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OK, I finally decided who go with a single partition on my iBook's 20 gigabyte hard drive. Here's my reasoning.

The little iBook boots nicely from OS 9.2.2 installed on the single partition drive, but one of the main reasons I like partitions is so that I can boot from a system on another partition for running diagnostic and repair software from the hard drive without having to boot from a CD, something I detest doing.

However, I have installed the 10 gigabyte Toshiba drive that I had in my WallStreet PowerBook in my Que! M2 FireWire drive enclosure, whise original 6 gigabyte drive, also a Toshiba unit, failed with less than 200 hours' use (but unfortunately off warranty -- I used that drive maily for backups and file transfers).

I dragged a copy of the OS 9.2.2 System Folder from the iBook hard drive on to the FireWire drive, and the iBook boots from the M2, so I have my troubleshooting volume. Interestingly, the iBook refused to boot from the OS 9.2.2 install that had been on 10 GB drive left over from the WallStreet.

I was able to get my entire collected works and archives of software installers onto the 10 GB drive with about 1.5 gigabytes to spare, so was able to transfer my files to the iBook in one shift. With that accomplished, I have about 8 gigabytes left free on the on the iBook's drive, and while I can increase that with some judicious weeding, a dedicated partition for OS 9 would have resulted in constricted quarters. If I had a 30 gigabyte or larger drive, it would have altered the dynamic, but with this setup a single partition makes the best sense, IMHO.

So now begins the chore of software installation and configuration. Some applications just happily dragged on from the Pismo installs, but others require a full reinstall. I have also now run the OS 10.2.3 combo update your over the 10.2.1 installation that shipped with the iBook. That went smoothly and reasonably quickly. It seems to work fine for the most part, but I have noted some wonky Finder window behavior (like the contents of the hard drive window subimposed behind the System Preferences window) and strange text rendering that didn't manifest with OS 10.2.1.

I tried to run the ViaVoice X installer, but had forgotten that it requires a minimum of 192 megabytes of RAM, and prefers 256 MB. Until my 512 MB RAM upgrade arrives, I'm stuck with the 128 MB soldered to the motherboard, So ViaVoice will have to wait. Unfortunately, it has quit working on the Pismo, and refuses to start up, even in my pristine alter ego user identity that I keep close to all OS X default configuration for diagnostic and troubleshooting purposes.

iListen, however, installed without any hassle or hicccups, and even with the paltry 128 megabytes of standard RAM in the on the iBook. it transcribes dictation faster than the same program in the OS X, on the Pismo, however not as best as it does in OS 9. Anyway, hooray for iListen!

One final observation for today; pointing device support still -- not to put too fine a point on it -- sucks in OS 10.2.3 on the iBook. In fact, it seems to suck even worse than it does in 10.2.1 on the Pismo. Neither the iMac hockey puck USB mouse nor the Cirque Easy Cat trackpad that I currently have hooked up to it will scroll (when you click the scroll arrow, the scroll starts and then immediately craps out), while for some reason, the Quill Mouse works fine. All use the standard OS X drivers, and all three devices work perfectly in OS 9.2.2 on the iBook. I tried three different Apple hockey pucks, and got the same result with every one.

Benchmarking Safari

From Dan Knight

So nice to see Jon Smith reporting that Low End Mac loads in a mere 2 seconds. I try my best to keep the code lean for those with older Macs, dial-up connections, and so forth.

As for Dave, who claims that your results are invalid, he makes one good point and several impractical ones. Neither you, I, nor most writers on the Mac Web this side of the professional print magazines (read Macworld) have the hardware, time, and other resources to perform multiple simultaneous downloads on identical computers. And even then, complications could arise if their ISP does any content caching.

You very fairly point out that you ran your tests over a slow dial-up connection, and I would assume you did them as close together as practical. That's about all we can do when testing on a single computer. The Daves of this world have to understand our limitations; we are not professional testing houses.

