Apple's M1 vs M2 MacBook Air - the $200 upgrade worth it?

The M1 MacBook Air packs a lot of processing punch at only $999. If your budget has a little more wiggle room, the extra $200 for the brand new M2 process could be worth it.

The M2 MacBook Air adds:

Processor
8 Core GPU
100GB/s memory bandwidth

ProRes and ProRes RAW processing
Hardware accelterated for both. ProRes encode and decode engine

Safer Charging
MagSafe 3 charging port

Higher Def camera
1080p webcam

Brighter screen
500 nits of brightness

A little lighter
2.7 pounds (reduced from 2.8 pounds)

Improved Sound
Quad speaker array

A tiny bit more screen real estate
13.6" screeen (up from 13.3" on the M1)

Size
Consistent height instead of a tapered height

Remember, student or military can get 10% off MacBooks via Apple's special section of their website.

MacBook Air M1 vs M2

New MacBook Pro with M2 chip outperforms the base model Mac Pro and costs about $5,000 less.

Setting up a New PC Checklist

Windows updates

Install anti-virus software (if not already included with the computer)

Install Brave Browser

• Turn on prompt for where to download files
• Disable saving of passwords

Install Chrome

Chrome Settings

• Install Last Pass
• Turn on prompt for where to download files
• Disable saving of passwords
• Turn on the bookmarks bar
• Add bookmarks for the 10 most used websites

Install Irfanview

Install Adobe Products (Premiere, Photoshop, and Lightroom).

Install VPN

Install Torrent program

Windows Settings

• Change power settings to prevent laptop from shutting down in 10 minutes.
• Show file extensions
• Change mouse/trackpad cursor speed

Upgrading a 2007 MacBook Pro to El Capitan - Getting More Life Out of an Ancient Mac

After throwing in a 256GB Solid State drive in my friend's 2010 MacBook Pro, it runs faster than when it was brand new.  Before installing the SSD drive earlier this year, her computer would take a long time to launch some programs and there was noticeable lag when running a few extra tabs in a Firefox.

Her Mac laptop, though 8 years old, now feels as zippy as something new.  Programs launch almost instantly and there's no noticeable lag when running different programs on the computer, including Lightroom and other things that require more resources than merely the Office suite.

I'm going to be upgrading my ancient 2007 MacBook Pro (model A1226). It's currently running 10.9.5 (Mavericks updated) and part of the research to do the upgrade is figuring out what OS will be best to put on an SSD and still get decent performance out of this laptop that would otherwise be far past it's usable life.

The latest OS that the 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo laptop supports is

The Mid/Late 2007 MacBook Pro is the oldest laptop model supported by El Capitan OS 10.11.  To be running a 2007 model laptop and be able to run a 2015 version OS is pretty impressive.  Although it may be better to run Yosemite if the RAM needs and system usage is significantly less.

Mavericks has been running like molasses on this 11 year old laptop, but hard drives don't even usually last that long, so it's definitely showing it's age as the system performance slows to a crawl.  If more software could run, I would love to continue running Mavericks on this Mac, but not even my web browsers can be updated anymore!

El Capitan requires 2GB of RAM.
Yosemite requires 2GB of RAM.

Yosemite requires a MacBook Pro Mid-2007 or newer.

Chrome for Mac requires Yosemite (10.10) or later.  Since web browsing on the go is one of the only things I use this aging mac for, I would need to at least use Yosemite to make sure that my browser not only updates, but is safe from security holes. 

Installing El Capitan will help extend the laptop's usable life for as long as Chrome updates are supported!  If I was installing a standard (slower) platter hard drive, I would not install El Capitan because of it's negative impacts on performance [see the Youtube video notes below].

Rundown of OS Versions:

OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - 28 August 2009
OS X 10.7 Lion (Barolo) - 20 July 2011
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (Zinfandel) - 25 July 2012
OS X 10.9 Mavericks (Cabernet) - 22 October 2013
OS X 10.10: Yosemite (Syrah) - 16 October 2014

OS X 10.11: El Capitan (Gala) - 30 September 2015
* MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)

 macOS 10.12: Sierra (Fuji) - 20 September 2016
* requires a MacBook Pro (Mid 2010 or newer)

macOS 10.13: High Sierra (Lobo) - 25 September 2017
* requires a MacBook Pro (Mid 2010 or newer)

 macOS 10.14: Mojave (Liberty) - 24 September 2018
* requires a MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or newer)

macOS 10.15: Catalina - October 2019
* requires: MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or newer)

