LEMblog

Intel Mac mini: How slow can you go?

2011-03-24T15:07:00.000-04:00

I picked up a second-hand 2007 Mac mini over the weekend, my first Intel-based Mac. I would have preferred the 2008 version with nVidia graphics, but the whole package listed on Craigslist was too tempting:

2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini with 1 GB of RAM, 120 GB hard drive, SuperDrive, Intel GMA 950 graphics, and OS X 10.6.6 Snow Leopard - also 10.4.6 Tiger installer
23" Apple ADC Cinema HD Display
Apple's DVI-to-ADC connector so the display works with the Mac mini
Apple's aluminum USB keyboard, the one with the numeric keypad
Bluetooth Mighty Mouse
80 GB external bus-powered USB drive
speakers with subwoofer

I paid just a bit more for this whole setup than I did for my dual 1 GHz MDD Power Mac G4 about six years ago.

It's going to be a long, slow process making the transition. 1 GB of memory is inadequate, the stock hard drive is slow, and the external USB drive is even slower. When finances permit, I'm planning to max out RAM to 3 G and install a WD Scorpio Black hard drive, which is the fastest conventional hard drive on the market. Debating whether 320 GB will be enough or if I should go for the 500 GB drive - 400 GB is more than enough on my G4 Power Macs. My plan is seperate partitions for Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard plus a "work" partition and a spare partition where I'll be able to try Lion when it becomes available.

Right now I have 10.6.7 on the internal 5400 rpm Hitachi Travelstar (8 MB buffer) and have simply cloned the Leopard partition from my Power Mac to the external USB drive with an unknown mechanism. So right now I have the option of running Snow Leopard from a relatively poky internal SATA drive or using Leopard on a drive connected to USB 2.0, which means a maximum transfer speed of about 320 Mbps - about 1/5 of what SATA offers.

Next project: Finding a 7200 rpm 3.5" drive (I have several 80 GB from upgrading) to put in one of my NewerTech miniStack enclosures, which will let me use FireWire 400 - that's a bit better than 1/4 of SATA bandwidth. Then I'll be able to pick between a fast drive on a slow bus (FireWire) or a slow drive on a fast bus (SATA) and won't have to deal with a slow drive on a really slow bus (USB 2.0).

Unfortunately, the Cinema Display's native resolution is only 1600 x 1024 - a bit less than the 1680 x 1050 my 20" Cinema Display (on a Power Mac) offers. I'll probably end up putting the 20" on the Mini and the 23" on the Power Mac when I finally make the migration. At that point I'll have a dual 1.0 GHz MDD Power Mac with 2 GB of RAM and three 7200 rpm hard drives (one 80 GB plus two 400 GB) capable of booting into Tiger or Leopard and the Mini (with RAM and hard drive upgrades) able to boot Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard. They'll be side-by-side using Teleport so one keyboard and mouse can control both - the same thing I'm doing now with my pair of production Power Macs.

More on Low End Mac when I have enough speed to be able to work comfortably on the Mini....

Display power consumption

2010-06-03T15:55:00.000-04:00

I picked up a Kill-a-Watt a while back in hopes of learning more about energy consumption - how much does a second hard drive, increased RAM, or adding a USB 2.0 card increase the current draw on my G4 Power Macs. I'll get to that eventually, but I have done some testing of computer displays - and made some interesting discoveries.

The first one I tested was a 17" Gateway 2000 Vivitron 1770 that I picked up at a moving sale for $3. Who can resist that kind of price? I wondered if it might draw less power than my current monitor, and the Energy Star sticker was encouraging.

My Blue & White Power Mac G3 booted to 800 x 600 resolution at 60.3 Hz, and the Kill-a-Watt reported the display was drawing 90W. Bumping resolution to 1024 x 768 @ 60 Hz, that dropped a bit to 88W. Changing the refresh rate to 70 Hz increased that to 92W. This display has an 1152 x 870 setting - at 75 Hz, it draws 97W. Finally, at 1280 x 1024 and 60 Hz, that drops a bit to 95W. And when Energy Saver puts the display to sleep, elecricity usage drops to 3.6W.

