower cost products...
Do you think that when steve talked about copying the full contents of a DVD in one second if it was in the RAM is his way of saying that you don't need a second drive to copy discs? That just having lots of RAM and HD space is enough?
No, I fully admit that it is an 'issue', but I'm saying it's being overblown. My point is that it's not like you can't have an external drive to serve the same purpose.
My thought is that if you added in another expansion bay, you'd have to find another way to cool the parts of the system and the added cost wouldn't be worth it in the long run.
Of course you can have an external drive serve the same purpose, but you can also do that on a bloody 799$ iMac.
Cooling is not a Problem at all, in fact moving to 2x5.25" bay height would allow for an even larger (and thus even slower-speed) fan, further reducing noise, while maintaining or even improving airflow
I think it's most important to have a second optical drive bay. Direct disc to disc dupes should be possible with any tower, especially a high-priced tower like the Powermac. Sure, it's not necessary, but neither is a G5. It's a luxury, just like the rest of the computer.
My opinion exactly and there's one more sad fact: There is no readily configured PC system that doesn't have at least a DVD Drive and a Burner in the same case. Some are even starting to ship with DVD+RW Drives and Combo Drives. Really ever classical "discounter PC" that you can buy at your local electronics or Hifi shop here in Switzerland comes with a case that has at least 2 5.25" bays.
After all I'm not asking for 4 of them, or 6 like that ugly PC tower under my desk, I'm just asking for 2 and 4 HDs, so I can at least have the same setup I have with my MDD now.
We're really not asking for miracles here, rather for something that I take for granted for something that costs 2999$ and is considered a Pro machine.
Extra HD bays would be nice, but with serial ATA, these towers can house up to 500 GB of storage--that's more than the 4 HD powermacs. Still, at least 3 bays would be nice.
Actually that's far less than the 4HD Powermacs.
Take the now shipping 300GB Maxtor drive, multiply by 4 (yes, even though it's only ATA 100/66, you can use drives larger than 127GB) and realize that 1200GB is more than 500.
But that is not the point. I don't need 1200GB of storage, in fact even 500 is more than enough. The point is, that you don't always buy the biggest drives when you upgrade, and that you might also want to keep the old drives, instead of replacing them, because it's probably a damn pain in the ass to replace a OS X boot harddisk (for people who work with their machines for a living anyway).
So, assuming I buy a G5 now, with 160GB of storage. Turns out that storage is filled faster than you can say "divx", so you buy a second drive, with another 160GB, because the 250GB drive is too expensive. After another year or so, both drives are full. Now you need to somehow move the files from one HD to the new, now afforadble 300GB drive that you just bought...however, how do you do that? put in the 300GB drive into the third (non-existant) harddisk bay is impossible, connecting the serial ATA disk to the DVD drive connector is impossible too. so you end up doing one of the following 3 things:
-you install a SATA controller card in a PCI slot, and somehow put the HD into the PCI bay, in order to copy thigns over and then replace the 160GB drive with the new 300GB drive. Point is, you can't leave the tower open, because it doesn't boot when the plastic cover isn't put in place, for overheating protection reasons (see www.xlr8yourmac.com).
If you have the PCI slots all filled with PCI cards, because you happen to be a sound professional or something like that, you're out of luck, that option is a no go for you
-you install the SATA harddisk into another SATA capable Mac (as of now that is a G5 only) and copy the files over Ethernet. Even using gigabit ethernet, that is going to take about twice as long as a disk to disk copy would take. Plus you need a damn second mac, and as we all know, these don't fall off trees.
-you backup 160GB of files to DVD-Rs first which requires roughly 37 DVD-R discs, thus costs around 110$ for the media alone (basically the cost for another harddisk) and taking about 750 Minutes of time to complete, assuming you take about 20 minutes per disk and have no coasters.
Then you yank the 160GB drive out, install the 300GB drive and copy the files back, taking another 360 Minutes or so, hoping that no disks are unreadable.
last but not least you can also buy another ATA harddisk with at least 160GB storage, for another 100$, install that in the DVD bay and use that as a workaround.
