And the really big thing for me?... 16GB of RAM!!! It's a dream come true! Bliss, really. Though, of course, a 64-bit VE for Mac would be the icing on the cake. Some day soon, I hope. ;-)
J.
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I'd personally go and sell, but only as Apple's focus will be on Intel so at least you'll have a good base to move forward on. I can see a point not too far in the future when PPC code is no more and apps developers will focus on Intel only.
You do raise an interesting point though around buying Macbooks - I've never really considered buying a laptop as a slave as I always saw the cost as too high when you can buy 2 minis or an iMac for the same price. Why not buy 4 x 2GB mini's and control them with leopard's screen sharing?
And I do wish VSL would lift the veil of silence on all this - or at least give us a countdown on the front page.....
@stevesong said:
Perhaps someone would be gracious enough to forgo the sarcasm and answer this question
sorry if it came over that way ...
we just noticed a significantly higher CPU load with PPC and the strange thing is, it puts also higher load on the (intel-)host.
our test setup was the special edition demo #1 (24 tracks IIRC) and this has been too much ....
christian
Christian:
Thanks for the answer.
Tim:
I thought of the MacBooks because they are relatively inexpensive and accomodate 4GB of RAM whereas the current Mac Mini is limited to 2GB of RAM. So the two Macbooks might double as mobile system as well being slaves in the studio. First thing is to obtain a MacPro and see what can be done with it - - I'm waiting a bit until some of the kinks are worked out with firmware updates and OS 10.5.2. Perhaps by then there will be new Mac Minis or some other solution.
Simsy,
Mini's can only take 2GB AFAIK. I'm using 3 so far and also want further information on how good the performance will be. They all have 1000T ports so that's ok, plus I've upgraded the internal disks to 7200RPM and use Lacie LittleBig 200GB 7200RPM Firewire drives.
Hopefully we'll get either i) further info from VSL or ii) VE3 released on Friday (wishful thinking that though)
Best
Tim
Hi@timkiel said:
Simsy,
Mini's can only take 2GB AFAIK. I'm using 3 so far and also want further information on how good the performance will be. They all have 1000T ports so that's ok, plus I've upgraded the internal disks to 7200RPM and use Lacie LittleBig 200GB 7200RPM Firewire drives.
Hopefully we'll get either i) further info from VSL or ii) VE3 released on Friday (wishful thinking that though)
Best
Tim
Hi
If you go to macsales.com and click on memory and mac mini, they now sell 3GB memory that will work in the mac mini for $70! Awesome!! If mac minis work for you then I am sure it would be fine to get some. Just out of curiosity what processor speed do you have in yours? Just the slightly slower processors sell for a lot less on ebay and if I knew they would work fine I would maybe go for them!
I'd not seen that I must go and have a look. I have the earlier 1.6 and a 1.8 both seem fine with memory being the bottle neck rather than CPU - and that's running at 128ms on the internal mac soundcard.
DG
And, if you suspend the hard drives with something like NoiseMagic NoVibes, you can't really hear your hard drives. From 3 feet away, I can't hear mine. And damp the case with accoustic dampening foam and you're quiet as a clam. NoVibes are great for rotational vibration cacellation. Less so, if you have a hard drive with loud seek noise. They still quiet seek noise, too though. I believe Antec includes a suspension option similar to this with their Solo cases.
Mahlon
@stevesong said:
Before committing to the Mac Mini take a look at the RAM and hard drive installation videos available at Other World Computing. Not, I think, for the faint of heart.
Actually, it's extremely easy. I looked at those videos and had an easy time changing everything in 15 mins. :-)
As for the noise remarks, I suddenly agree that PCs can be just as quiet as the Mac Mini, and especially the Intel processors have done their part to make it easier to build a virtually silent PC rig. But, right out the box you will get a silent slave with the Mini, with no soundproofing or special attention to obtaining silent HDs, PSU and casing fans.
But then again, if you need 3 or more Minis to do your job it might be a more noisy solution than a single PC rig to handle it all. Haven't tried the comparison.[;)]