Philoking.com

Last weekend I walked a tightrope. I was probably the most nervous working on a computer I have ever been. I gathered my courage and undertook the most dangerous of all upgrades, the Macbook Pro hard drive replacement.

My Macbook Pro has been suffering with an anemic 120GB Hard Disk for quite some time. Now 120GB on a notebook shouldn’t be that anemic right? After formatting and such it’s really only about 112GB, and after a full install of the OS, Photoshop CS, Final Cut Express, iLife, Office 2008, Logic Studio and a few dozen other various applications, I was sitting with about 16GB of free space.

I had decided to give VMware 2 Beta 2 a shot, and knew something had to give. It would be pointless to start a VMware with Windows Vista with 16GB of space.

The Hardware
Luck was in my favor last Sunday. After a strike out at Best Buy, Office Depot had a Seagate Momentus 250GB SATA drive on sale for $89. That was just what I was looking for and I took it home following a short trip to Radio Shack to get the prerequisite T6 Torx screwdriver that is required for the upgrade.

Also required to complete the task successfully, was the hard drive converter I purchased a few weeks ago at Fry’s. The Apricorn Drivewire is not only a very slick device, but it makes this whole process totally easy. This slick device allows you to connect a 3.5" IDE, 3.5" SATA, 2.5" IDE or 2.5" SATA (What the Macbook Pro Uses) Hard Drive to your computer via USB 2.0, without having to use an external case. With this device I am able to transfer data among hard drives without having to constantly crack external enclosures and swap things around to get things done.

The Software
Many people will tell you that to pull this off you need software like SuperDuper or the like. I am here to tell you, there really is no need for such software, everything you need is built into OS X, both Tiger and Leopard and even earlier I am betting. It’s called Disk Utility. I’ll tell you more about that in the process.

The Process
Dismantling the Macbook Pro is no easy task. You will need a small, and I mean very small Phillips screwdriver, jewelers size, as well as a T6 Torx screwdriver and by some accounts a spludger. I didn’t have the spludger and all went well for me so I am thinking that is optional.

First of all, either use a second laptop, or print the directions from iFixit. The Hard Drive Replacement guide is thorough and all I needed for my operation.

To make my life easier, I took a piece of poster board I had handy, and I drew circles each time I moved to a new section of the laptop, labeled the circle something like "right side of case" and I placed the screws in that circle. That way every screw went right back where it came from.

I removed all 30 or so screws, including the four, you count em, 4 T6 screws that you need the Torx screwdriver for, and replaced the hard drive empty. I did not make an attempt to backup the drive or move the OS contents until after the hardware upgrade was complete.

With the new drive in place, I reassembled the case, twice. Why twice? Somehow in the process I bent the top of the DVD slit slightly and it wouldn’t close just right, I re-opened it, bent it back, and it closed up perfect the second time.

With the hard part finished, I started the process of restoring my OS to the drive. I connected the old drive to the Drivewire device mentioned earlier, and booted the computer with the OS X install DVD. When time came to install the OS, I instead chose utilities from the top menu, and selected "Disk Utility", on the restore tab, I was able to select the new 250GB drive as the target and the old 120GB as the source. In about an hour total, it had formatted the new drive to the Journaled OS file system and restored the entire OS, all my software, settings and data to the new drive. I removed the DVD, rebooted the system and my desktop loaded as if I had never touched it. Talk about easy!

Bootcamp
I decided I wanted this set up a certain way. I wanted Windows Vista Home Premium installed on a 50GB Bootcamp partition, and I wanted to be able to access it from Mac OS X via VMware Fusion if I needed to.

I used the Bootcamp Utility to set up the partition and begin the Windows installation. After a few hours I had it up, all drivers set up, all the software and updates I wanted and I was ready to boot back into OS X.

VMware
I would say setting up VMware to read the Bootcamp partition is easy, but that might be making it more complicated than it is. If VMware detects a Bootcamp partition, it shows up as an OS in your VMware system list. You boot it, it runs, installs the drivers it needs and prompts you to install the VMware tools. Done deal.