Eitherway, you see, this limitation is more than just a problem to people who use a lot of storage, but it's also a problem to people who want to keep their mac for longer than a year, and having large volumes of data that is growing every day.
as of now, there are no external SATA cases to connect over Firewire, afaik, so that additional 150$ option falls away as well.
You see, I could do that on my MDD and I actually did do that on my Beige G3: there are 3 hds in that thing and only because it had enough space to fit them all at once was I able to simply install the drives and have more disk space instantly, rather than copying gigabytes of files over a horribly slow PIO mode interface at 16.6MB/sec (granted the old WD harddisk only pushes around 6)
Do some of you see the issue now?
G-News
Originally posted by Eotku
I think it's most important to have a second optical drive bay. Direct disc to disc dupes should be possible with any tower
Do you think that when steve talked about copying the full contents of a DVD in one second if it was in the RAM is his way of saying that you don't need a second drive to copy discs? That just having lots of RAM and HD space is enough?
um... do you understand what he was saying? i don't think so. Because you certainly won't be copying DVDs to RAM in 1 second.
Originally posted by applenut
clearly from the posts ripping your stance apart throughout this thread you have no idea what you are talking about and clearly from your resfusal to defend your stance you have admitted you have no idea what you are talking about.
PRO user.... my God... you're in denial
Scroll up, there are equally as many posts that share my view about the lack of optical drives and internal storage.
I speak from experience, not hypotheticals. If you don't believe me turn on your television or go to the movies. I'll give you my name and you can see it in the credits yourself.
I am not going to waste my time trading insults with you. I thought this forum was for open discussion, not arguinig with teenagers.
PS - I just looked at your website. You are in serious denial if you consider YOURSELF a pro user.
Originally posted by G-News
After all I'm not asking for 4 of them, or 6 like that ugly PC tower under my desk, I'm just asking for 2 and 4 HDs, so I can at least have the same setup I have with my MDD now.
This, to me, seems to be the crux of the issue: It's not even so much the capacity as the downgrade in capacity. The same complaints were voiced when Apple killed the 9600.
If someone really did grow into the potential of a QuickSilver, or an MDD, and they're now in the position of figuring out which PCI card and which drives get the boot, that's an understandably frustrating position - even if Apple has mooted several of the reasons for PCI slots with the latest suite of I/O connectors, they might not have mooted your reasons.
Yes, this is about particular custom configurations for a few people. That's exactly what the Mac professional market has looked like for years. So even if Apple basically decided (as with the 9600) that so few people were using the extra bays in the MDD that it wasn't worth the trouble of engineering them into the G5, let's have some sympathy for those few people. It's not like they have a lot of options for the time being.
um... do you understand what he was saying? i don't think so. Because you certainly won't be copying DVDs to RAM in 1 second.
So exaclty what was Steve saying shen he talked about copying a DVD in 1 second once it was in the RAM? Copy it to where?
I was thinking that maybe with the extra band width and massive RAM, etc of these new machines copying a DVD using only one drive would be almost as fast as from one drive to another. But I'm probably way out in some field somewhere lookin for some kind of grail like object.
Originally posted by applenut
I'm sorry if I sound harsh but, you're an idiot.
Applenut, I enjoyed your posts much more before you became a moderator. You actually used more than 5 sentences and words with more than three syllables in your remarks.
Are you just too busy right now?
Originally posted by Eotku
originally posted by applenut:
um... do you understand what he was saying? i don't think so. Because you certainly won't be copying DVDs to RAM in 1 second.
So exaclty what was Steve saying shen he talked about copying a DVD in 1 second once it was in the RAM? Copy it to where?
I was thinking that maybe with the extra band width and massive RAM, etc of these new machines copying a DVD using only one drive would be almost as fast as from one drive to another. But I'm probably way out in some field somewhere lookin for some kind of grail like object.
he made his statement to provide a sort of example of how much bandwidth is available.... what was it 6.4GB or something? to relate that to something he used a DVD.
Copying a DVD will still only be as fast as the DVD Drive..... very slow.
