Ben Drawbaugh

As long as I have had my MacBook Pro I have regretted ordering a 120GB 5400rpm drive. I ordered it when the it was first announced, and in my all my excitement I failed to notice the performance difference between 5400rpm and 7200rpm drives. My good friend Frankie quickly pointed it out; no, I didn’t appreciate it. As much as I wanted to swap the drive, I just couldn’t justify it because of the price and the fact that my drive is always full, until recently 160GB 7200rpm drives weren’t even available. I was very excited when I learned that Seagate was releasing a drive for me, only to be disappointed to have to wait to actually receive it. Well the time has finally arrived and it was worth the wait. Anxious to justify my purchase I rebooted and ran back to back XBench tests to get a baseline before swapping in the new drive (more on that later).

After following the great disassembly instructions at iFixit and only loosing one screw I used my favorite Linux LiveCD Gentoo to dd the original disc which took just over an hour. I used the same technique I did for upgrading my Series3, and lucky for me, 2.5″ SATA drives use the same physical interface as the 3.5″ variety. I put everything back together and what do you know, it booted.

Just before I got started my friend Ryan reminded me that 7200rpm drives will kill my battery faster than 5400rpm does, thanks for hating on my new purchase! So just after I booted with my new drive and ran XBench a few times, I researched the drives specs and more specifically the power requirements. The original Toshiba MK1234GSX drive averaged 2.5 watts when seeking compared to the Seagate which was 2.3 watts, while the Read/write uses 2.0 watts vs 2.1 watts and lastly the idle/standby: 1.0/0.25 vs 0.8/0.25. So not only is the new drive bigger and faster, but it also uses less power!

On to performance.
I ran multiple XBench tests so I took the best from both.

Total Disk test results: 30.41 vs 41.86 or 27% increase.

Sequential test results: 35.76 vs 89.12 or 60% increase.

Random test Results: 26.46 vs 27.35 or 3% increase.

My overall XBench score also went from 83.64 to 97.54, which I think makes it well worth the $199 for the new drive, not to mention the additional 37GB of usable space and now I can turn the old 120GB drive into a pocket drive.

Ever since I started using a Mac I continue to be surprised when things “Just work”, and today I am writing this with my new EVDO 740 Air card from Verizon. I have been wanting one of these ever since I changed jobs and my new employer supplied me with a phone from Cingular instead of Verizon. Cingular’s voice service is good, but the data leaves alot to be desired. Unlike most of my purchases I didn’t research this as much as I usually do. I was in a pinch and needed to get my Internet fix, previously my research had let me to Sprint, but tonight when I tried to go to the Sprint store they were closed at 7pm, and what do you know, Verizon was just across the street and open till 9pm. After waiting a few minutes Carlos was really helping me out and even got me a discount on the device or $100 instead of $179, no rebates!

So I was off, but concerned about activation, as reading that it wasn’t possible to activate on a Mac. Reading the directions on my way home — yes while I was driving — I realized that OS X was supported and when I eventually plugged the ExpressCard in, I was amazed that I was on the internet in less than 2 minutes and all I had to do was insert the card, click ok a few times, followed by my password and finally hit the connect button. All I have to say is WOW! I wish using my XV6700 was that easy.

This is my first Verizon service and I am off to a great start, we’ll see how long that lasts. Ohh did I mention it was fast?

‘Been reading PC world for some time, and thanks to a fellow Engadgeter I get mentioned in online article about hacking the Apple TV. While this won’t be printed, it’s still exciting for me and I’m glad Cyrus decided to invite me to participate. Not only did I get recognized for being the first to write an Apple TV drive upgrade How-To, but he used a quote, “Hacks don’t have to be practical, they have to be enjoyable,”.

Thanks Cyrus!

One of my problems with the Apple TV is you can only sync with one Mac and I keep my iPhoto collection on a different Mac than iTunes. This on top of the fact that you can’t stream Photos means I have to move my iPhoto library to my Mini. I don’t want to do this, so I figured an easy way around it. I am going to do a one-way manual sync from my MacBookPro to my Mac Mini using rsync.

No doubt I could schedule this, but my MacBook isn’t always on and I don’t update my iPhoto library every day so I am going to do it manually.

For now I will run it from the terminal, but I may write an AppleScript that prompts me for the credentials. Here is the command.

rsync -e ssh -az –delete /Users/bdrawbaugh/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library macmini.local:/Users/bdrawbaugh/Pictures

Then I get prompted for my password on my mini and it syncs.