The Aftermath
I now say that my Macbook Pro has a split personality. The list of software installed is formidable. In addition to the earlier listed load of Mac apps, I also have all that’s included with Vista, as well as Visual Studio Professional, Expression Studio 2, Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 and the suite of Live apps I love including Windows Live writer that I am using to write this post right now.

Now my daily life I spent in OS X, chatting, mail, browsing the web and the like. My more serious work I do in Vista, that is development, blogging, etc.

I would venture to say that given this site’s general topic of OS Agnostic computing, I know more than most the arguments for and against these two titan operating systems. The arguments against Vista are legendary. I have made no secret of the fact that I started carrying a Macbook Pro in September of last year. With the exception of using VmWare Fusion sometimes at work, it has truly lived as a Mac. It shipped with Tiger and was upgraded to Leopard as soon as it was available. Still, I have never strayed from my Windows roots. I used a Windows XP desktop machine regularly at home and these days I have two Vista powerhouses side by side at home. My laptop still runs Leopard and I have added an iMac into the mix that runs Leopard also, but I still remain divided right down the middle in my personal computing world, two Macs and two PCs. I might just give someone a headache to think about how this works, but for me, it’s computing Nirvana.

I think it’s important to dissect each computer’s purpose and see how it lends itself to a particular operating system. I think this first exercise might just lend some light to this dubious setup:

1. Macbook Pro Laptop: (2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB Ram, 120GB HD, nVidia GeForce 8600m) This laptop is hands down my favorite laptop I have ever owned. To quantify that, this is laptop number 10. I have been a card carrying, or laptop carrying, geek since I was in the 10th grade. I am not kidding, we are talking monochrome plasma screen, DOS and a 5 1/4" floppy drive. It probably weighed 10lbs. These days, it’s a svelte Macbook Pro, 15.4" display, thin and light, fast as hell and it runs OS X Leopard. I use it for mobile photo work, email, chatting, browsing the web and the like. It’s just a keep me connected while I am away machine. I have a PC laptop Microsoft provides that does the work duty while I am mobile, and I keep my laptop free to play and have fun. Steve Jobs can cringe, but I would hardly consider an Apple laptop if it was my primary business laptop, that is unless my primary business was graphics, audio or video. Not that one couldn’t survive on one (or boot Vista on it for that matter, but this is about OS X) I just don’t think it would be a practical machine. That being said, I have never loved a laptop more.
2. Home Built Vista Ultimate 32-bit Desktop: (2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 3GB Ram, 400GB & 120GB HD’s, nVidia GeForce 8400 GS) This machine is a week new. I say a week new because I replaced all of the guts in this machine last week. This has nothing to do with the OS, but I hardly think I could have revived a waning iMac for $340 and literally replaced every component but the case, power supply and DVD drive. In a way it does have everything to do with the OS though. Windows Vista is flexible. It doesn’t require Steve Jobs approved hardware. It will run on nearly anything. I bought a box of parts, put them together, turned it on and installed Vista without incident. I am writing this blog on it and so far this machine is fast, stabile and a dream to use. This is the machine I use for development work, including maintaining this site. I also sometimes do some light graphics work on it, manage all of my email, and browse the web and communicate with friends. This box has been my general purpose computer for five years. I think it cost me about $2,000 to build in 2003, and now another $340 and it’s better than any machine I could have bought at the local PC retailers for three times as much. I know, I looked.
3. HP Vista Ultimate 64-bit Desktop: (2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB Ram, 350GB HD, nVidia GeForce 8800 GT) This machine is arguably the most under utilized machine in this house. It’s fast, has gobs of ram and a big ass 24" monitor. I use it for photo work from time to time, watch TV and movies on it, and most of the time I just plink around on it when my other box is busy. They side side by side in my office and it gets maybe 20% of the overall use. It screams through Photoshop and given some of the upgrades I gave it, it plays games fantastically well. It has 4GB of Ram, a Core 2 Duo processor and a nVidia GeForce 8800 GT video card. It’s a true screamer and to me it’s just a fun machine to play with. I am sure someday I will come up with something useful to use it for regularly, but for now it’s kind of the Tim Allen machine, you know, the one that makes you grunt when you use it.
4. 24" iMac Desktop: (2.13Ghz Core 2 Duo, 3GB Ram, 250GB HD, nVidia 7300 GT) I bought this computer for the sole purpose of doing music work with it. It excels at that task well and has now also picked up some video work. This computer gets the least use of any in the arsenal, but when it does, it never gets in my way, it’s rock solid and Logic Express is a dream to use. It’s connected to a variety of audio hardware and it never gives me a minute’s trouble. I would possibly use this machine for more if I didn’t already have several others. I have intentionally left certain applications off of it so I am not tempted to garbage it up full of stuff I could too easily use on other computers that already have that software.