This is an older monitor, not especially crisp, and slow to wake up, but it's a contender for use on a server, where it will only be powered on when necessary. The 1152 x 870 75 Hz setting is a good compromise between resolution and a steady display. (60 Hz tends to create a subtle flicker that can tire your eyes over time.)

Not bad for $3 - and I also got a free 15" 10-year-old Dell E550 at the same moving sale. It draws a whole lot less power - between 49 and 55 Watts in my various tests. Here's the quick overview:

800 x 600 @ 60 Hz, 49.4W; 75 Hz, 52.5W; 85 Hz, 54.8W
1024 x 768 @ 60 Hz, 51.6W
640 x 480 @ 60 Hz, 49.2W; 75 Hz, 50.6W; 85 Hz, 52W; 100 Hz, 54.2W

Interesting pattern: The higher the refresh rate and/or resolution, the greater the power draw - but not by a huge amount. There's only about 10% variance among the settings I tested.

This monitor also has one big plus over the Gateway Vivitron - the power button is up front, making it easier to turn it on and off. Thank goodness most displays moved away from rear-mounted power buttons years ago.

The third display I tested is an ancient Compaq 15" from the mid-to-late 90s. I picked up a few of these refurb at a very good price. They're not great monitors, but okay for setting up computers and testing. I was the same pattern in energy usage:

640 x 480 @ 60 Hz, 67W; 75 Hz, 71W
800 x 600 @ 60 Hz, 69W; 75 Hz, 74W
1024 x 768 @ 60 Hz, 73W

With Energy Saver putting the display to sleep, this drops to 14.5W - a lot more than the 17" Gateway Vivitron.

I next tested a 17" Micron display that my wife used to use with her Windows PC. No matter what resolution and refresh rate I chose, power draw was steady at between 118.5 and 119W. That surprised me after my other tests.

My stock CRT display for years has been a Samsumg 700DF, which supports up to 1280 x 1024 pixels. I've used it with my Titanium PowerBook and various G4 Power Macs, most recently with the dual 1 GHz Mirror Drive Door model. The display is crisp, but the refresh rate at 1280 x 1024 is a low 60 Hz. At tested resolutions and refresh rates, it consistently measured 120W.

By contrast, my 19" Dell flat panel display draws just 26W at its native 1280 x 1024 resolution. This is my primarly display - easy on the eyes, good resolution, and it sold for a great price when I bought it many years ago.

You can save quite a bit of energy by choosing the right display. The flat panel beats the CRTs hands down, the 15" Dell CRT draws about 30% less than the even older Compaq, and the Gateway Vivitron saves 20-25% over the Samsung and Micron monitors I tested.

End result: Until I can afford a new flat panel display, I'll keep the 19" Dell flat panel as my primary display on my Leopard machine (1.6 GHz dual G4 upgraded Digital Audio Power Mac), the Samsung on my Mirror Drive Door (the Gatewaw draws less power, but it's not crisp, wakes from sleep slowly, and has poorer color). On my server, I'm going to hook up the 15" Dell E550, which uses less energy than any of the CRT displays I've yet tested. I'll run it at 1024 x 768, which is lower than I prefer, but then I'm really only using this dual 500 MHz Power Mac G4 as a servery, so it's not a big deal.

Number Crunching

Electical rates range from 12¢ to 15¢ per killowatt-hour here in Michigan. By using a flat panel display instead of a 17" CRT, I save between 69 and 94 Watts - say an average of 85. That's roughly 2.04 kWH per day, 61 per month, for a saving of $7.30 to $9.20 a month, ignoring things like sleep mode and Energy Saver settings.

But you probably don't run your monitor 24/7. Let's say you have your monitor on 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and you're using it enough so sleep mode rarely kicks in. 22 workdays in a month times 0.68 kWH per day comes out to 14.96 kWH per month. Savings: $1.80 to $2.25 per month in this scenario - $22 to $27 a year.