One way your benchmarks would be more meaningful would be to perform several (3-5) downloads and average the results. This is because while some content remains the same on the site, things like banners may vary considerably between one visit to Low End Mac and the next. Some ads are much bigger than others, sometimes enough so that a faster browser might take longer than a slower one simply due to huge ads.

Other than that, it's nice to see you and others attempting to test Steve Jobs claims in the real world of older Macs, dial-up modems, and copper telephone lines. Safari is a very nice browser, but I haven't swallow the claim that it's several times faster than the competition. Thank you for helping set the record straight.

My vote is to partition: One big partition for Mac OS 9 and X and all your work. One smaller partition for a basic OS 9 install, room for your favorite diagnostic tools, and maybe down the road -- when there's a good collection of OS X utilities available, a basic OS X install as well. I'd guess 4-5 GB should be more than enough.

That's almost how I set up the 20 GB drive in my TiBook. 2 GB for the emergency partition (where I also keep backup copies of my site files), 16.6 GB for everything else -- and still 7 GB of free space.

Singer's advice makes sense if you have a pretty full drive. I don't. You probably don't. I suggest you go ahead and partition the hard drive before you start putting all your work on it.

(BTW, I'm sending this from Mail -- about the first time I've used it to write and email. Now that I've settled on Jaguar as my primary OS, it's time to learn the Mail app and teach it to filter all my spam.)

Thanks Dan;

Good points all. As you will have seen above, while I, like you, am a partition fan, I opted to go with a single partition this time for reasons stated. If I had a 30 GB drive instead of a 20 GB, I would probably have partitioned, but that extra 10 GB is on my FirwWire drive, which I plan to set up much as you suggest for maintenance and diagnostics.

Charles

Re: New Powerbooks

FromTom Bender

Dear Charles:

"Until my RAM upgrade arrives (hopefully this week) I can't really provide a fair evaluation of my new iBook's performance, but even with 128 MB of RAM, it's zippier in OS X Finder performance than the Pismo with 640 MB."

Thanks Tom;

You would think that the amount saved would be trivial, especially with Apple's buying power, but in volume production even pennies cout, I guess. Even the 14.1" iBook, which comes with 256 MB of RAM, has 128 MB soldered to the mobo, which is a real pain, because if you want to upgrade (and 256 MB is not enough, IMHO), you have to remove and probably discard the 128 MB DIMM in the single RAM slot.

I usually have at least a dozen apps open, and it's usually more like 15 or 20. Dr. Mac Bob Levitus says the difference with extra RAM is substantial in this article:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/business/1716440

"When I first tried the iBook, it was as slow as a turtle. But then I realized that Apple, in its infinite wisdom, never includes enough RAM in its iBooks and iMacs. Once I figured out that this one had only 128MB, I bumped it to a more reasonable (for OS X) 640 MB and it was like a whole other animal.

"So if you buy a new iBook, budget for some more RAM, too. I ordered a 512 MB chip for about $100 from Other World Computing and installed it myself. You can also order 512MB of additional RAM from Apple for $200 and they'll install it for you."

"So the new iBook is fast enough for OS X, but only after you install additional RAM."

Perhaps there's the reason why Apple is stingy with standard RAM -- the make a big profit selling upgrades.

As noted above, I went with the single partition.

Charles

Partition Or Not To Partition article

From Larry Estes

Hi,

I read your article “OS X Odyssey 240 - To Partition Or Not To Partition? “ this morning & I have some things for you to consider.

As far as I know Jaguar can’t be reinstalled over itself – the volume should be erased. Not sure about this though.

If you don’t partition, what are you going to do when Jaguar needs to be reinstalled?
Erase everything? That’s what you’ll have to do if you don’t partition. Everyone that I know that is running OS X has had to reinstall it if they want to keep using it.

