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I passed a milestone yesterday that I haven't seen very often; Untitled document 200 in Tex Edit Plus. I can only for sure recall getting past that point once before, I think in my personal record of 15 days without a reboot (in OS 9 on a machine being used for production work. I've gone six or seven weeks in OS X without restarting the Pismo when I was just using it as a backup and learning platform). I've now gone almost two weeks in OS X 10.2.6 with the iBook in production with no restarts. I actually got up to TE+ Untitled document 220 or so last evening before the program unexpactedly quit while I was attampting to open a document created by another program. No shame to it after 15 days, and I had about two dozen documents open and windowshaded at the time. I use Tex Edit Plus for multiple tasks -- drafting articles; html markup, text cleanup, some data archiving, (although I've been using DEVONthink more and more for that over the past several months). The cool thing is that after nearly two weeks of uptime with long hours of use every day; a bunch of software installs and upgrades, literally dozens of sleep/waheup cycles, and many program starts and quits, with about 20 applications and utilities open most of the time, performance has hardly deteriorated since the mamory usage became maxed out on about day 2. The key to this has been the little alphaware AppleScript utility that I'm testing and can't tell you a whole lot about yet due to confidentiality (and ignorance -- I really don't know quite how it works -- something to do with tweaking the vnodes, whatever that entails -- just that it seems to work very well). Obviously, as the log below indicates, there have been lots of pageouts, but with this utility activated, they don't seem to slow things down as much. I hope a final version of this product will be released soon. Anyway, here's the log readout from the little utility as of this writing:
Friday, August 29, 2003 10:46:59 AM
With this small software hack, I am finally realizing OS X's promise of stability and am able to run for long periods of time without rebooting. I will reboot over the weekend because I need to install some software that will require a restart, but if that were not necessary, I fugure I could go another week or more on this startup with no problem. Cool! Re; Eudora 6b31 review OmniWeb renders the same as Safari? An "Odyssey" indeed: Upgrading to OS 10.2 from OS 9.2.2 From Alex Mathew Hi Charles: Since you and your readers were so helpful, it seems only fair that I provide a feedback on my experience with upgrading from OS 9.2.2 to OS X on a Powerbook G3 Firewire Pismo. This may prove useful to others. Let me give one warning to Pismo users upgrading or installing Mac OS X. !-- Keep the DVD module in the bay while installing any OS X version --! (If you have a CDRW or another CD module - replace it with the a DVD drive if you want DVD playback capabilities and don't want to endure my "pain". Do this even if you are using an external CD or HD drive to boot and install)
Origin:
Destination: OS 10.2.6 via upgrade CD's of 10.0.3, 10.1 and 10.2 Partitioning: YES! After my experience, I unequivocally recommend a partition of OS 9.2.2, however small - it may be a life and sanity saver! After copying my original 9.2.2 installation to an external Firewire drive (using Synk X), I partitioned the 40GB into 30GB and 10GB and formatted both with Mac OS Extended HFS. I copied over the 9.2.2 to the 10GB and the 30GB partitions from the external drive (I had to use USB since the boot CD I had was for OS 9.0.4 which does not have FireWire drivers - I could have created a OS 9.2.2 boot CD but I had time!) I then used Norton Disk Optimizer on both partitions - I would not touch the 10GB with the OS X install - but I wanted to make a clean beginning. Ready for OS X Install - Upgrade CD VS Full Install CD: It is critical to understand that using upgrade CD's to get to OS 10.2 (Jaguar) can be very time consuming. I was sent the original 10.0.3 install CD, 10.1 Update and 10.2 Update CD. The 10.2 Update CD does not state that it IS an update - nowhere - not even on the booklet or software license (watch out if buying from eBay!). I thought perhaps the 10.2 CD just checked for the availability of a 10.0.3 or 10.1 CD - how wrong I was ! Also, the 10.0.3 required OS 9.1 or above to be installed. Upon inserting the 10.2 CD in the CD/DVD drive of the Pismo - it started scraping, spinning up and then spinning down - this went on for some time (5 minutes) but eventually, the 10.2 CD mounted. However, opening any folder on it would take another 5 minutes. So I assumed it was some CD media incompatibility with the old DVD drive and swapped the DVD drive for a Sony CD/CDRW expansion bay drive I had been using under OS 9.2.2. Another big no-no! As this article below states - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106479 The 10.2 install CD was read fine by the Sony drive and I tried to install. After a reboot, it informs me that I NEED to have a prior OS X installation - does not say which version!. I try the 10.1 upgrade CD and it tells me the same. So I installed OS 10.0.3 - a nice 2 hour procedure. (I later found out that the time could be reduced by not installing the BSD subsystem and the localization files - since