Ballpark figure: If you're using a 17" CRT and replace it with a 19" to 22" flat panel display, you may reduce your electric bill $20 a year assuming a 40 hour work week - or $100 assuming the display is on 24/7. Use that display for 5 years, and you've saved between $100 and $500, probably enough to justify that $99 flat panel display Dell had on clearance last week or that $160 22" 1080 x 1920 display you discovered on dealmac.

Other benefits of going flat panel: No flicker, so it's easier on the eyes, and crisp pixels, where CRTs can become fuzzy over time. Less heat. And you'll have all those extra pixels to play with if you go widescreen. I find a 1080 x 1920 display very tempting, as I often have a dozen or more apps active at once, lots of overlapping windows, and the extra screen width would be a real blessing. (I've tried 1440 x 900 displays. After years at 1280 x 1024, I miss the extra height. Going to 1080 makes things even better.)

You'll need to do your own number crunching for your display, the new one you're looking at, monthly usage, and your local electrical rate. Just be sure to do your due diligence before you buy a new monitor - find out what reviewers and end users have to say about things like color accuracy, glare, build quality, etc.

Brains of the iPad

2010-01-28T14:31:00.000-05:00

There's very little definitively known about the 1 GHz Apple A4 CPU, other than it's an ARM CPU. Rumor is that it's Apple's customized version of the Cortex A9, the first multicore ARM chip. If it's a dual-core 1 GHz chip, it could easily have 3x the processing power of the iPhone's 600 MHz (or so) CPU.

No wonder everyone raves about how fast the iPad is compared to the iPhone and iPod touch!

Firefox 3.7 and Tiger

2010-01-26T16:58:00.000-05:00

Firefox 3.6 went final last Friday, so I'm moving to that at my "regular" version of Firefox, replacing 3.5. I've been using the 3.6 Namoroka PowerPC G4 build for some time, and it's been very stable.

I wanted to put the 3.7 alpha on my Power Macs and soon discovered that it won't launch on Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" - it apparently requires 10.5 "Leopard" or later. That's a shame, as Tiger remains a great operating system and meets almost all of my needs. (Ditto for Leopard, which doesn't support Classic Mode. That's why I use two Macs side by side.)

Camino 2.0.1 remains my primary browser, with the PowerPC build of Firefox 3.7 playing second fiddle. I also use Opera 10 and Safari now and then.

LEM Publishing Schedule Adjustments

2009-10-20T08:22:00.000-04:00

As you may know, although I haven't publicized it widely, the past 12 months have been very difficult financially for Low End Mac. I've been looking for a part-time job to supplement that for some time, and I finally got my first interview - and a job.

I'll be working at the local Kohl's store unloading trucks on third shift anywhere from two to five days a week, and I'm in the process of adjusting my sleep cycle with 25 hour days (going to bed an hour later each night). By the time I finish training and start the real work, I should be on target.

This means changes in my schedule working on LEM, since I'll be sleeping days. No more updates during the workday. I'm hoping to have price trackers up first thing in the morning and work on articles after I get up late in the afternoon - not that much different from what I did the first 4 years of LEM, starting my website work late in the afternoon when I got home from work. Still, it's going to be a real adjustment for me. (This might give me the incentive to finally learn enough Joomla to move LEM to a content management system.)

I'm very excited about working for Kohl's, a company that seems to do its best to treat both its customers and its employees right, including benefits for part timers.

Leaving GyazMail for OS X Mail

2009-10-06T09:27:00.000-04:00

Last week, I began my migration from GyazMail, which I've been using just about as long as I've been using Mac OS X, to Apple's Mail application.

I chose GyazMail for one simple reason: It's a plain text email client, and I'm a firm believer in plain text email - no colors, no bold or italic, no big or small text, no use of multiple and/or unreadable fonts, no VCF cards, no embeded images. Nothing but good old fashioned text (plus attachments for images, MP3s, PDFs, Word documents, etc.). I'd used and loved Claris Emailer in my Classic Mac OS days and also used PowerMail.

