The 17" MacBook Pro i7-2.66 GHz
Well, I have been talking so much about other things that I realized that I've forgotten to write about my new 17" MacBook Pro that I finally took delivery of. It is souped up to the i7/2.66 GHz chip and loaded with 8 GB of RAM and a 7200 rpm 500GB HDD. So, other than not going for the SSD drive, I pretty much max-ed it out.
What do I think of it? Well, the screen resolution has gone up, so everything looks kind of smaller on the desktop. I am also getting used to Snow Leopard. If you are wondering, my PowerBook G4 was on Tiger for the longest time, and I only recently upgraded it to Leopard.
Well, I am appreciating the speed that everything is running at. From PhotoShop to XLD. Another thing is the hyperthreading, which comes with the i7 chip. Although it is a dual-core chip, there are 4 virtual threads, and XLD decodes four different audio files at once! I originally thought that I was in for the long-haul when I decided to convert my ALAC files to AIFF, but I am amazed by the blazing speed of XLD on the MacBook Pro! I think I will be done converting the entire ALAC music collection on my 2TB Western Digital My Book Studio by the end of the night, and I only started this evening! Then, I will be able to do side=by-side comparisons of ALAC versus AIFF on a computer, but that is part of my ongoing audio journey...
FFMpegX conversion is still painfully slow though, and I am still getting used to having all the ports squashed on to the left-hand side of the computer, rather than on both (as compared with the PowerBook G4). Also still thinking if I should invest in a CF card reader for my Express/34 card slot. I was all for buying one, until I heard that there were problems with the one by Sandisk.
What do I think of it? Well, the screen resolution has gone up, so everything looks kind of smaller on the desktop. I am also getting used to Snow Leopard. If you are wondering, my PowerBook G4 was on Tiger for the longest time, and I only recently upgraded it to Leopard.
Well, I am appreciating the speed that everything is running at. From PhotoShop to XLD. Another thing is the hyperthreading, which comes with the i7 chip. Although it is a dual-core chip, there are 4 virtual threads, and XLD decodes four different audio files at once! I originally thought that I was in for the long-haul when I decided to convert my ALAC files to AIFF, but I am amazed by the blazing speed of XLD on the MacBook Pro! I think I will be done converting the entire ALAC music collection on my 2TB Western Digital My Book Studio by the end of the night, and I only started this evening! Then, I will be able to do side=by-side comparisons of ALAC versus AIFF on a computer, but that is part of my ongoing audio journey...
FFMpegX conversion is still painfully slow though, and I am still getting used to having all the ports squashed on to the left-hand side of the computer, rather than on both (as compared with the PowerBook G4). Also still thinking if I should invest in a CF card reader for my Express/34 card slot. I was all for buying one, until I heard that there were problems with the one by Sandisk.