Mhackintosh blog

Microsoft have 2 table projects that they demonstrated, their Courier prototype, and HP Slate that was a finished product, demonstrated in many occasions…

Courier presented itself as a book, that you may open vertically to read 2 pages at-once (useless, but..), or horizontally with one of the screen becoming a multi-touch keyboard (really great idea!). It was presented on videos and was for Microsoft their future tablet project. They tried to enter this market with different product and this one was the first that doesn’t seems to be based on desktop-os but on a real new seed. Sad it’s cancelled.

HP Slate was totally different, as this is not a prototype of any kind, but a finished product that look like a Chinese copy of an iPad. OS were Windows 7, that was not originally conceived for multi-touch even if it support it, and as any attempt from Microsoft to put it’s desktop OS on a tablet it failed on usability, autonomy, and reactivness. As usual. It’s not a loss, they should have avoided to present it to try to have some buzz before the iPad launch!

When Apple show a new product, a real new product, such as first iMac, iPhone or iPad, please consider the work will be really well done, and you could not tie some generic hardware, a crappy desktop OS or mobile OS, a revised interface, and think you’ll impress anyone or be able to compete!

If you read my blog carefully, you know that I think that simple hard-drives are just too slow for modern computers:

• I installed 3 x 1TB hard-drive (RAID-0) on an original Mac Pro, at my work, to make it litterally fly. It’s original 320GB hard-drive was just like a brake for the system!
• I use 2 x 1TB hard-drive (RAID-0) on my hackintosh (4×3.4Ghz/8GB/GeForce GTX260), but still I find it not as fast as it may be. I tried a 1st generation 64GB SSD (Kingston SSD V Now) but wasn’t faster really.
• I swapped my 500GB 5400rpm hard-drive of my MacBook Pro to a 500GB 7200rpm and finally a faster 1TB 5200rpm. Before going to SSD

MacBook Pro 17″ Unibody Core2 Duo 2.8Ghz upgrade

I expected mobile Core i5 and mobile Core i7 to be really faster, but as MacWorld show, mobile Core i7 is marginally faster than Core2 Duo 2.8Ghz and slower on major tasks (as launching Windows in VM for example!). I will wait to change my MacBook Pro that there’s a real-world speed gain of at least 25%! Nobody will see difference when a computer is just 10% faster!

Instead, I tried the Kingston SSD V Now 64GB, a 1st generation SSD, that is theorically not faster than hard-drives. I discovered a world where my fan stop making noise, where all launch (including boot and shutdown, or sleep mode) where real faster, and a 2×2.8Ghz laptop that is more reactive than my 4×3.4Ghz desktop! hot!

So I decided that it,s the way to go, upgrading my MacBook Pro instead buying the new model, and I decided to have room to spare and take a real-fast SSD (a 3rd generation) with SATA 6Gbps to be able to use it on future laptops and desktop, that will have this connection. SATA 3Gbps limit this SSD to 250MB/s approximately, but with future 6Gbps-enabled laptop or desktop, it’s given to deliver up to 315MB/s, 25% faster on future computer!

So how does it perform on my actual laptop, compared to hard-drives I installed, 1st generation SSD, and how does it show up on a full-system bench as XBench?

Benchmark of hard-drives and SSD on my MacBook Pro

I forget to bench the 500GB 5400 rpm hard-drive that was shipped on my MacBook Pro. Anyway it’s not interesting, the 500GB 7200rpm was visibly faster as well as the 1TB 5200rpm. And Apple is well known to put the less-expensive drive into their “Pro” computers, that translate to under-performing hardware in many case (same for videocard/GPU).

This chart is clear, the CRUCIAL C300 256GB is just astonishing compared to 1st generation SSD (KINGSTON SSD V Now 64GB), and still beating hard-drives by a 5X performance-ratio! (1.8X for sequential access, 21X for random access! ouch!)