How things have changed over the years. I do most of my personal email using Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo does everything in its power to get you to avoid using its simplest, fastest interface. And I get a lot more "enhanced" email these days with photos and the like. I don't tend to send fancy email, but even plain text diehards have to realize that the world has moved on to something much more customizable (for lack of a better word).

On top of that, GyazMail isn't the most stable email client. It works well, and it's been a pleasure to use it, but (1) it doesn't remember which emails you may have had open when you quit it, (2) it randomly quits without warning, and (3) it often reports that it has spontaneously quit when you quit it. Enough annoyances that over time I decided it was time to switch.

I'm not a huge fan of Mail, but it's free, it integrates perfectly with SpamSieve (the best anti-spam tool I've ever used - highly recommended!), and I've been using it for some time with a few email accounts I don't access very often. I've also learned that, unlike GyazMail, it has no problem working with multiple Gmail accounts - and I love my free Gmail accounts!

So last Friday I migrated my account settings one-by-one from GyazMail to OS X Mail. It took some fiddling with outbound server settings, authentication, and the like, but now it's working beautifully with my .mac (MobileMe) address, three Gmail addresses, and 4 different lowendmac.com addresses. And now I can quit my email client and have it re-open messages I had open when I relaunch it.

I'm very happy with the switch.

Finally Migrating to Leopard

2009-09-28T09:42:00.000-04:00

Monday, September 28, 2009. Mark that date on your calendars. It's the date I officially moved from Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" to 10.5 "Leopard" (I can't use 10.6 "Snow Leopard", as I don't have an Intel-based Mac yet) as my primary OS.

As I type this, I'm in the midst of the process: I've used Migration Assistant to migrate two user accounts from Tiger to Leopard. I searched for "(from old Mac)" and deleted about 6 GB of apps, folders, etc. that resulted from the merger. I'm currently running Drive Genius to find duplicate files on the Leopard boot partition. Once those are deleted, I'll be using SuperDuper! to clone this drive to my backup drive (using USB 2.0, since FireWire died on my dual 1 GHz Mirror Drive Door on Friday), moving the drive to the dual 1.6 GHz upgraded Digital Audio Power Mac G4, and then SuperDuper! to clone from the backup drive to the Leopard partition for that machine.

BTW, I've been ripping some CDs in iTunes on both machines, which have matching 16x Pioneer DVR-110D SuperDrives. They both peak at a bit over 20x. Very impressive!

I'll still be running Tiger on the MDD, as I still use Claris Home Page (from 1997!) as one of my important production tools, and Tiger supports Classic Mode whereas Leopard doesn't. Teleport is doing a great job letting move move between the two machines effortlessly while using one mouse and one keyboard. (Tip: If you're using Teleport with different versions of Mac OS X, set the one with the newer OS version as the master/host and the older OS as the slave/remote. I discovered that the clipboard didn't work in both directions when I had Tiger set as master and Leopard as slave.)

Except for that, I expect to be using Leopard for everything else from this point forward - email, browsing the Web, etc.

Because of the time involved migrating users, removing duplicates, and so forth, site updates will be somewhat delayed today.

My Mac Web Server, FireWire Failure, and Using Teleport

2009-09-25T08:56:00.000-04:00

I finally got everything up and running as I'd planned - well, almost.

1. I have the dual 500 MHz "Mystic" Power Mac G4 running as a Web server using MAMP. It took a little digging to figure out how to enable Server Side Includes (SSI), but I did it. I'm using ZoneEdit.com for dynamic DNS, and eventually reformed.net (a personal research site) will be served by this old Mac. Until then, it's available at reformednet.gotdns.com courtesy of DynDNS.org. I'm using DNSUpdate to keep ZoneEdit and DynDNS connected to the server. All of these apps and services are free.