the final upgrade would add those). Now, I assumed that perhaps Apple wants to save me time and will allow a 10.2 install on a 10.0.3 - NO. The 10.2 installation lets me know that the Mac OS version is not suitable for upgrade - it still does not tell me which OS X version I need! I proceed with 10.1 install (another 2 hours) - again I could have ignored the BSD and localization files. Then the 10.2 install works (another 2 hours - a long optimization period at the end). OS X quickly finds my Airport connection and I download and install the 10.2.6 update. I'm DONE - I think - and take out a DVD to play and take a break - Alas! Nothing happens! Disc mounts but no DVD player! Downloading and installing DVDplayer from Apple does not work. After much searching on the Apple Knowledge base, I find the article that points out the requirement of having the DVD drive module when installing Mac OS X. I find that there is no way of reinstalling just the system software for DVD! So, I started all over again (perhaps there was an easier way - but searches on the Internet did not reveal it) - and I had some time since I was off from work for a few days. Another 6 hours of erasing the partition and reinstalling OS 10.0.3, 10.1, 10.2 and 10.2.6. This is where the 9.2.2 partition saved me, I could boot from it, quickly erase the OS X partition and copy over all the OS 9.2.2 files to begin again. Now I am DONE and firmly in OS X. My fears of a bloated, unresponsive system quickly disappeared! I am loving the interface and the stability. Everything works - my Palm syncs, my Mozilla preferences from OS 9.2.2 copied over easily. My Classic applications (Lotus Notes and Framemaker work well - in fact perhaps even faster!). Those waiting with a Pismo and a large enough hard drive - I say - go for it! I have yet to boot to OS 9.2.2 partition - but I will have to for GPS some other legacy applications. I plan to use the Documents folder in OS X while booted in Os 9.2.2 since it seems seamless.
I have downloaded CarbonCopyCloner
Finally, unless one has loads of time (atleast 6 hours), do not bother with the upgrade path to 10.2 - just get the 10.2 full install CD.
Thank you for your support
Hi Alex;
I'm delighted to hear that you have OS X successfully installed. You certainly did it the hard way, but I'm guessing that you saved some $$$ by going the upgrade route. The Jaguar installation on my Pismo has been incrementally upgraded from OS X 10.0 through 10.2.6 without a clean reinstall, although I do have a full OS 10.2 install CD.
I was not previously aware of the provision that the DVD drive remain in the expansion bay throughout. Good to know.
Thanks for this great report.
Charles From Mark Hasseman Thanks for your review & comments, I picked up on a couple features that will probably get me to give 6 a try. The spam filtering isn't currently of use to me. I have been using Eudora 5.2.1 in paid mode. There are a couple things that really frustrate me in Eudora, and I don't think they are fixed in release 6: 1) Long filenames for attachments. Eudora is still limited to 31 characters. This is really getting old. Eudora and Office are the 2 programs I use with this problem. It's worse with Eudora because I lose long filenames on incoming email, and I sometimes send email with the Apple filetag as part of the name [when the name is longer than 31 characters]. 2) Another problem are links to attachments breaking. If an attachment is moved in the Finder and the email with the link to the attachment is filed in another folder, the link is broken, so the attachment can no longer be opened from within Eudora. HFS should manage this for Eudora, but for some reason it doesn't work correctly. I presume both of these are not issues with Mail, but I haven't had time to try it. I have been trying to get Qualcomm to fix these problems, but so far no success.
Best regards,
Hi Mark;
Glad the moni-review was helpful. I had never encountered the long filename issue in my personal use. I guess I have never hot the 31 character limit.
Attachment aliases do break as you describe. I'm not sure whether OS X Mail or other email clients have this issue or not.
Charles OmniWeb renders the same as Safari? From David Chilstrom I agree that lack of tabbed browser or some other form of multi-window management, has relegated OmniWeb to second stringer status for me. However, your remark about "as with iCab JavaScript and CSS2 support are incomplete" is no longer the case with the current version of the browser. As you mentioned, Apple's WebCore and JavaScriptCore technologies have been adopted by OmniWeb, which should make its rendering of pages and handling of Javascript identical to that of Safari.
Regards,
Hi David;
The last version of the OmniWeb browser I downloaded was version 4 point something a few months back, and I haven't sampled version 4.5 yet.
However, Eric Brangeman has, and he says that "JavaScript and CSS2 support [are] incomplete," and that OmniWeb's "slow rendering and problems with JavaScript, [have]... been improved with the adoption of WebCore and JavaScriptCore technologies, [but] It still lags behind Safari on rendering speed" Certainly, OmniWEb lagged behind Safari in speed in Eric's benchmark comparison.
Charles
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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