Mac mini (Late 2012 or newer)

Hardware (Models) Required for Special Features:

AirDrop requires: MacBook Pro (2012 or newer)
AirPlay requires: MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer)

OS X El Capitan review: Mac upgrade that's as solid as a rock [MacWorld]

Yosemite vs. El Capitan [YouTube Video] 3:47
* El Capitan took about 14 seconds longer to get to the Desktop from boot up than its predecessor Yosemite.
* El Cap took 5-6 seconds longer to open MS Word and get to a new document.
* iTunes opened slightly faster on El Capitan.
*
(This test is done on a 2009/2010 macbook white upgraded to 4GB of ram)The creator of this video recommends sticking with Yosemite if you have a Mac older than 2010.

Yosemite vs. El Capitan - Is it faster? [YouTube video] 5:10 (October 1, 2015)
On a newer Mac with a solid state hard drive, El Capitan only takes about one second longer to reach the desktop than Yosemite.  The Geekbench score did go up on a newer MacBook Pro by simply upgrading to El Capitan.

Full specs of the Mid/Late 2007 MacBook Pro [EveryMac]

How to Upgrade to OS X El Capitan [Apple]


My 120 GB hard drive would run even slower if I had less than 7GB of free hard drive space because of the page file that we regularly get tapped when the system memory was not enough to handle web browsing and other tasks simultaneously.

Somehow the system applications are taking up 46GB of space, and I'm not really sure how this is possible, because the Adobe suite is the only larger software I run on this aging beast.  My best guess is that the space is used up by buried Premiere cache files from when I first started video editing.

Ockel Sirius A & B - powerful pocket PCs

Ockel Sirius B: the powerful Windows 10 pocket PC from IndieGoGo is $349 (plus shipping) and features:
Cherry-trail X5-Z8300 processor, 4GB RAM, Wi-Fi AC, 64GB internal storage, a USB 3.0 and a USB 2.0 port. A pre-installed version of Windows 10, an HDMI cable and a power adapter are included.

• No screen (see the Sirius A)
• has an easy to reach Micro SD-card slot, which supports Micro SD-cards up to 128GB
• The Sirius B Black Cherry pocket PC has a Quad-core Cherry Trail Intel processor, 4GB of RAM and a Wi-Fi-AC chip, so you can run more and heavier applications at the same time. Internal memory has been expanded to 64GB and both a USB 3.0 as a USB 2.0 port will be integrated.
• We designed the Ockel Sirius B in such a way that ventilation fans are no longer required. This unique feature combined with flash storage means you can enjoy working in silence and benefit from ultra-low power consumption. 

Ockel Sirius A: the World's Most Versatile Mini PC also from IGG is $549 for early bird.  Super early birds picked it up for $499.  (As of 10/12/16 there are only 32 units left at the $499 price point.

How to Create a PC Desktop for Editing Video

 

Building a PC Desktop that can edit HD footage in real-time and export videos quickly requires of combination of:

• 4, 6, or 8 processor cores
• generous amounts of RAM memory (16GB+)
• a graphics card with a high amount of RAM that supports the Mercury Playback Engine for Adobe Premiere

Expect to spend $1,400 and up to configure a professional system, not including the monitor.  Check motherboard specs to see how upgradable your system will be for the future.

Learn more about system benchmarks and what hardward will affect what performace:

Premiere Pro Benchmark for CS5

Adobe Premiere CC, CS6, CS5.5 and CS5 Video Cards with CUDA Acceleration Mercury Playback
test results with AMD and Intel system configurations

A friend who was a freelance videographer and now works at a local TV station is able to edit HD footage in real time with these system specs:

AMD 8-Core Processor
16 GB RAM
128GB solid state drive
2TB 7,200 rpm drive
600w power supply
Nvidia 760 GTX graphics card

=====================

Here's a current custom desktop build from iBuyPower.com on 12/16/13 to match the pro video guy's specs.