Now one might ask why the hell have all these computers, couldn’t I have gotten one big ass computer and done all of this stuff on it? Yea, possibly I could have. But that’s just not how I work. Without having a business to pay the ridiculous cost of a Mac Pro or a high end Workstation computer, I buy these on my budget. I also like the ability to dedicate a machine to a particular task, like compressing video or playing a game, and still be able to browse the web about the game or work on something else while one is crunching away.

The entire point to this article is simple. With all that information I just threw out there, I use Windows and OS X simultaneously. Never am I on one when I am saying to myself "Man, I wish this had x on it." I think they both have their own strengths and weaknesses, but neither are so strong or so weak as to make a clear winner. And one last note to leave on, don’t let anyone tell you that Vista is crazy buggy, slow or hard to use. I gave up Windows XP for Vista officially last week, and not once have I wished otherwise. This machine runs it exceptionally well, it’s rock solid and I have no complaints.

After reading this article on Macenstein this evening, I felt compelled to bang out a quick blog to add a little truth to the reality distortion field that is already reaching fever pitch more than 12 hours away from Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld tomorrow.

The article’s title "On Macworld Eve: Two more mails in Vista’s coffin," makes me want to ponder his points a little more. First let me be clear on a few facts

I am a Mac user. I love my Macbook Pro. I love my iPod, and I love OS X.

Now for the disclosure that will shock and cause your brain to hurt. I work for Microsoft. I use Windows Vista every day on a desktop and a laptop. I actually really like Windows Vista too. So with that said, let’s look at some reality and alternate points of view. For the sake of this article, I am going to pretend (actually I am not pretending, I do) use ProTools on a Mac. Let’s rewind to Mac OS X Panther and pretend that I am running a shiny PowerMac dual 2.0 Ghz tower with the latest version of Pro Tools on it. Again, it’s not really hypothetical, I was.

So OS X Tiger came out and I wanted it. The only problem is that ProTools wouldn’t work with OS X Tiger. Only Panther. Sound familiar?

Now let’s fast forward to last year, I ran out to get Leopard, installed it on a brand spankin’ new current 2.2Ghz Macbook Pro and bam, bluescreen. Time Machine ran like crap on a brand new dedicated hard disk. There were glitches abound.

Since when are these things unique to Microsoft? Now we read that there is a petition to keep Microsoft from giving up selling Windows XP. Here is the reality…

If you are using a new computer with current software, Windows Vista works just fine. If you are using an older computer, keep XP on it, it’s probably on it anyway.

Microsoft may very well extend the life of XP, that’s anyone’s guess. But the negativity is pointless. I say instead of giving Vista the finger, give Vista a chance. It’s actually pretty damned solid on good hardware.

UK Schools Ditching Windows?
Here is another take at bait and switch titling. Just because a school isn’t adopting Vista and Office 07 (which is common practice for corporations and educational institutions since Windows 2000 came out to replace NT4) doesn’t mean they are going all Mac or taking up the Linux bandwagon. It just means they aren’t making a commitment to Vista yet. This again, is common practice.

The point is that the tornado that is "hate Vista propaganda" is getting ridiculous. Ethical journalism has long left the building and people are now debating pure hyperbole and buzz. Nobody looks at the facts, the real compatibility and most of all most of the people writing the articles aren’t using it.