My daughter just bought an iBook with a 30 GB HD. As I can recall it had 3 or 4 restore CDs with it. Well, I thought that I would be smart & partition it & install 9 on 1 volume, a repair HD (running 9) on another, X on another, X Clone on another & a storage volume for another. The X install went fine, but when it came to 9, it wanted to be installed on the X volume & wouldn’t let me install it on a volume by itself. What to do? I did a find for (can’t remember what anymore) from OS X to the restore CDs & I found the installer DMGs for OS 9. They wouldn’t work as they should with installers, but I was able to get all of the OS 9 items on a volume that would eventually boot after the system folder got blessed. Now she has a 2 functional OS 9 volumes, 1 Jaguar volume, 1 Jaguar Clone volume & 1 volume for storage. All in all this was more difficult than I expected, but the final outcome was exactly what I wanted to achieve.

If you decide not to partition, how will you deal with this?

Thanks for all the great articles.

Regards,
Larry

Hi Larry;

As noted above, I've decided not to partition. I can still get all my archived stuff on the FireWire drive if the need to reformat the drive arises.

Had I partitioned, I planned to proceed as follows.

Drag the iBook's OS 9.2.2 System folder to the FireWire drive (which I did -- boots nicely)

Boot from either the OS X install CD or the FireWire drive and erase/partition the iBook HD, making sure to install OS 9 drivers on both/all partitions.

Drag the OS 9.2.2 System folder back to my new OS 9 partition on the iBook drive (one of the beauties of the Classic OS is that you can do this so easily)

Install Jaguar on the main iBook partition.

Charles

Partitioning for OS X

From Lawrence Rhodes

Personally, I partition so I sleep better. I installed 10.2.3 and 9.2.2 on separate partitions, and haven't had any problems running Classic with the full-up extension set, though I don't actually run Classic that much. Early on (10.1.2) the X partition developed a case of keys out of order which Disk Utility and fsck wouldn't touch and Norton Disk Doctor 6.0.3 and TechTool Deluxe 2.5.4 would say they fixed but it would still be there, and I found it invaluable to have another partition to try fixes from, and run from without further corrupting my catalog. (A friend's DiskWarrior fixed it first time, so I bought my own copy.)

Another minor but appealing advantage of two partitions is the possibility of using Alsoft's Plus Maximizer. This is a system extension for OS 9 that allows you to set the smallest legal allocation block size (512 bytes) on HFS+ disks when you erase them. Jaguar has thousands of very small configuration files, plists, etc., which normally occupy something like 22 bytes out of a 4K block, and it does my heart good to think of them wasting only an eighth of those bytes (a problem the Resource Manager solved neatly, in the days when people worried about disk space). Now, Jaguar is so big that this doesn't rescue an overwhelming amount of disk space, but an iBook disk isn't unlimited.

I rather share your wish for an "Aqua lite" but... Quartz is a necessary technology for the coming high-resolution displays, like PostScript enables 300 dpi and 1200 dpi laser printers to print the same sized letters for a given font size. The advent of OS X was the best time to switch. Aqua lite would have to be bitmap-based to be faster, I don't see how it could have the same API, and it would only sell to semi-obsolete machines, a steadily shrinking market. Not a great business case.

Love your OS X Odyssey series, and hope you find happiness sooner than Mulder and Scully.

Lawrence Rhodes

Hi Lawrence;

I went with the single partition for now, but the FireWire drive should happily serve the diagnostic/maintenance function.

Thanks for the info about AlSoft's Plus Optimizer. I wasn;t aware of that block allocation feature.

Your points on "Aqua Lite" are well taken.

Charles

To Partition or Not ...

From Jan Williams

I was sent a link to your article by a friend who knows I am an avid partitioner.

I have partitioned my Macs since System 7.6 days, then not so much for separate level systems, but to compartmentalise function. They served as high-level folders that could easily be backed up in toto to a ZIP (those that were around 100 MB, how small that seems now).

However, I did have 3 of my 8 partitions supplied with a System Folder.

(A) My main 'drive' had the Blessed one that I used daily with all the comfy accessories, extensions, control panels and fonts that Made My Day.

(B) I had a second partition, TELECOMM, that had a leaner, meaner System Folder if I was going to be on the web (dial-up days) for a serious chunck of time or work. No superfluous fonts, bells or whistles. It was a large partition as they went at the time for cache and graphics files, which got purged regularly.

