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OS X Odyssey 300 already. We passed the Odyssey 200 mark just short of five months ago, on November 11, at which time I had just installed OS X 10,2,1, but was still using OS 9 for most of my production work, and looking forward to the imminent release of OS 10.2.2, which as it eventually turned out I downloaded but never installed. There is progress. For the past three weeks, I've been using OS X for production almost exclusively, and I'm now pretty much "acclimatized" to considering it my "normal" operating system, so I guess I can almost say I'm switched. I'm still running Classic Mode to support Color It! 4.1, WannaBe, and my old Apple NotePad, a refugee from System 6 days! (I even keep it in the Dock), and I'm still very happy to be able to boot into OS 9 when I need to. Most of the disk repair/maintenance software I have is OS 9 native, and it's just nice to have an alternate OS to boot into. A bit of a security blanket if you will, but I'm a belt & suspenders kind of guy. I'm using OS 10.2.4 on the Pismo and 10.2.1 on the iBook, having been persuaded by widespread rpeorts of battery damage and modem dysfunction caused by 10.2.4 on several recent Mac models, including late model iBooks, that 10,2,4 is not a prudent upgrade for these machines. I did upgrade the iBook to 10.2.3 for a short time soon after I bought it at the first of the year, but "downgraded" again when I reformatted and partitioned the hard drive and ran the restore CDs. I had noticed some Finder flakiness with the iBook running 10,2,3, and it seems pretty solid in 10,2,1, so I haven't been in any hurry to upgrade again. OS 9 is still a LOT faster than OS X for the sort of computing I do, especially on the Pismo. The Quartz Extreme support provided by the iBook's RADEON 7500 video card and 16 MB of VRAM speeds up Finder performance substantially, but not to the right there, right now responsiveness one enjoys in OS 9. However, OS X isn't just the future anymore, but more and more the present as well, and I'm becoming addicted to some of the software that is only available in OS X, or the OS X versions of which have more and cooler features than their Classic counterparts. For the past several weeks I've been mainly using Camino 0.7 for browsing, backed up by iCab and WannaBe, although I've just downloaded Mozilla 1.4a and will be checking it out. I still haven't really warmed to Safari so far, although I'm looking forward to checking out the next release. On the upside, I find that generally, browsing performance is faster in OS X than OS 9 (with the exception of scrolling), partly because of the availability of faster browsers, but even iCab works better in OS X. The Eudora 5.2.1 final build seems to have finally speeded up Eudora performance in OS X a bit, and is working nicely so far. My mainstay do-almost-everything application, Tex Edit Plus, just gets better and better with each OS X release, the version 4.5 final is currently the latest version. For FTP I'm mostly using Vicom FTP Client X and Captain FTP 2.2. I enjoy OS X's rock-solid stability, although I find that it is even more important to save one's work in progress frequently in X than in OS 9, as while the system doesn't go down, individual applications certainly do, and with less (ie: no) warning than they usually give me in OS 9. Then there is also the mysterious memory leak problem that we've discussed at considerable length here on the Odyssey, that causes the machine's performance to progressively deteriorate the longer OSX is up without a restart. I've found that quitting and restarting certain programs, especially browsers, and running various maintenance routines like repairing permissions and the suite available in Cocktail (or other maintenance apps.) helps somewhat, but the only real (albeit temporary) cure is a restart. So our Odyssey continues. I continue to learn new things every day, and there's pleanty to learn yet. Floppy RAID on OS X From Steve Chavez,
I am not sure about the manufacture date but the serial number starts
Hi Steve;
That means your iBook was built in the 8th week of 2003 -- ie: late February, so that proves that there was no firmware block implemented in early January as had been rumored.
Thanks;
From Lenn Hann For your education and amusement, a five USB floppy-disk RAID under OS X. Switchers take note - another Mac-only capability! (Ok, just kidding.) http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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