512mb to 1.25gb upgrade?
 

Hey,
I just got my new 12" powerbook about a week ago and I've seen a lot of people with the ram maxed out at 1.25gb. How much of a speed increase does this offer? I do A LOT of photo editing with photoshop, and I almost always have Yahoo instant messanger, firefox, ichat, itunes and photoshop open. Do you guys think that the ram upgrade will be worth it for me?

Thanks,
Kyle


Also, any random info I should know? This is my first Apple computer. :D

If you are doing Photoshop work on Hi-res pics, then definitely you will notice everything is a bit snappier with say 1gb as compared to 512mb. To be honest you wont find a lot of difference in real speed of say filter rendering. But you will find the system is snappier with multiple apps running, as it wont have to write stuff to disk as often. It's a much more pleasurable and productive process with that much ram. I always recommend people try to get 1Gb as a starting point.

Think of it this way: More memory does not increase speed. Lack of memory slows the machine down. You may or may not lack memory, and how much you need and how much difference it makes will vary.

Get a utility such as Menu Meters, and watch your memory usage as you work in your usual apps. Then decide if you need an upgrade, and how much.

PS use isn't necessarily a pig; it depends on file sizes. Assume you need about 3-5 times as much memory as the file size, for each concurrent file open.

Get Apple-certified memory to decrease the chance of an issue. Doesn't need to be from Apple, just any vendor that puts "Apple compatible" in the name. I've used Corsair, Kingston, Viking, PQI, and a few others. You need SO-DIMM form factor, PC2700/DDR333 speed. The Corsair doesn't mention Apple, but works great. Fry's Outpost had 1GB sticks for $130-ish a few weeks ago.

Alright, thanks.

What about this: I have 10 or so tabs open in firefox and I'm working on a couple of 4mp pictures in photoshop, will the ram fix the slowdown I see doing this?

I'll be ordering the new ram soon, just wondering... :)

Welcome to Mac! As others have mentioned, I think you will find a bit of a performance increase with more RAM. I'd say it's worth grabbing a Gig. If you are careful you can put it in yourself.

Random tip: Drag your Applications folder into your dock, next to your trash can. When you hold the mouse button down on the folder in the dock you will have the Mac equivalent of the Start menu.

Well, I'm running the MenuMeter thing and it says I have about 150mb of ram free, and my CPU is at 100%.

Even when I'm not doing anything but typing it says my cpu is at 90%+, that can't be right, is it?

Thanks for that tip about the App folder in my dock.... It's kinda cool.

MenuMeters is kind of complicated. But in general if you see a lot of pageouts it means you could use more memory. You are welcome for the tip!

Pageouts? You mean where you switch to another window and some sections are white//have contents from the programs under it, right?

I like this forum... much friendlier than my old one. :)

It's not normal for a system to idle at 90%, so you should see what's using the CPU. If you click on the CPU display in Menu Meters, it will give you quick access to the Activity Monitor. That will show you all the processes. Click on the CPU column to arrange them by usage, and see what the top users are.

If you click on the memory display in Menu Meters, it will show the pagein/pageout stats, as well as other useful info. I'm not an expert on interpreting this, but post it and I'm sure someone who is will give you the meaning.

Carbon Keys Trojan Server 1.3


Uhh..... Two of those were running... each taking up 35% of my cpu... Anybody have any clue what that was and how it got on my computer? That doesn't sound good, and the fact that I dont know what it was and that it was using that much of my resources makes it worse. Lol.

I searched for it in google with no results.

Edit:
Nevermind... I found out what it was.... It was a friend of mine who put that on my computer when he was sending me some music... AH!

Does anybody know what it does though? Sounds like a keylogger to me.

You can find info on pageouts by clicking on the memory section of menumeters. Pageouts tell you how much the hard drive is working to compensate for lack of FAM. Basically few or no pageouts means you have plenty of RAM.

I'm glad somebody picked up on the 90 percent CPU activity.

Haha, 575,000 page-ins... and 365,000 page outs.

That's not good, is it?

and yes, I'm glad that somebody caught the CPU idle, too!

Uhh, no! :-)

With one Gig of RAM I have 32,835 pageins and 1 pageout. I'd say you could benefit from more RAM!

Geez...if it's got Trojan in the name, and it's not birth control, and it's running on a computer, I don't like the sound of dat! :cool:

It's set then, as soon as I get my next check I'm off to newegg to get some ram!


...My friends are going to be so jealous. :)

Hmm. I have 1.5GB on my PB, and with 7.5 days of uptime I have 1.38 million pageins and 392,000 pageouts. Do I really need more than 1.5GB? Maybe it was those huge TIFF files I was importing to iPhoto; they really tied up the machine.

Something definitely did! My understanding is that pageouts mean you are using the hard disk for VM. How many and what size of VM files (swapfiles) do you have? That will be another indicator. You can find that info in the same place in MM.

Another idea: shut down and start over on the pageouts. Check more frequently and try to catch what makes the number go up.

6 swap files, 2GB. At no time did the memory meter dip below 400MB free.

You're right, I'll have to reboot and see what it does. Gotta be that iPhoto TIFF import; the machine was near-dead but there was little CPU usage. And really, they're only 60-130MB TIFF files, I did five of them, and no more than three at one time.

ram and scratch
 

yes more ram will help you out in all areas.

