Rico, I don't exactly have $300 burning a hole in my pocket, but I'm hardware bored. What do you think of this upgrade card for my MDD G4? They dropped the price a hundred bucks. It's a 28% increase in processor speed, which isn't much, but it is two processors (I have just the one 1.25 GHz now) and it has 512K of L2 cache instead of the 256K that I have now. So, WWRD? How much of a speed difference should I expect to see in the real world?
Posts: 17092 | Location: The Left Coast | Registered: Sun May 04 2003
Basically I want the printer in order to do very short run color work. I farm out most of this kind of stuff to a network of suppliers and partners. But a lady came in yesterday and wanted 50 color copies (print-outs, really) of a funeral announcement. Her son had been killed by some dirtbag ex-girlfriend and her friend. I had set up the art and was going to farm it out as usual, but 50 copes is hardly worth it. And I wasn't planning on charging anything. I didn’t. I just put the pdf on a disk and gave it to her. She was really still grieving pretty badly. How can you profit off of that? I would make a horrible funeral director.
But I know when looking for black and white laser printers for the Mac there is often just one definitive model (usually an HP) that everyone had. So, first off, I was asking to find out if there was a consensus color laser printer out there for the Mac. The requirements are PostScript Level III (or emulation) and, obviously, that it works with a Mac. (OS X. I don't expect it to work with OS 9 directly.) I'm guessing there may not be a definitive color laser printer for the Mac, although I'm going to see if I can find that Xerox in the store so I can look at it and see a sample. Thanks for all the info, Rico.
Posts: 17092 | Location: The Left Coast | Registered: Sun May 04 2003
I looked through what every one has to offer and I have to say on paper the Phaser 6280 really blows them all away. None of them come close in the price range. Here is a local what looks like a corporate sales company that deal with Xerox. On that page the Phaser 6280 memory wise alone can max out at 1.2GB's. The others are not even close. The standard RAM that the 6280 comes with is as much as the max ram on the others. It has a 400mhz CPU and you can even put a hard drive in it. This all speeds up output. Especially with large files.
The Toner cartridges are pricey. For the standard size for all four costs around $500 and the high capacity ones would set you back $850. You are talking 2500 color prints standard and more than double that for the High capacity cartridges. That is a lot of prints. Xerox claims it comes out to 3 cents B&W and 14 cents color per print.
It features all the appropriate postscript languages.
Crap, I hardly have the money to do this, but a buddy of mine had a like-new Samsung SyncMaster 216bw 1680 x 1050 LCD monitor he was selling so I bought it for $200.00. I can actually get larger monitors for less but the new insane fad is for postage-stamp-height monitors that are about a mile wide which I find hardly optimal for general computer work, although they're certainly good for widescreen movies. This 1680 x 1050 is a much more palatable 16:10 aspect ratio. It's fairly minimalist in design. The screen -- of course -- is not high-gloss. I wouldn't buy one of those if you gave it to me for a nickel. It's sharp and the color looks good. I'm not done with fussing with the calibration, but it looks pretty good. This allows we to retire my last CRT monitor (yeah...I'm going green). I had been using an old one as my second monitor used for palettes and stuff. I've rotated over my old Princeton LCD to the right hand palette monitor.
Posts: 17092 | Location: The Left Coast | Registered: Sun May 04 2003
Thalo talks about RAM in terms of 4, 8, or 16 gigabytes, so I feel like a real rookie when I tell you that I just finally maxed out my G4 MDD to 2 gigs of ram. The reason for this is that we FINALLY have a DTP process going on here, and it requires me having a whole lot more apps open then I typically would. I print from the G4 directly to a plate. It's a small move. I had 1.75 gigs and am adding only 256 MB, but that's something. It was twenty bucks. It certainly didn't break the bank.
Posts: 17092 | Location: The Left Coast | Registered: Sun May 04 2003
But there's no telling with memory pulled from Seabiscuit. As I recall I had instances where after upgrading firmware, memory wouldn't work on that machine.
Yes, I'm definitely thinking in terms of 16GB chunks of RAM for the new machine. I'd go 32 if I can afford it. What I'm not clear on, maybe brother Rico could illuminate, is why that OWC memory doesn't let you mix and match. So, for example, if I get a 16GB kit from them, I wouldn't be able to fill the 4 open slots with 4 of the 6 GB chips that will come with the Mac, giving me 20GB. OWC says no to that, and I need to know if that's because their memory is crappy or broken or not to spec.
Let's just say, if you go buy any kind of AC adapter, or power cable for older Mac hardware or peripherals, you're nuts. I've got the cables and hub from my old 10-base 2 network. Old keyboards, dead mice. Various chips. A firewire PCI card, maybe dead maybe not. I actually culled through a lot of it, and got rid of old Appletalk crap, ADB cables and that sort of thing. Zip drive for a PC. My toasted superdrive, all kinds of dead or dying hard drives. I think I just need to take it all to the dump. But seriously, a plastic grocery bag FULL of AC adapters. I don't know why I hold onto them. I guess hoping that somehow one will have the right spec to work on something else. Which is retarded, because they never do.
Your sack of AC adaptors sounds like my box of power cords. I think they are multiplying.
Actually, any PCI cards you have might intrigue me. I don't even use the FireWire slots I have now, but if you have a USB 2.0 PCI card, I could use that.
Posts: 17092 | Location: The Left Coast | Registered: Sun May 04 2003
If you were to buy an old iMac I would say get one with an Intel CPU. The G5 CPU is dead in regards to support. Snow Leopard the latest X version will only run on Intel. Plus that is not much RAM. You would have to upgrade the RAM.
It was really painless to set up and just what the Doctor ordered. All I had to do was turn it on login to the router the modem was ready asking what my Password and User name for my DSL was presto connected straight away. Wireless was just as easy. I even set up the MAC address stuff to limit the wifi access to my specific machine.
The Netgear GND3500 was $129. Pricey but it is a three in one device including hard wired Gigabit ethernet which I preferred. Wish I could have held out for one of the Actiontec combos either the V1000H or the newer V2000H but they just do not exist in the retail market. It is a shame as Actiontec has the best product.