Gamer Mage D295 system, $1,399 (sale price)

AMD FX-8320 CPU (8x 3.50GHz/8MB L3 Cache)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 - 2GB
(has 2 x DVI, 1 x HDMI , 1 x DisplayPort)
120 GB S510 ADATA SSD -- Read: 550MB/s, Write: 510MB/s
2 TB WD Black HARD DRIVE -- 64M Cache, 7200rpm, 6.0Gb/s
ASUS M5A97 R2.0 -- AMD 970
14x Blu-Ray] LG BLU-RAY Re-Writer, DVD±R/±RW Burner
600 watt power supply
Windows 8.1

ASUS M5A97 R2.0 -- AMD 970 motherboard specs:
up to 32GB of RAM
Memory Slots:  4 × DDR3 DIMM 240pin
6 x USB 2.0 ports; 2 x USB 3.0 ports
6 x 6GB/s (SATA-III)

upgrades for this system:
256 GB ADATA SX900 SSD -- Read: 550MB/s ; Write: 530MB/s - $85
ASRock 990FX Extreme9 -- AMD 990FX w/ 4x PCI-E 2.0 x16, 2x eSATA3, 8x USB 3.0 - $130
(only motherboard available that supports up to 64GB of RAM.)
AMD FX-8350 CPU (8x 4.00GHz/8MB L3 Cache) - $50

cheaper options for this system:
AMD Radeon R9 270X 2GB  - $84 less
1 x Daul Link DVI-I, 1 x HDMI, 1 x D-SUB Port

DjVu format for digital books

While browsing the BookOs.org website, I stumbled on the DjVu file format, which was completely unknown to me.  The first version of the file format was released in 1996 and the latest version was updated in 2005.

It's an open file format.

DjVu is a computer file format designed primarily to store scanned documents, especially those containing a combination of text, line drawings, indexed color images, and photographs. It uses technologies such as image layer separation of text and background/images, progressive loading, arithmetic coding, and lossy compression for bitonal (monochrome) images. This allows for high-quality, readable images to be stored in a minimum of space, so that they can be made available on the web.

DjVu has been promoted as an alternative to PDF, promising smaller files than PDF for most scanned documents.  The DjVu developers report that color magazine pages compress to 40–70 kB, black and white technical papers compress to 15–40 kB, and ancient manuscripts compress to around 100 kB; a satisfactory JPEG image typically requires 500 kB.^[5] Like PDF, DjVu can contain an OCR text layer, making it easy to perform copy and paste and text search operations.

info from: DjVu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Gmail - the image cannot be displayed because it contains errors

After sending an image file attachment with Gmail, the recipient said that they could not open the file.

Using Gmail's download link worked for me and I could open up the image.jpg file on my desktop.
However, an error message displayed when clicking on the "view" link.

Here is the error message:

I checked my original file and it opened on my mac without a problem.  Other forums suggested that the error was due to the color profile being in CMYK instead of the web standard sRBG. My image was in sRBG.

The error message was caused by the file extension being wrong.  I had accidentally added a JPG file extension. The file was actually a PSD.  I meant to save it out as a JPG, but clicked on an old file name and forgot to change the save format to JPG.

This online uploader service TrID identified the file type as being a PSD (photoshop document).

How to Disable Auto Logon in Windows XP

To enhance security and prevent Windows XP from automatically logging on:

Click on the Start Button, select Run, and type rundll32 netplwiz.dll,ClearAutoLogon

No confirmation will be displayed, but when you restart the machine the Welcome Screen with a login prompt will appear.  (A plain login box could also appear, depending on your system settings.)


There are two other working methods to stop the auto logon, at the link below.

Thanks to Ramesh for detailing several methods to stop the auto logon in Windows XP 

Why I shared this tip:
Last night I setup a Windows XP virtual machine in Parallels (on a mac).  This was on a shared computer and so I needed to prevent the others users from having immediate access to Windows XP until they were given access.

Testing your Optimum ISP connection speed

Bresnan was recently bought out by the company that owns Optimum. After speaking with a customer service rep. this week to help diagnose connection speed issues, he pointed me to the Optimum Speedcheck for customers in the West.

* Left click on the large speedometer.  No change will happen.
* Type the letter 'S'.  A Support Mode box will appear.

* Now click on the city nearest you to start the speed test.  (Being in Southwest Montana the rep had me choose Billings, MT for the testing city.)

When the first test runs, (which took only about 15 seconds on our connection), it will test the download speed. When that finishes, the second part, the upload test will run automatically.

After the testing is finished, you'll see both your download and upload speed displayed.