I decided some time ago to move reformed.net from AIT Domains, where it has been hosted for several years. Their servers have been compromised, the website has been infected with "badware" links, and all sorts of services (including Google search) now flag it as a "reported malware site". My solution: Run my own secure server.

2. I swapped the external FireWire drives between the dual 1 GHz "Mirror Drive Door" Power Mac G4 and the dual 1.6 GHz upgraded "Digital Audio" Power Mac G4. The upgraded DA has been my primary machine, but with the CPU upgrade it doesn't want to boot Mac OS 9. The MDD is a bit slower but will boot OS 9 when I need to. I did swap video cards, so the better card from the MDD is now in the DA.

I now have two monitors side-by-side, each connected to a different Mac (one running Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" for Classic Mode, the other running Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" so I can get used to it and use some newer apps that are not compatible with Tiger), and I can more the mouse and keyboard from one display to the other thanks to Teleport, a great little Mac-only freeware app. With Teleport, you can move clipboard contents between machines and drag files from one to the other. After quite a bit of trial and error, I finally figured out that it only works in both directions when Leopard is the master/host and Tiger is the slave/remote.

3. Everything almost went smoothly. The MDD chose this as the day its FireWire port would fail, so I had to dismantle the NewerTech miniStack and transplant the 400 GB hard drive in the Power Mac. I prefer to work from external drives just because it's easier to move to another Mac if a computer fails, but the dead FireWire ports killed that. (My backup computer is a 1.25 GHz eMac, a nice enough machine, but with only a single CPU, it doesn't run nearly as smoothly as a dual processor Power Mac G4.)

Haiku OS run decently on 450 MHz Pentium III Dell

2009-09-18T12:21:00.000-04:00

Remember when Apple almost bought Be, which would have made BeOS the foundation for the next generation Mac OS? Apple bought NeXT instead, and BeOs - which many of us fiddled with - eventually vanished.

It's back, but with a new name. Since 2001, the Haiku project has been developing a free, open source operating system compatible with BeOS - and it's finally reached the alpha stage. If you have an old PC or have virtualization software on an Intel-based Mac, you can download the ISO, burn it to a CD, and use that to boot and install the Haiku OS.

Six years ago I bought an inexpensive used Dell Optiplex GX1 with Windows 98, because Yahoo Messenger had some capabilities on Windows that it didn't have on Macs (voice chat, for instance). That machine has been sitting unused for several years, so I burned a Haiku disc, booted from it, wiped the hard drive, and installed Haiku. A 450 MHz Pentium III machine with 128 MB of RAM certainly isn't the ideal platform, nor is a 640 x 480 display terribly practical nowadays, but I can report that Haiku runs reasonably well and looks very nice.

Unfortunately, I can't get it on the Internet yet. I don't know whether the built-in ethernet port is the culprit or if it's Intenet sharing on the eMac in the basement that's causing the problem. I'll have to try connecting another machine via ethernet and see if that works.

Haiku recommends more RAM and more CPU power than I have. It seems to support almost every PCI ethernet card tested, so that's an option if the built-in ethernet is the problem. For about $50 I could make this machine much more capable.

If you're looking for something new to play with, give Haiku a try.

Quieter MDD Power Mac!

2009-09-16T10:03:00.003-04:00

The last time I tried to use my dual 1 GHz Power Mac G4 'Mirror Drive Door', I was blown away at how much louder it was than my 'Digital Audio' Power Mac with its dual 1.6 GHz upgrade. The MDD Power Mac is known to be noisy, and Acclerate Your Mac has a very helpful article on replacing the two fans in the power supply and the CPU cooling fan.

I ordered the suggested fans from NewEgg.com for about $18, and I finished installing them this morning. It took some doing, as Apple uses different power connectors, so I had to splice the old connectors to the new fans. That meant scrounging up my ancient soldering iron and some solder, buying a roll of electrical tape, and only burning my fingers once - very slightly.