I also have my photoshop scatch disk set on a fast external disk. This really helps the speed of photoshop when using big files.

happy days !

This idea just hit me... What if I set my 512mb thumbdrive as the scratch disk? Would that work? or is it not big enough?

I think you have two concerns with the thumbdrive. Speed and capacity. If swap files need to exceed 512MB, you hit a ceiling. But before that, you may hit a speed limit on the transfer rate of the flash media or the interface. If scratch space is supposed to assist RAM, you want the fastest media you can afford. Even fast hard drives on a fast bus are far slower than RAM. Day to day Photoshop soldiers always tell you to get some hella fast huge hard drives or a RAID to use as a scratch disk to provide minimal compromise on performance, and a 512MB thumbdrive is nearly as far as you can get from that goal.

Okay, that's what I thought, just was wondering.

I do have a USB 2.0 80 gig external hard drive, though, I doubt it'd be fast enough to help at all.


On a side note, I have a 80gb SATA drive that I'd like to hook up to my laptop as an external drive, how could I pull this off?

Also, my understanding is that flash memory takes a limited number of writes. Constantly writing to flash memory as a scratch disk may accelerate its death, but I don't really know the facts about this.

The USB 2.0 might be OK. Not sure, since I use a FireWire external. The SATA might be attachable with an SATA external enclosure like one of these (thanks Google)

http://fwdepot.com/thestore/product_...oducts_id/1041
http://www.cooldrives.com/nasadrenwiou.html
http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sata/satakits.php

Hmm... Oh well. Heh.

Isn't USB 2 faster than firewire 400? I think I'll set that up as a scratch drive when I get organized... If ever.

That reminds me... How do you guys transport your powerbooks/iBooks? I'd been carrying it around like a book, as it's a little smaller than my math book. When school comes around I think I'm going to be putting it in my backpack. (in a special section though)

USB 2 is not faster than Firewire. It has a higher speed number, but it's not actually faster in the real world. Kinda like a Pentium has a higher speed number than a G5, but is less efficient.

Note that most SATA external enclosures require a SATA connection to the computer also. The second link above seems to be a rare exception.

I carry my 17" PB in a Targus case that has space for all my other computer and office supplies. It's not big, but it has 387 pockets for all kinds of stuff. The 12" lives in a sling case that I picked up at the Apple store. That one seems ideal for student use; has enough space for a couple books and some supplies, along with a reasonably padded computer compartment.

I don't recommend just adapting a regular backpack. There are great computer backpacks out there. Check the Apple store if you have one near you, Best Buy, and CompUSA.

This site says FireWire 400 is faster than USB 2, and the funny thing is they sell USB gear.
http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm

I always carry my PowerBook in a padded case of some kind because it costs too much money to be dropped. Either a briefcase style when I need to look businesslike, or a good padded insert inside my beat-up old backpack when I want to avoid that "hey all you muggers, I'm carrying a $2000 computer" look.

I guess it depends on the computer and the device you are connecting to. From my experience and from reading posts here it seems like FireWire on Macs is usually faster than USB 2.

Alright. Lets see... I MUST have some more questions while I'm here...

What's a good backpack-replacement/powerbook carrier that you guys would recomend? :)

Is anybody up on their consumer video camera-knowledge? :o

I carry my iBook in a Roots backpack that was given to me by a friend who competed in the 2004 Olympics. I've seen these backpacks being sold on eBay, so you might look into getting one. A nice padded computer area, a big middle area for books, a decent-sized set of pockets for a mouse, a small USB hub, your power adapter, and other stuff, a detachable front pocket for a portable CD player or your iPod, and a mesh pouch on the side to hold a water bottle (or other beverage of choice. I might still be forgetting something. Oh, and you don't have to wear it on your back; it has a shoulder strap also.

Video camera: Just make sure it's DV and has firewire out. My wife has a Sharp which you hold like a digital point-and-shoot camera and look at the huge LCD on the back. Oddly enough I have not yet played with it with iMovie... she just plugs it into the firewire in on our DVD recorder and makes discs directly. If I were wanting one, I'd probably get a Canon, because I like the way they fit into the hand.

It might be time to start another thread! :-)

Back to RAM and speed...
 

One more bit of advice for a new Mac user: Sleep the computer rather than shutdown. What I have found (and read elsewhere) is that the contents of your RAM cache becomes more streamlined to the way you work the longer your computer runs. So after a couple of days, you may find that the computer is more responsive as you work. Make sense?

Oh, and plus your boot-up time goes away! :p

Nope.

But I never turn off any of the PBs anyway, no reason to.

MenuMeter CPU always at 100%
 

Dear all,

My problem is with MenuMeter, my CPU Meter speed is always telling me I'm maxed out at 100%. This is wrong and I know this is wrong because I checked my Activity Monitor. On idle all my CPU %s added up is around 7%, yet in my CPU MenuMeter at the top still says 100%.

Is this a bug in MenuMeter?

Alex
(I have a 12inch 1Ghz Powerbook, 1.25 Ram)

In my experience, MenuMeter is extremely robust.

Make sure you run the most recent version.

Does the problem persist after a reboot ?

In Activity Monitor, is 'My Processes' selected? Make sure it's set to 'All Processes'.