Our connection speed was only about one half of what we are paying for, but Optimum was not at fault.  Our wireless connection was causing the issue, which we determined after I connected my laptop directly to the wireless router with an Ethernet CAT5 cable.  The connection speed was a full 18,000 kbps per second, what the support rep. said it was supposed to be.

Our other roommate has his computer upstairs almost directly above the router and he had a 15,000 kbps connection when we tested his laptop.

Consumer Reports: Best Computer Monitors

Ratings From the June 2010 issue.

All models are recommended models.

22- to 26-inch displays

#1 Apple 24" LED Cinema Display, $850
Overall score: 76
Excellent display quality
Excellent viewing angle
Very good ease of use

#2 ViewSonic VA2223wm (21.5-inch), $160
Overall score: 74
Excellent display quality
Fair viewing angle
Very good ease of use
on Amazon, $169 on 7/6/10

#3 Hans G HH221 (21.5-inch), $150
Overall score: 71
Excellent display quality
Fair viewing angle
Good ease of use

#6 Dell S2409W (24-inch), $225
Overall score: 68
Very good display quality
Fair viewing angle
Very good ease of use
Not available new on Amazon, available refurbished from some places

LCD Monitor Reviews and Ratings

HP w2558hc Black 25.5-Inch LCD Monitor Review - PC World
- 4 Stars on Jun 12, 2009
- Bottom line: This display offers impressive image quality and great features, including a card reader and built-in reading light.
Amazon: Out of Stock

HP LP2475w Review | Displays | From the Lab | Macworld
- 4.5 stars on May 9, 2009
- many connection options
Price as rated: $624
Amazon: $553.69

LG Electronics W2353V-PF Review | Business Center | Macworld
- 4 stars on Nov 26, 2009
- only tilt
Price as rated: $310
Amazon: $230
TigerDirect: $200

Samsung SyncMaster 2233SW Review | Business Center | From the Lab | Macworld
- 4 stars on Nov 21, 2009
- solid image quality across the board
- only tilt
- no HDMI
Price as rated: $200


ViewSonic VX2433wm Review | Displays | From the Lab | Macworld
- 3 stars
- Affordable 24-inch LCD comes with a few compromises

Top 5 23-Inch and 24-Inch Wide-Screen Monitors - PC World (June 2008)

Installing RAM on a Late 2007 MacBook Pro

Apple's manuals for older MacBook Pro's

Lifehacker video tutorial by Adam Pash

Tools:
* Philips #00 screwdriver is helpful

Important instructions:

• Disconnect the power cord before beginning.
• Apple recommends letting the computer cool for 10 minutes if the laptop was running
  
• Touch a metal surface inside the computer to discharge static electricity (just after removing the battery)

Apple releases new iMacs and the Magic Mouse

Apple Releases Updated iMac Models With 21.5- and 27-Inch LED Screens - Mac Rumors
Not only has Apple finally bumped the base amount of memory up to 4GB, but the iMacs can
be had at 21.5" and 27" sizes! All the dual-core iMac base models now have 3.06GHz processors.
>> Still no blu-ray drive, however. I expect that Apple will include blu-ray drives in the next update
to the iMac line.

Apple - Magic Mouse - The world’s first Multi-Touch mouse.
I like the dexterity of a mouse wheel, but this looks incredible, like something brought back from the future.

Apple Stock Hits All-Time High on Earnings Strength - Mac Rumors

Apple Introduces New Aluminum Remote, Improves Performance on AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule - Mac Rumors
- new Apple remote includes a wheel and separated menu and play/pause buttons. It's compatible with any mac made since 2005.

Refurbished Macs

Refurbished Macs from Apple

$1,000 model below appeared again around 7/8/10.

03/04/10

Refurbished iMac 21.5-inch 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
21.5-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display
4GB memory
500GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics with 256MB memory
Built-in iSight camera
$1,000

10/22/09

iMac 20-inch 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
20-inch glossy widescreen display
2GB memory
320GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB memory
Built-in iSight camera
$850


iMac 20-inch 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
(1066 MHz frontside bus)
2GB Memory
320GB Hard Drive
8x Superdrive
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory
$1,000



10/21/09

iMac 24-inch 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB Memory
640GB hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB memory
$1,100


3/13/09

Currently a 4GB RAM kit for this iMac is only $52 on Crucial.com

iMac 20-inch 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
20-inch glossy widescreen display
1GB memory
320GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory
$850