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Something that has become apparent this week using the Pismo for production work -- some in OS X, but mostly in OS 9.1 -- is that my speed complaints over the past eight months of this Odyssey are not entirely OS X’s fault. I used the Pismo for three weeks last fall fas a production machine in order to check it out after I bought it, and was surprised at the relatively modest performance advantage it had over my old 233 MHz WallStreet ‘Book. I then dedicated the Pismo to OS X and went back to the WallStreet has my main workhorse. This week has been my first serious use of OS 9 ion the Pismo (save for Classic Mode) since last November, and it now has 640 MB of RAM, rather than the 256 MB it did then, which gives me a lot of breathing space in the legacy system as well as a boost in performance. However, it has also highlighted a significant shortcoming in the Pismo -- the 20 MB Toshiba hard drive is dog slow. Processor-intensive stuff is still very fast of course, scrolling almost annoyingly so. I find the scrolling speed on the WallStreet about ideal most of the time. But when you start accessing the hard drive, things slow down substantially. The drive feels and sounds like it’s struggling to catch up and keep up all the time in some applications -- clunking frenziedly away, even with APM Tuner set to its maximum 254 value. By contrast, the 10 GB drive in the WallStreet, also a Toshiba, is very responsive and also almost dead silent in terms of head-seeking noise once APM Tuner is up and running. (wish I could say the same for the motor bearings; that drive gets a louder all the time). When I first installed it back in October, 2000, I noticed a dramatic increase in performance on the WallStreet. I had also installed a RAM upgrade at the same time, so I was unsure which enhancement was most responsible for the better performance. Now I’m certain it was mainly the hard drive. The difference between the two Toshiba drives is so substantial that the 233 MHz WallStreet, with less than half the clock speed, less than one-third as much RAM, and a 34% slower system bus actually feels faster and more responsive than the 500 MHz Pismo for hard drive intensive tasks. So it’s small wonder that OS X feels slower yet. The poky hard drive is not the whole story of course. Things like scrolling and menu opening, which are near-instantaneous in OS 9 on the Pismo, are still very sluggish in OS X, but presumably a faster-responding drive would speed things up. In terms of Finder response. The question is, of course, how to determine whether a particular drive is going to be fast without trying it. As I noted, the drives in both of my PowerBooks are Toshibas, and both are 4200 rpm units. A 5400 rpm drive could be assumed to be quicker, but the 10 GB Toshiba in the WallStreet proves that a 4200 rpm drive doesn’t have to be a slug. OS X Odyssey 139 - Trying Again, But..... From: Chris Long Hey C: Just read this piece. we’re in the exact same boat, not counting your problem w 3 input devices -- I’m using & liking OS X.1.5 on my iBook and I really WANT to just make the switch once & for all ... but every few days I get a tad annoyed at the glitches you mention and I reboot into OS 9.2 and I’m in heaven again -- everything just WORKS, and works FAST. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for OS X.2 -- Maybe it’ll be enough to make the switch! Meanwhile, reboot, back n forth, OS X to OS9 to OSX to OS9 ... Chris Doing so. Charles
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