[RooneyX]

Just bought a PB12. I found the 17 too uncomfortable using it at cafes. Too many people stare and I can't work with that kind of attention. So now I got my 12. Quite a nice little piece of work, solid and robust. But slow and hot. That lack of cache makes it feel slower than my old Ti-800. Hope Apple puts the cache back in later revisions.

Now a question. When G5 PBs come out eventually, how will dual channel RAM be installed? Will it still have to be in pairs? (I saw the G5 PM at the store today BTW, quite nice. Very fast at launching apps, but this is due to the hard disk and not CPU.)

[cambro]

Originally posted by RooneyX:
but this is due to the hard disk and not CPU.)

Exactly. I still can't figure out why hard drive technology has lagged so far behind. Speed has gone up very incrementally. Most of the emphasis seems to be on size.

IF Apple or somebody else could come up with a power efficient and fast storage technology for portables, it would revolutionize laptop speed because this has to be one of the prinicpal bottle-necks.

[juanpacolopez]

Originally posted by cambro:
Exactly. I still can't figure out why hard drive technology has lagged so far behind. Speed has gone up very incrementally. Most of the emphasis seems to be on size.

IF Apple or somebody else could come up with a power efficient and fast storage technology for portables, it would revolutionize laptop speed because this has to be one of the prinicpal bottle-necks.

Chime me on for the list of people who things that the HD needs to die Everything else in computers has DRASTICALLY sped up in recent years (CPU, bus, video, RAM, everything) except mass storage.

With technology the way it is, and certain things on the horizon (bio and nano computing) I think it won't be too long until we see a cheap, reliable alternative to the hard drive.

Magnetic storage needs to die, soon

[riverfreak]

Originally posted by juanpacolopez:

With technology the way it is, and certain things on the horizon (bio and nano computing) I think it won't be too long until we see a cheap, reliable alternative to the hard drive.

You must have a pretty big horizon! It's going to be a looong time before we see any cheap or practical applications of biocomputing. Solving single simple problems in the laboratory of a handful of researchers doesn't exactly equate to "on the horizon", nor does it really equate to the problem of data storage.

There are plenty of fast hard drives out there but they aren't used in consumer level solutions.

But imagine a machine that has 100 GB of ram - just keep all of your applications in resident memory. I think an incremental advance like that is far more likely than anything.

[11011001]

Originally posted by riverfreak:
But imagine a machine that has 100 GB of ram - just keep all of your applications in resident memory. I think an incremental advance like that is far more likely than anything.

And drain your battery!! Woot!

There was an article in Scientific American quite some time ago about nano drive technology. They were using large arrays of nano pointy thingys to store information on a surface by actually deforming the surface. That looks promising for an alternative to flash based storage.. for hard drives though? not sure