There’s 2 points that the chart doesn’t show:

• Even with it’s score near the hard-drive, the 1st generation KINGSTON SSD V Now 64GB is far faster in daily use, increase autonomy (real-world!), and the laptop feels more reactive than a 4×3.4Ghz desktop! (1.7X faster random access explain it)
• the 317 XBench subscore is astonishing for an storage system, but in fact toally in range with other subscores, from 190 (OpenGL and memory) to 340 (User Interface test), so the performances are better balanced, and it shows…

Whole system XBench performance

As said previously, with all susbsystem scores ranging from 190 to 340, except hard-drive (under 60), the system is not well-balanced, you are waiting for it to boot, waiting when launching application, waiting when using demanding applications, and screaming when using LightRoom because the thumbnails take so much time to be at least corrects! It is no more the case when disk subsystem cope with the CPU, Memory, OpenGL, User Interface, … A modern Core2 Duo laptop just fly, and it translates to XBench global score:

Notice that I put Mac Pro XBench average score, to put this in perspective. I won’t say that my laptop is faster than an average Mac Pro, it’s better to say that on some tasks, that demand disk IO, my laptop will beat them all, hands up! And I used a Mac Pro at work, I know the feeling I had with it, it just underperforms on heavy-io tasks, compared to my upgraded laptop! Seriously!

In short…

Changing from hard-drive to 1st generation SSD (KINGSTON SSD V Now 64GB) was an interesting experience, score doesn’t change, SSD is slower on most test, but user experience was impressive, beating my 4×3.4Ghz desktop with my 2×2.8Ghz laptop, giving me envy to use it more for demanding tasks! Score don’t tell the whole story when it comes to SSD, these benchmarks have been devised for hard-drives, and SSD instantly change your system responsivness!

And upgrading to a 3rd generation SSD (Crucial C300 256GB) is more impressive, but even if score is far over everything I saw or used, even on our server farm, this drive is faster than I need actually, will probably be used until it’s death, because it could give up to 25% more performance on future laptop or desktop, and you see how it pushes the XBench global score, showing how a balanced modern laptop could perform against powerful desktop equipped with under-performing hard-drives!

For myself, I love the CRUCIAL C300, but the experience started with the Kingston SSD V Now 64GB, and I think that you should avoid 1st generation SSD (except Intel’s that are probably the best SSD on the market, but don’t offer 256GB at this time), and go for 2nd generation or 3rd generation SSD, of any size. The firsts minutes you will use it, you will rediscover your computer, you will even launch the most-demanding application, just to see them fly on screen!

SSD is the way to go, it deserve a test, you might be surprised by what YOUR computer might do with one inside

I just received my Crucial C300 256GB SSD, a real fast SSD, fastest on some metrics (with SATA 6Gbps bus), but in the leading pack for the rest, still under Intel X25-M on some test, but finally a good SSD, as it offers 256GB capacity (Intel is limited to 160GB) and a good performance/price ratio.

But my question is, how fast is fast? How do you measure it? Against which reference?

Yes, you need a reference, because speed is just relative to another thing. So I choose to follow XBench, because they choose a good computer as a reference: PowerMac G5 2×2Ghz, 2.5GB RAM, 300GB 7200rpm hard-drive, GeForce 6800 Ultra. Not so bad,m except maybe for the hard-drive, many people used to install 2 hard-drive in RAID-0 to have better performance and better system balance. Anyway we will consider it as balanced.

Fact is, my MacBook Pro 17″ unibody Core2 Duo 2.8Ghz is balanced differently, as sold: CPU is 2X faster and 2.9X faster on multi-thread, memory is 1.9X faster, videocard 1.7X to 2.2X faster. So general performance are between 1.7X to 2.9X faster … except the hard-drive that is 2X SLOWER! Yes you read it, Twice the processinbg power, half the hard-drive speed, that’s why you and me waiting for unresponsive but still over-powered laptop or desktop.

The hard-drive is the thing that slow me down when I power up my Mac, open some browser, use dashboard (the more widget the slower!), launch CS4, NetBeans, browse photo collections with LightRoom, …

While a laptop from today is 2X to 3X faster (with Core i7) than PowerMac G5, it’s hard-drive is 2X slower, meaning sometimes your 2010 “Pro” laptop is slower than 2005 desktop Mac, and some other time so faster. Everytime you use the hard-drive, your laptop slow down to a crawl! You have to put something that is 2X to 4X faster than PowerMac hard-drive to have a laptop balanced as a RAID-0 PowerMac and stop waiting for disks IO!

Hard-drives are something from the past!

Impressive the new Mobile Core i7: it’s 10% faster than a Core2 Duo 3.06Ghz MacBook Pro from 9 months ago!!!

