Mhackintosh blog

I am “downsized”. Doesn’t means I was fired due to company downsizing, nor that I feel … huuu… little…

It means that I am moving back to mobile computing as fast as possible. I setted up a desktop quad-core hackintosh on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, 8GB RAM (planned to upgrade it to 16GB), 4 hard-drives (2×1TB RAID-0 OS X+Photos+Music, 2TB Vidéos, 1TB Windows), with 24″ inch display. I thought I need that to work. My MacBook Pro (Core2 Duo 2×2.8Ghz, 8GB) was too slow even with 1TB hard-drive.

And then there was 2 events that totally changed my mind…

SSD drive

I tried 64GB SSD storage on myMacBook Pro and discovered a fast and reactive computer, far faster than my RAID-0 desktop for most of my tasks except H.264 Full HD video encoding! I could still beat it using my Turbo.264 HD for video encoding, but at the price of quality, and I am not the kind that want to trade quality for speed!

I bought a CRUCIAL C300 256GB SSD on NewEgg, installed it on my MacBook Pro, and decided to use cloud storage to share files between computers and devices, with both MobileMe (Emails, Contacts, Agenda, Safari Bookmarks…) and DropBox (files).

I added a ProBox 4xSATA storage on my TimeCapsule. 2TB Video, 1TB Photo+Music, 1.5TB Time Capsule and storage for my beloved one, and 1.5TB spare, 6TB online storage shared by my MacBook Pro and my Hackintosh/Windows 7 quad-core PC.

This PC just have 2 hard-drive to boot on, and do some internal work (1TB each!), so it began to be less and less used, except for video encoding, using BD-Rebuilder and x264 codec. And it’s my backup computer in case my MacBook Pro is stolen or needs repair!

iPad 3G

I bought an iPad Wifi (64GB model) in april, and was really happy with it, except that on many places there’s no public-available WiFi!

So this friday, at Canadian launch of iPad, I just bought an iPad 3G+WiFi 64GB, with a Rogers 250MB plan. As expected Rogers do it wrong from start, but since yesterday afternoon, they seems to deliver content again. iPhone users and iPad users have been impaired since arrival of first iPad on thursday, and it was a real mess!

But now, I begin to use my iPad really anywhere, taking it with me, as my first computing tool.

As a consultant, computing for me means 2 different things, and the most important one is not development (that I do on my MacBook Pro), but emails, server monitoring, analysis, document reading and with Pages for iPad, document writing or updating!

Combining Pages and DropBox on a 3G iPad is really impressive, you have your emails, files (starred ones), documents with you, and you are even able to write quality document (I mean better looking than with desktop Microsoft Office!), on the go, and synchronize them wirelessly using DropBox, share them with your team, and even with your Mac using iTunes.

Downsized

Now I am truly downsized, my main computing and communication platform is my iPad, able to access a great amount of my work, and produce document, exchange ideas, monitor things. And my secondary one is my MacBook Pro. a Mobile desktop replacement that is heavy but so powerful with an SSD that you might be surprised by the performace-level it reach, 235 XBench global score, 40% over an average MacPro!

This is the trend, lightweight, mobile, efficient, anyplace anytime. Cloud+iPad+SSD laptop is a winning combination over pure CPU power of a desktop computer, or it’s internal storage ability!

CRUCIAL issued a first firmware update, with an updater that poses problems with most of the users, sometimes ending with a “bricked” SSD!

Today they issued a new Firmware update, containing the same firmware, supporting TRIM and better power-management, but with an updated updater

I am trying it on my MacBook Pro, having a 500GB 7200 rpm to put it in, if something bad happens… keep you informed!

PS: 20 minutes later, Mac OS X reinstalled, and all went flawlessly, I have to install the 10.6.3 combo update, and do a XBench! Ouch! 340 for disk subsystem after upgrading firmware, 317 before, it’s a 7% direct improvement, even with SATA 3Gb/s limiting the CRUCIAL C300 that need SATA 6Gb/s for full performance!

PS2: upgraded to 10.6.3, that is a real SSR downgrade, as score go back to 317! But the global XBench index of my MacBook Pro Core2 Duo 2×2.8Ghz is now 234, showing it’s excellent balance between CPU, GPU, Memory and SSD speed, remember that MacPro are under 170 in average!

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