I ran into a problem the first time I booted the system with the new fans installed - the CPU temperature quickly rose beyond 70 degrees Celcius. I found that the power supply was very hot, and the culprit was the new fans. They weren't spinning at all. It turns out they were catching on something, so I made a gasket with some double-sided foam tape, which solved the problem.

I am happy to report that the MDD is pretty much as quiet as the 'Mystic' dual 500 MHz Power Mac (scheduled to become our test server now that the MDD is up and running again) and the Digital Audio. This mod if not for the faint hearted, and it's letting me use my newest Power Mac once again. (Yes, it really was that noisy.)

Many thanks to Accelerate Your Mac and its readers for the article on quieting the MDD - and so many other wonderful reports on the site.

Teleport update

2009-09-04T07:41:00.003-04:00

I am loving this program. I've set it up so I have to hold down the Ctrl key to switch between machines - it keeps me from going off the side of the screen by accident.

Tip: If you use the Dock on the side of your display, don't have it on the same side you drag through when moving between machines. I usually have the Dock on the bottom, but is was on the side when I booted into Leopard. Just too distracting having the Dock respond while you're moving between Macs. (Leopard isn't bad at all on a dual 500 MHz Power Mac G4!)

I've posted my clipboard problem to the Teleport forum. Hoping to find an answer soon. I'll share it here.

One Keyboard and Mouse for Multiple Macs

2009-09-03T06:38:00.002-04:00

I've got my dual 500 MHz 'Mystic' Power Mac G4 running Mac OS X 10.4.11 - just like my main Mac, a dual 1.6 GHz upgraded 'Digital Audio' Power Mac. The Mystic has a 17" Samsung display set at 1280 x 960, and to the right of that is the Dell flat panel display connected to the Digital Audio.

I've installed Teleport on both, set Mystic as a "shared" Mac, and now I can simply move my mouse from one display to the other. The keyboard works with whatever screen I'm on at the moment. Very cool! I can drag files from one Mac to the other by dragging them from one display to the other, and I have it set to synchronize the clipboard, so I can cut-and-paste between machines. (For some reason, it's only working in one direction - from the master to the slave.)

My goal is to do this with Leopard on one Mac (most likely the upgraded Digital Audio) and Tiger on the other (Mystic right now, but the dual 1 GHz 'Mirror Drive Door' Power Mac when the quieter cooling fans arrive from NewEgg.com). This will let me migrate to Leopard as my main OS and still be able to use Tiger and Classic Mode as necessary. (Yes, after all these years I'm still using Claris Home Page.)

Pretty impressive!

A Wrench in the Works

2009-09-02T15:05:00.003-04:00

I got everything set up: dual 1 GHz Mirror Drive Door Power Mac on the left, 17" Samsung display next to it, Dell LCD monitor next to that, and dual 1.8 GHz upgraded Digital Audio Power Mac on the right. It all fits quite nicely on this makeshift desk (two 2-drawer file cabinets with countertop replaced in the kitchen last summer). Rerouted ethernet cables, moved the Netgear router, relocated the UPSes and surge strips.

Everything works, but I'd forgotten how freakin' noisy the MDD Power Mac can be. It takes very little time before the cooling fans are running flat out. I cleaned out quite a bit of dust, which helped a bit. I moved the hard drive away from the CPU radiator, which should also help a bit. But the machine is simply noisy. Found a good article on Accelerate Your Mac with suggested replacement fans - supposed to cost about $20. I'll have to look into that - after all these months with the upgraded DA, I just can't take the noise. Maybe I'll swap in my dual 500 MHz Mystic until I can silence the MDD....

Moving Toward Leopard

2009-08-31T14:20:00.002-04:00

This is the week I'm preparing to move to Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" as my primary operating system. The reason I've held back is my dependence on Classic Mode to run Claris Home Page. The plan is to have two G4 Power Macs side by side with Leopard on one and Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" (and Classic Mode) on the other.

