The collected works of semi-fly - Page 2

nekonoko wrote:

fu wrote: that's a huge busy dock neko !

Beats digging through the 195 items in my Applications folder

I've found that the vastly improved Leopard Spotlight is great for application digging - Spotlight will locate the package, allow me to launch it, and immediately halt the search without further disk scrubbing - total time: approx. 1.5 seconds.

That being said, I still fill my dock with tons of (sometimes useless) icons: here is my trusty 1.5 ghz PowerBook's current Desktop.


(checkout the Kerberos icon in the upper area of the dock - I don't need it there: all Kerberos commands are completed from a command prompt, I just like the look of it)

pentium wrote: Those MASSIVE 30" apple LCD monitors are an ultimate dream.
It's so big I can't even think of what to fill the screen with.
BTW, how are the G5 processors when it comes to running more modern mac software on them?

PPC support for Applications and from Apple Inc. will exist (at least) until the next major point release - and supported PPC's run Leopard / recent applications just fine

The Quad G5's are still rather expensive, however, although I've seen them sell for as little as $1250.00-$1500.00. Fast machines with tremendous amounts of hardware issues - we finally retired the last quad at work this summer.

If you are looking for pure-power in a Mac, go for an Intel - can't go wrong with a MacPro. Other wise, the late-model dual G4 MDD make for fantastic multi-tasking / general use systems that will run Leopard very, very well. Look for the 2-meg L2 cache per-processor systems, such as the dual 1.25's and the dual 1.42's. Plenty of upgrade options, and will probably cost between $250.00-$350.00. Just keep in mind that these systems are SUPER loud.

Another option would be an early G5, such as a dual 1.8 or 2.0 - good machines for multi-tasking and general usage as well.

I played a bit over the holidays but allowed my account to expire - and I really haven't played much since last winter, when I retired my main and quickly leveled a Warlock to 69.

But, I might be interested in reactivating my account if I had a reason to....

I only play Horde however, unlike most of my RL friends. Anyone else here non-alliance?

nekonoko wrote: Both. At the moment I'm leveling a Draenei warrior (at 55 right now), but I have a level 70 Blood Elf Mage on the same server (and some other assorted Horde characters). I play on Sentinels.

I've always found not being able to roll apposing fraction characaters on PVP servers annoying as hell.
Anyhoo, my undead 'lock is on Onyxia, which is a low population PVP server. Sentinels is RP, correct?

fu wrote:

semi-fly wrote: here is my trusty 1.5 ghz PowerBook's current Desktop...

how's leopard running on the g4? my main laptop is 12'' g4/1.5 but i still run panther on it... another g4 pbook user here reported that so far is ok...

Leopard runs extremely well on my PPC hardware, especially for general usage - Dock animation performance and Intel optimized applications are the most noticeable speed offenders.

I decided to upgrade my old 2.66GHz Xeon 5150 Mac Pro rather than buy a new one, so installed the following over the past week

I've been thinking about upgrading my MacPro1,1 (Woodcrest 5130s) but haven't really looked into yet - the system isn't really doing much right now except for file serving (10.6 server), and your research/work gives me confidence it can be done with minimal effort and cost

Cool cool - I'll look into it! Thanks for the posting!

Aion presently

That's on my horizon as well, since I let my WoW account expire last spring - probably pickup a copy once Christmas break starts and I get some time off

nekonoko wrote: I've been having a lot of fun with it so far; I'm on the Fregion server and have playing mostly with a Chanter and Gladiator. Leaning towards the Chanter though

Nice - most of the reviews I've read thus far have been positive, and the game looks fantastic (its using the Fry Cry engine I think).

nekonoko wrote: Memory vendors are crafty though.

Yes, yes they are - memory prices have been climbing (holiday season influence, maybe?) - I'm currently shopping around for 4GB DDR2-1066 (about $100 - $120) for a Phenom - I remember looking up prices early this year and seeing them $20-$30 cheaper.

zmttoxics wrote: Oh, well, there you go. According to Wikipedia it says it is on the CryEngine. Well then. <insert_foot>mouth</insert_foot>

hehe, indeed http://aion-online.net/cryengine.php

For $29.00 the 10.6 upgrade is absolutely worth it (of course, I has a seed key which gives me access to the builds regardless, hehe) - I've also tried to promote, help, and encourage people to make the switch. You'll get some disk space back, the Exchange support is fantastic, and overall 10.6 performs amazing well out of the box. The improved installer logic means, for the first time ever, I actually *encourage* people to upgrade rather then perform a clean load

For me personally, it's the stability and performance of 10.6 after extended desktop use - I never have reboot my MacBook pro, except for updates, and I leave it running for weeks with dozens of Applications running (Mail.app, Xcode, Safari and Firefox, CS4, etc). It goes from work, to home, to coffee shops, meetings, presentations, Air Plane rides, I let the battery run out and generally beat the living crap out it. It just keeps ticking. Same thing with my 13' Unibody MacBook. In 10.5, I rebooted on a regular basis, usually resulting from Finder hang ups and web browser crashes after extended use.

foetz wrote: the gfx performance is worse than 10.5, filesystem perf.

Interesting. How did you come to that conclusion? Generally speaking, 10.6 and the native apps now have a smaller CPU, memory, and disk-usage footprint, which translates into greater available system resources. Also, Apple engineers have added compression logic (Extended Attributes) and better block storage algorithms to HFS+ in 10.6, so disk performance, if anything should be faster in addition to video.

foetz wrote: as long as there're no apps with grand central and/or opencl support 10.5 is the better choice.

Finder? Mail? Most of the native Applications?

For reference, here are some quick bench marks: http://macperformanceguide.com/SnowLeop ... mance.html

All - I have an official Apple WWDC 2008 laptop bag (swag) that I've never used - I can't bring my self to throw it away, and it's not worth putting up on the auction sites, so I'm just asking price of shipping (probably $10.00-$15.00 U.S).

nekonoko wrote: The Aion boot screen has the CryEngine logo on it as well. It does look really good though.

Sadly, I never managed to pull out enough free time for Aion over the break - too much family and shopping, I guess

ritchan wrote: Is that the cheapest SDSL plan? Is a SDSL plan really required when it comes to bandwidth? And you have to pay extra for a static IP too, right?

That is a decent price in my area for good SDSL - virtually all SDSL connectivity has been lumped into business class connections, which usually means a starting point of $125-$200.00 for very low bandwidth (like ISDN speeds).