Get the facts, give it a shot, and don’t do it on your grandpa’s old commodore 64, use a reasonable system.

Today I’ve been using Mac OS X Leopard for 4 weeks on a daily basis. On a PowerMac G5 at work and and on my Macbook Pro at home.
And in this article I try to point out some things I probably would have done differently when I was to decide that to put in Leopard.

The list is in semi random order whichever item came to mind first is at the top.

So there is a simple form of preference here. But not necessarily a order or importance.

1. Leave the firewall port based and have it actually work. The ‘all-new’ firewall in Leopard is completely broken and is so dysfunctional I disabled it because it just doesn’t block anything or even leaves my computer in stealth. The firewall in Tiger worked fine and should not have been changed. Merely updates to optionally offer application based rules instead of port based ones.
2. Have the trash appear as a stack instead of a Finder folder. To truly have stacks integrated in the system and not have it as a by-product inside a existing system they could have made the trash a stack just to show how it works and for looks of course. Now it seems the system ignores stacks and shows of as pure eye-candy with no real function.
3. Spaces should be on a cube. Like Linux has had for years. When switching desktops offer some more visual options regarding the actual switch. Stick the desktops to a cube… The sliding isn’t bad and is quite fast but it’s too limited for “the most advanced OS ever”.
4. Offer more options for theming Mac OS X. If Apple and ‘Mac’ was truly about fun and games and creativity why not offer a form of SDK or various themes to style the OS to your personal liking? Why force everyone to use the exact same theme, icons and mouse cursors? Sometimes I so miss such options.
5. Allow more options in Timemachine, regarding the back-up schedule for example. I can imagine most people don’t want hourly back-ups… Like me… once every few days is enough for me.
6. Also for Timemachine, allow a broader selection of storage devices. Like network disks or another server than Xserve and XSan. Technically this is not impossible as I’m doing it right now using Rsyncx.
7. Obtain the app Growl and create systemwide support for it. Much like the current app does now. But then truly built-in.
8. Expand the clock view in the upper right corner to include a quickview or preview of the iCal calendars you use. Like when you click the clock a menu/dynamic window comes out showing the current month in a calendar and this weeks appointments in a list below it. Also allowing a certain degree of management like adding events or a simple search would be very nice.
9. Better navigation controls in Finder. Perhaps even add a bar showing the current path and allowing to navigate with that as well or opening upper layers/folders in a new windows for more easy control and copying/dragging files around.
10. Not be so wary about security and let it go a bit. Sure, people should be made aware of the risks. But at the same time it struck me how much more alerts and warnings there are compared to Tiger… Almost as if they don’t trust their own system and feel like they need to tell the end user this over and over. Isn’t OS X still the more safe OS along with Unix/Linux?

Maybe you have other things you would have done differently. Don’t hesitate and post them in the comment section. I would like to hear about them. Maybe someone (Apple) takes not of it and makes changes accordingly. Or some software enthusiast will make some app or tool to accomplish said points in a stylish and proper manner. Who knows!

But for now…

bye.

SHRIKEE
www.sothq.net

I responded to a reader comment today, and I thought I would share the mail. I know that there is still all this Mac vs. Windows stuff (Is it just me or is this just like the East Coast vs. West Coast stuff…if only I could figure out which one was Biggie and which one was Tupac…now there is a philosophical question for you) so I thought I would share my response with you so I can show you how truly OS Agnostic this site is.

Sure I have been writing a lot about Apple lately with the release and testing of Leopard, but this site is not, nor will it ever be a place to carry on the nonsense that exists between Windows and Apple fanboys. Both are only as good as the person using them.

I recently switched to a Macbook Pro for my personal laptop (2.2Ghz 4GB Ram) but I was hardly out of love with computing. I still use Windows XP on my home desktop, Vista in parallels, and XP on my work laptop and desktop. I don’t have problems with them.

I love my Mac, but I am not using it because Windows was so bad I had to.

Jason

Short and sweet, but to the point. Your thoughts?