The current plan is to use the Digital Audio Power Mac with the 1.6 GHz dual processor upgrade as the Leopard machine, as that's my fastest machine. It already has the Radeon 9000 card from my 1 GHz dual Mirror Drive Door, which should make it a better match for Leopard. It has 1.25 GB of RAM.

The MDD will be my Tiger machine. It has the video card from the Digital Audio, and there isn't much performance difference in Tiger. It also has 2 GB of RAM, the most I've ever had in a computer. In a pinch, I'll be able to boot this on into Mac OS 9.2.2. (With the CPU upgrade, the Digital Audio doesn't like booting OS 9 natively.)

I hope to set things up so I can seamlessly share the same mouse and keyboard with both machines. I'm looking at SynergyKM (free) and Teleport (donationware). The latter is Mac only and supports OS X 10.3 through 10.6.

Tough Times at Low End Mac

2009-08-25T14:18:00.002-04:00

It's been a pretty horrible 10 months from an income standpoint. Low End Mac traffic remains good, and we have new content daily, but ad rates - or maybe just the number of ads being sold - have fallen significantly. We've had a lot of really bad months in the past year, but August is shaping up as the worst by far. There simply isn't enough income to cover minimum expenses.

We've added Low End Mac Services as the troubleshooting/consulting/file conversion/etc. side of the business - just need to get the word out there and find clients. We can support clients anywhere in the world by email, in the US by phone, and almost anywhere by mail. Reasonable rates, and we accept credit cards (thanks to PayPal - and you needn't have a PayPal account to use this service).

We've had a handful of clients in our first two weeks, and each has been very happy with the services we've provided. You can learn more in the Low End Mac Services Blog.

If that doesn't take off, I'm looking into employment options in the state with the nation's highest unemployment rate. I'd hate to have to turn LEM into a part-time sideline, but mortgages have to be paid and groceries bought. (We won't shut down. Not ever.)

How Can You Help?

There are any number of ways you can help our bottom line.

1. Buy through the companies that run ads on Low End Mac. This will let them know that LEM is a good source of customers.

2. Buy through the companies listed in our price trackers. Some of them advertise, and some are affiliates, which means that we get a small commission from any sales.

3. Boost site traffic through links on your blog or website. Share links on Facebook and/or Twitter. We earn just a fraction of a penny per page view, but with over a million pages served per month, that turns into real money.

4. If finances permit, send a gift of money to Low End Mac or use the Tip Jar to gift money directly to one of our columnists.

Thanks for being a fan of Low End Mac. We're here for the long haul and hoping the economy will take a turn for the better very soon.

Dan Knight, publisher, LowEndMac.com

"64-Bitness" Article a Hit

2009-08-20T08:56:00.000-04:00

It's very gratifying to see that nearly 5,000 people have read my article The 64-Bitness of Mac OS X 10.6 'Snow Leopard' since it was posted Wednesday morning. I think it's important that we know that while Snow Leopard may not boot into 64-bit mode by default, that's not necessarily a drawback at this point.

Once Snow Leopard has been on the market for a while, we should see a lot more 64-bit apps and drivers, which will pave the way for 64-bit mode becoming the default, but we're not there yet.

WallStreet comes through

2009-08-18T09:28:00.000-04:00

Back in May, a friend at church gave me his dad's old WallStreet PowerBook. It hadn't been used in years and was in beautiful condition. I got two batteries (one completely dead), a CD-ROM module, and a floppy drive module. I've since picked up a second battery on eBay for about $5 - figured it was worth a shot, and if it was dead, not much lost. I now have two batteries that each hold a nearly 3 hour charge.

I've been experimenting, trying to get newer versions of OS X installed (it only officially supports up to 10.2.8), and upgrading the RAM and hard drive. I went from a slow 6 GB hard drive to 20 GB 5400 rpm (from my dead PowerBook G4) and boosted RAM from 64 MB to 384 MB. It's no speed demon, but it works.

Anyhow, I got to use it yesterday to copy some files from an 800K floppy disk, which USB floppy drives can't read at all. It's nice to have a practical use for this 11-year-old computer!