Seriously, I added the exclamation points just to be sure to thrill you! Hey 10% faster in 9 months, it’s just ridiculous! It’s 15% faster than 2008 MacBook Pro! Worse, some benchmarks of the core i7 are under the results of Core2 Duo 2.8hz, like Windows benchmark on VM, iMovie, …

I am deceived by the new MacBook Pro. Autonomy was great, performance was medium if not under average, and these Core i5/Core i7 mobile chips are not the killer we all expected to be. Nothing compared to Core i5 and Core i7 on desktop that are far far faster!

You know I have a MacBook Pro 17″ unibody, that is my main computer, I could do nearly anything (except full HD video encoding/recoding or storing 2TB videos!), and take it with me. Tomorrow I will change the Kinsgton SSD V now 64GB, 1st generation SSD, that I installed to test and see how it feel. Tomorrow I will have a Crucial C300 256GB instead, that is 2X faster at least (and sometimes 10X faster!)… (I will sleep on the entrance just to be sure)

Hardware…

I also have a desktop hackintosh, Quad-core 4×3.4Ghz, with 4TB storage inside, that is really fast, but not as reactive as my MacBook Pro limited by it’s RAID-0 2×1TB 7200 rpm system disk! But still, it’s fast and could impress a Mac Pro user with it’s CPU and GTX 260 video card. I use it to store all my photos, music and videos. All media are in it. 4TB it’s huge compared to 64GB or 256 GB

Naturally my cellphone is an iPhone 3G, that store a playlist of music, re-encoded in AAC 128KB. My Music is stored as VBR 320Kb MP3 on my desktop. 100GB of music. My iPhone come with me wherever I go, and is online anytime, even at night… Awaiting iPhone HD this summer!

And now I own a 64GB iPad, that is a pretty interesting gadget. Gadget because Apps are not yet available (at least in Canada), and more advanced Apps are to come, to use it as a computing platform, more than an iPhone+…

Oh! I Forgot my PowerBook G4 15″ HD, the lastest and greated PowerBook, late’2005 model, upgraded to 2GB RAM and 320GB hard-drive. An old computer by today’s metrics, but still a great laptop to live with, especially with iLife and iWork! I keep it just in case…

Cloud, synchronizing, …

I synchronize all these stuff using two great cloud software, DropBox (that I will drop anyway! lol!), and now MobileMe, which store and synchronize my emails (even if GMail is my main provider), Safari’s bookmarks, iCal, Address Book, and store my latest works on iDisk! I like Mobile Me, as my Mac and iGadgets: the more you have the more they interact and give you an incredible user experience!

Still I need to synchronize my iTunes library (100+ GB) online to be able to use them off-line, synchronize my LightRoom catalogs, photos (200GB!), and be able to use any platforms for any tasks (with their limitations), like hearing my full iTunes library on my iPhone while on the road or on my iPad, edit my photo catalog on iPad, on a french café, what a wonderful computer for that! Access any file, at least to display them, print from my iPad or iPhone an interesting webpage, an email or anything…

All that is not fulfilled today, you have to do some compromise between usability and features. I don’t want to compromise, even an iPhone is more powerful than a Windows 95 or 98 computer! I want it to offer me the abolity to print things, to access all my data, and with it’s limitations, to be able to work anywhere, anytime. iPad is the dream machine, since I bought it, I take it anywhere, it’s size of MacWorld magazine, and weight less than a Book! Powerful, efficient, sexy!

I want Lightroom, OpenOffice, Microsoft Office 2008, and all major application to go cloud, at least to enable us to synchronize our work, to work anywhere, to go from a computer-related experience to a media-related experience: I don’t care where my data is (even in USA where NSA analyse them! I love you guys, you are so genius but so predictible!), but I would like to use them, stream them, process them, display them, print them, anywhere, anytime. As long as I have a physical backup or two

This is the future, iPhone show the road, iPad is the highway, and for myself, I will try to do software that enable us to unlock from the desktop and even laptop Mac. We need to stay in control of our data, but we need them to be available now and then! Not in front of our desk.

What could I do?

That’s why I am developping 3 iPad applications, some synchronizing with Mac and PC counterparts, some using your Mac or PC to do your job, with an iPad or iPhone interface, anywhere you are! Future is now, and developers have to take risks because if you buy it (hey! basic versions will be free! promised!) world will change!