(C) The third installation of the OS was a copy of the initial basic installation of (A) before all the customsing. Essentially, a backup.

I also had separate copies of Norton Utilities on these partitions.

Having a spare OS was a comfort, because should Disaster Ever Strike, and my Blessed System did not work, the ROM would seek out another 'drive' that might have an OS on it. Saved my bacon, especially in the clone days. I could tell immediately if this had occurred as the start-up screens and desktop colours were different. So much easier to run Norton (then on floppies) for diagnostics and defragmenting.

So, now I have a dual USB 14" iBook, and the first thing I did after, oohing and aaahhing, was partition it 5 ways:

(1) OS 9 and

(2) OS X partitions,

(3) one just for installed software (most of which I have on CD somewhere),

(4) one for my Documents & Projects, and a

(5) Swap/Scratch Disk for OS X. Actually, there is a 6th one should I want to play around with UNIX in its native state, but it isn't very large, and like most spare rooms, is stashed with other 'stuff.)

I have ordered a G4—arriving any day now—simply because its ROMs will allow booting into OS 9 natively. OS 9 native can't be the same as OS 9 emulated, IMHO, and I have some quaint old stuff from System 7.6 days that I am not willing to relinquish.

The Whole Mac Thing is about options, choices, different thinking. Homes are divided into rooms to compartmentalise function. They and their contents can be closed off from the main field of view and it seems to streamline living; it reduces visual noise, clutter. Why should not my Mind's house be any different?

I understand why Apple has to commit itself to moving forward, and somewhat, to burn its backwardly compatible bridges behind them. Sometimes I see their moves as shooting themselves in the foot. However, I don't have to agree on these implications when it comes to my personal use. This is NOT Microsoft, after all.

Jan Williams

Hi Jan;

We're on the same page. I have partitioned my hard drives on all my Macs and installed multiple system versions for the reasons you cite. I even partitioned the tiny 20MB drive on my Mac Plus and installed both System 6 and System 7. Going with one partition on the iBook will be something new for me. I remain a partitioning fan, and this is an experiment as much as anything.

Also, like you, one of my BIG reasons for buying an iBook now was to get one of the last machines that will boot OS 9. I intend on using OS X mostly on the iBook, but I too have some old software that I'm not ready to let go of, and Classic Mode, convenients as it is, is just not the same. Choice is good.

Charles

Partitioning

From George Woodrow III

For the first time in at least 10 years, I did not immediately reformat and partition the drive in my new computer, a 1GHZ PowerBook. I am glad that I did not.

I ended up filling up about half of the 60 GByte HD (iTunes files, movie projects, photos, plus the usual other things). I would have no way of guessing which would have been the best size for the partitions.

I thought I would miss the ability to control the OS at boot time by using the option key. However, other than having to boot into OS 9 to install some games (Myst III has to be installed and upgraded in OS 9), I never have to boot into 9.

In addition, it makes upgrades that much easier. I don't have to worry about having files on the 'other' partition.

Using the disk tools to fix permissions only works on the boot OS X partition. With only one partition, no worrys.

I do keep data and older programs on external firewire drives, so I guess I am hedging my bet.

So, from a dyed in the wool partitioner, I can say that running OS X from a single partition has many more advantages than disadvantages.

George

Hi George;

Wow; you have a LOT of stuff!

As I noted above, I was able to get my collected works and archives on a 10 GB drive with room to spare, but I don't have a lot of MP3s or large photo files.

It seems we came to similar conclusions about partitioning, although had I had 60 GB to play with, I would probably have gone partition hog-wild. ;-)

Charles

RE:Partitioning HD

From Jesse Lamsam

Charles,

I too had concerns regarding partitioning my OS X HD. I eventually left mine alone, but shelled out extra $$ for an external Firewire SmartDisk VST. I partitioned this external drive into OS 9 on one Volume and OS X on the other. Now I have the extra space for storing my unruly data as well as the ability to boot from an external volume.

