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'.