Tech Tok

Woo, just tripled my RAM and doubled my hard drive space. When I bought the G5, I got the minimum RAM because Apple charges way more than retail. It’s taken me this long to finally get around to getting more RAM.

I had 512 MB before, and now I have 1.5 Gig. Sometimes, when running many apps, I was thrashing quite a bit.

top: new RAM; bottom: old RAM

The new RAM is faster than the old, being PC-4200 (old was PC-3200), but the Mac only recognizes it as PC3200:

Ah well. If I get a newer machine, hopefully I will be able to move the RAM to it (and use it at a higher speed).

Both the new and old hard drives are marked as 250 Gig, but the OS says that the old Maxtor (AApple-installed) is 233.76 GB, while the new Western Digital is 232.89 GB, almost a Gig of difference! The plan is to use the two drives with Apple’s built-in software RAID-0 to speed things up. This, of course, requires me to back everything up and reformat. Well, it’s a good exercise, since it forces me to back up everything. I’m burning many DVDs to store things on. I’ve run out of place4s to put the burned DVDs, so I should go and get a pack of sleeves or something soon.

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I’m not a big fan of email or ringtones on phones, but if you’re getting a new phone with a camera (also not particularly useful, I don’t think, unless you want to sneak a few shots at a concert or something) be sure to get a triband phone. You need a triband phone with GSM for use in Mexico, France or U.K. and possibly elsewhere — it’s supposed to be an international standard. It’s about $3/min in Mexico & $2.50/min in France, so it’s only use is to initiate calls you would complete using a calling card on a public phone. It beats hotel rates, however.

Found this story on XBitLabs‘ site. Technically, it isn’t a big deal at all, and I’m sure the next version will support Intel CPUs. It’s just because Intel was so late in getting consumer-level 64-bit CPUs out. But boy, it sure makes Intel look bad — trailing after AMD in a way.