Upgrading all Macs to SSD

Upgrading all Macs to SSD

I recently ordered an SSD drive from OWC and proceeded to replace the stock drive on my good old MacBook Pro (one of the first unibody series).

The process was actually easier than I originally thought: just connect the new drive using an universal drive adapter and clone the internal drive using SuperDuper!. Then open the back cover and swap out the drives. Done! (Btw: OWC are doing a great job with their instruction videos that show you that, yes, you can actually do it yourself in no time! ;))

Reboot: the mac feels like it’s at least 3 or 4 times faster. Especially from Login to Desktop where it’s possible to start working instantaneously, compared to the painful wait in front of a half frozen screen I had before.

It’s like a new mac for a fraction of the price of an actual new one! And I now actually like using that laptop again ;)

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Mac Mini 2011 Hard Drive Speed

Mac Mini 2011 Hard Drive Speed

As a followup to my Mac Mini 2010 Hard Drive Speed rant, I went to the Apple Store today to check what’s up with the Mac Mini 2011…

Apparently, the Nvidia chipset has been replaced with an Intel chipset that is now capable of 6 Gigabit/second link speeds… and the entry level drive is now capable of 3 Gbps link speeds…

That is definitely not an improvement over last year’s model.

However, why still not a 6 Gbps drive? Because the drives are not fast enough to saturate a 3 Gbps link? My bet is that 6 Gbps would definitely make sense with SSD.

The Apple Store had no 7200 rpm or SSD Mac Mini on display. So, I enquired by the Apple Store employees… who had to ask their tech guru… who said that the 7200 rm drives are 3 Gbps also and that the SSD drives are 3 Gbps also. Since the iMac with a 7200 rpm drive is at 3 Gbps and that the Mac Mini with SSD is also at 3 Gbps, I will take their word for it: Apple just won’t give you drives that can communicate any faster than 3 Gbps! :/ (and they won’t sell them to you either…)

So… if you’d actually want top performance, you’d have to go for aftermarket solutions…

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3 displays on a mac mini

3 displays on a mac mini

While many are happy with 2 displays attached on their computer, I actually don’t quite like having to look either to the left or to the right when I’m working on something… I want a display right in front of me and I want additional displays on the sides for less important stuff.

According to Macworld, the latest Mac Mini 2011 (the version with the Radeon graphics chip) can actually drive 3 displays: 2 through Thunderbolt and 1 though HDMI…

If you’re feeling especially adventurous, the Radeon HD graphics processor in the $799 mini can drive two Thunderbolt displays, daisy-chained, while still handling a third display on the HDMI port, although you shouldn’t expect amazing performance.

If this actually works, I’d be happy to swap out that bulky Mac Pro for a tiny little mac mini…

Now… gotta find 3 identical displays that accept either HDMI or Thunderbolt… And that won’t be easy… for some reason there are not a lot of Thunderbolt devices out there… it seems that only Apple has offerings so far… and Apple displays… well… they are just way too glossy for me :p

Anyways, has anyone done this already??

Suicide failure stats

Suicide failure stats

19 out of 20 people who attempt suicide will fail.

But people who fail are 37 times more likely to succeed the second time…

At TEDYou, JD Schramm asks to break the silence surrounding suicide and suicide attempts:

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Just a thought... (about life & feedback loops)

Just a thought... (about life & feedback loops)

I had this epiphany the other day that everything about life, and even more so: everything about about human activities is deeply based on feedback loops.

It starts with natural evolution (including sexual selection) where the evolution and shaping of the species is refined generation after generation based on positive and negative feedback loops from the environment and from peers.

Then, there is so much about human psychology and sociology where ideas and behaviors are reinforced or subdued through feedback loops.

Not to mention the global economy, markets, consumption and speculation that are massively driven by feedback loops…

So, what’s left to pure, unbiased free will? Arts? Love? Thoughts? I don’t think so. It’s pretty easy to find feedback loops in all of these too!!

This doesn’t mean that everything about today is a direct result of what happened yesterday; there are still external stimuli that enter the system at any (random) time, but still… what is the external stimulus allowing for unconditioned thoughts?