Applenut, I enjoyed your posts much more before you became a moderator. You actually used more than 5 sentences and words with more than three syllables in your remarks.
Are you just too busy right now?
I've said enough in this thread and elsewhere. Read more.
Originally posted by buckeye
Scroll up, there are equally as many posts that share my view about the lack of optical drives and internal storage.
I speak from experience, not hypotheticals. If you don't believe me turn on your television or go to the movies. I'll give you my name and you can see it in the credits yourself.
I am not going to waste my time trading insults with you. I thought this forum was for open discussion, not arguinig with teenagers.
PS - I just looked at your website. You are in serious denial if you consider YOURSELF a pro user.
I'm waiting for the name. I have time.
I never have considered myself a pro user and never have needed to. Nor have I implied it.
Open discussion? So anyone who criticizes you isn't worth arguing with? I see how you work. It seems as if you were just taken off guard that someone could consider you an idiot for making a stupid generalization aout "pro" users.
Suit yourself if you don't want to "argue" anymore. I think enough people here have ripped your argument apart and you just have nothing left to add.
BTW, I'm glad you enjoyed my website.
1. I think the term "pro user" should be defined a little.
I do not consider myself a "pro user" even though 60% to 70% of my computer use is for business.
I think the term should be narrowed to people in the profesional media design industries, where speed and power are critical for their bottom line. For example: I use my 700 iMac to record music and do videos and that kind of stuff. I can see that some things cause me to wait while the computer "thinks" and that's OK with me. It generally does not bother me unless I am in a complete hurry. This is not my main function and therefore it is not a priority. I cannot justify paying big money for something that I do every now and then.
A pro user does these thing all day long and seconds here and there can save them a ton of time and increase production tremendously.
2. I don't see a pro user popping open their machines on a regular basis.
I would venture to say that most pro users stick to what they are good at and that is creating content. When their hard drive gets full or their machine becomes an anchor they get a new computer. They would most likely get the top of the line machine that will last as long as possible. I seriously doubt that how many PCI slots it has will even come up unless they plan to upgrade somthing specific in the future.
A pro user is making money and any additional storage needed is just and expense that most likely gets charged to the customer. Any time spent on tweaking their hardware setup is time wasted. The term "time is money" is not just an idle quip.
3. Apple as far as I can tell is usually far ahead of the rest of the computer industry.
I am sure that having three rather than four or six slots has been researched and is based on some kind of data. (by the way, I just installed a video card for a customer that wanted 4 monitors for one machine (pc) the video card took up one slot and is very cool.) Most devices needed are already on the motherboard.
ATA is so fast now and getting faster, that SCSI is just not needed on a workstation.
ATA Hard drives are getting exponentially bigger. I hear that you will probably be able to have up to a Terabyte of storage in one machine. Does it matter if you have 2 bays as apposed to 4? This is a workstation, remember. I personally have a 40 GB drive in my 1 yr. old iMac. I have yet to fill it up. I am thinking of getting an external drive, bit it seems that every day the sizes go up and the prices down. So since I am not full yet it is just a want.
Pro shops most likely have CD dupers that are way faster and more effective at duping than a direct disk to disk copy. I can see that the ability to do so would be nice but as stated, a pro shop has seperate equipment for that. I duplicate cd's all the time and the extra time is not an issue, once again, I don't do this all the time.
To sum it up, I don't think that most "pro users" will care much about the lack of slots or bays. They want it to work hard and be fast and reliable. That is exactly why they will rush out and buy this machine dispite the grumblings on this thread.
I finally switched totally to mac because of the reliability issue. I have had my iMac for 1 year now and have had no major and very few minor problems. I have lost no data! None. If had been still using my custom self-built PC (which I hand picked the components) I would have reloaded windows at least 3 times. Regular crashes and loss of data would have been the norm. Sure I could have installed as many drives as I could fit and expansion cards at will, but would it be stable? Who knows.
What I do know is, when I buy my next computer it will be an Apple and it will work. Be happy that Apple exists, because you could be recovering from your PC crashing instead of reading this.javascript:smilie('