Sincerely,
Jesse

Hi Jesse;

Great minds think alike. ;-)

Charles

Another Safari Story

From Travis Smith

Charles,

I have been reading about everyone (including your) experiences with Safari. I felt inclined to lend my 2 cents on this subject.

I am running a TiBook 800 with 768m with Airport card with a Linksys wireless router, tied to a charter cable modem.

Also, my wife runs an iMac 800 with 768m with wired LAN connection to the Linksys router.

On both machines, Safari is much faster loading pages, hitting the back button / snapback button. It is pretty much instantaneous when pulling up a page that has been loaded before via the back button (or snapback button).

With that being said, I solely use Safari now, with Chimera as a backup browser. Chimera used to be my primary, it just "felt" faster than ie or Netscape or Mozilla or any other browser. However, Safari seems to be much faster. I have not made any hard comparisons (writing down load times & such), but it is definately much faster.

However, my wife still likes the features of Chimera and continues to use it as her primary browser. She uses Safari as her backup. Her reasons- the speed is no big issue for her, she feels Chimera is better overall due to the features (passwords thru keychain, printer button on toolbar, etc.) and pages seem to load more "accurately" to her.

I guess it is always "different strokes for different folks".

I can not argue with the assessment that Safari is faster, but it needs a ton of features added such as tabbed browsing, keychain passwords, more toolbar icon options, etc.

Anyway, I think eliminating IE is the key to this. Most Mac users don't care to use Micro$oft products on their Macs (with the exception of Word / Office). I personally was glad to eliminate IE as my backup browser on both machines and am truly glad Apple made the decision to release a browser.

Despite everyone's preferences, I feel the true advantages are the future of the platform by eliminating IE as the default browser.

Have a great day, and god bless.

Travis

Hi Travis;

I agree wholeheartedly. I haven't used IE more than incidentally for 2 1/2 years, and don't miss it. I hope Safari won't hurt development of third-party, non IE browsers (see my commentary elsewhere on Applelinks today), but if it can wean more Mac users away from IE, great! Now let's try to get them off Word/Office. ;-)

Charles

Safari relative speed

From Richard Dalziel-Sharpe

Hello Charles.

I have been following your Odyssey since the beginning and have found it to be both entertaining and informative. I am pleased that you do not attempt the impossible, as a recent poster noted and try to be objective.

However, my wife is the ultimate in computer objectivity. She has a 600 mhz Dual USB iBook which she loves. The thing she loves the most about it is the way the light throbs on the front when the lid is closed. She surfs the web and writes lots of email and plays Mikes Cards. I keep it up to date with software updates and trouble shoot for her when she says its not doing something right. So I have set the scene.

She has always used Omniweb or Netscape for browsing the web; wont use IE because " it looks awful and jumps around on the screen" figure that one out!! So with some apprehension I installed Safari and got her bookmarks working. And what was her first unsolicited remark ? " gee Richie (thats me) its a lot faster than Omniweb isnt it." Being the good husband that I am, I replied "Yes dear" and didnt tell her about your tests.

On another topic I have been using OSX since the public beta and now at 10.2.3 use it exclusively. I still have Classic because my business uses a program that has not been updated to X yet. When it is, 9 will go the same way as all things past their prime. I say that bravely because I know that X is nowhere near its prime yet, but like all rides into the future it may be rough but it will be both exciting and rewarding.

Richard Dalziel-Sharpe
Australia

Hi Richard;

I didn't try Safari against OmniWeb, but speed relative to other OS X browsers is not Omni's strong suit, so I can understanDecember why your wife was impressed.

I think the little pulsing light is cool too, second only in charmingness to the sleep light on my former G4 Cube.

Charles

Safari

From Kevin Kunz

Charles

I just love Safari. I used it all weekend, It is both fast and innovative. The integration of Google in the bar and Snapback are great. But I really like the bookmark organization.

I wish it had the autofill from IE. But Safari is so good I actually don't mind the missing autofill.

All the best
Kevin Kunz
Reflexology Research Project

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

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