Most of the tips covered here will be applicable to Intel Macs too – after all, the first couple of iterations of Intel Macs are now beginning to look underpowered, but whichever your model of Mac, you may be able to get many more years use from it still.

What’s The Difference Between PowerPC And Intel?

While newer Macs sport an Intel-powered chip as their CPU, Apple have not always chosen this engine to drive their machines. Up until August 2006, Apple’s most powerful computer they offer, the Power Macintosh (later renamed Power Mac), contained a PowerPC chip, so they really aren’t all that old. Created by an alliance between Motorola, IBM and Apple, PowerPC chips are still utilised today in various environments, such as the F-35 Fighter Jet, Microsoft’s XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3, in addition to many IBM server machines.

Hardware Upgrades

RAM

Should you wish to get the most out of your older Mac, some hardware upgrades will be in order. The single most important is RAM. A Mac without its maximum RAM is simply not running at its full potential and by purchasing a stick of RAM, you will see immediate results. To get the correct type of RAM, head over to Crucial Memory, especially if you’ve got a non-Intel Mac as they can be tricky to find the right match for.

Hard Drive

OS X makes extensive use of your hard drive’s free space as virtual memory, so a hard drive upgrade can boost your computer’s performance significantly. This upgrade will depend upon your budget, the model of Mac and your own technical experience. For instance, Apple deigned to fit the iBook series with hard drives which are classed as non user-servicable, further compounding this problem by placing slow and small 4,200 RPM HDD’s inside too. However MacBook’s hard drives can be upgraded easily – head over to this guide to see how.

If you’re confident with a screwdriver, it is possible to do the iBook hard drive upgrade yourself. You will need an ATA (not SATA) hard drive and Western Digital still make this kind of HDD in affordable products. Take a look at this guide on iFixit to get an idea of what is involved.

Finally, if your storage needs are slight, it may be worthwhile to look into fitting an SSD into your older Mac. For this, once again navigate to Crucial.

Which Version Of OS X Is Right For You?

If your Mac has a PowerPC chip of over 1GHz, is maxed out with RAM and is capable of running Leopard, upgrade! Despite what common sense would have you assume, upgrading from Tiger to Leopard will not slow down your computer very much, it’s a very well optimised OS which still runs fine on older hardware. There is much more software open to Leopard and some of the tips I’ll set down later will only work on that OS – though bear in mind that upgrading to Leopard will lose the OS X ‘Classic’ support.

If your Mac is Intel-powered, then I’d recommend upgrading to Snow Leopard. By now it’s a very stable, speedy OS with many great features, still fully supported by Apple.

Basic OS X Tips

Before moving onto the advanced tips, there’s some basic tweaks we can make in OS X’s preferences to help lighten the load on an old Mac.

Login Screen

Software such as Skype often make themselves open when your Mac boots by default without asking first. Besides being potentially annoying, this takes up RAM, CPU and adds seconds to your Mac’s boot time. To take control over which applications launch automatically on login, navigate to “System Preferences -> Accounts -> Login Items”. I’ve left a few important ones that I think are worth the trade-off in boot time, as you can see above.

Spotlight

The Spotlight is a core feature of OS X but you may wish to look at Spotlight’s System Preferences pane and drag the search results in order of what you would like it to search for. This will speed up your Spotlight results and make your computer seem snappier. Since the above screenshot is taken from my work computer, I’ve disabled a few search results to speed it up even more, but only do this if you’re sure you won’t need to search for them.

Dock

Unless you’ve replaced it with a keyboard launcher like Quicksilver, your Dock is probably the centerpoint of your Mac OS X experience. It does however use some resources and while they’re not very heavy, we need to cut down on CPU and RAM use wherever possible, hoping that when all put together, they make a difference.

Turn off magnification and disable the ‘animate opening applications‘ tick box to lighten the load yet further.

Wallpaper

Choosing a simple or solid colour desktop background will also decrease demands on your Mac slightly.

Intermediate OS X Tips

These tips should suit those not scared to get a little more advanced with tweaking their OS X installation.

Trackpad

It’s not cost-effective or practical to upgrade the trackpad of a portable Mac such as an iBook or MacBook but if you would like to gain some of the functionality of later MacBooks’ trackpads, then the free application iScroll2 will give you a very effective scrolling capability and two finger tap/right click functionality.

A Clean Upgrade/Install

Mac’s are not typically expected to be wiped clean and there’s no need to make a habit of this, but if you’re going to give your Mac a new lease of life and it has had the same OS on it for a very long time, it’s best to start afresh – if only because it will force you to consider getting rid of some lesser used applications.

Advanced OS X Tips

There is more which can be done to make your Mac run lighter and I’m going to cover a few of these below, but beware they will involve Terminal use. This shouldn’t be a problem but it’s technically possible to do something nasty to your Mac in the terminal, so proceed with caution!

Disable 3D Dock

Whether you prefer the look of the 3D Dock or not depends upon taste but personally I think that once disabled it looks great (as shown in the screenshot above). Entering these commands into Terminal will disable the Dock and free up a few resources for Mac OS X.

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

To return the Dock back to normal, repeat the above command but replace ‘YES’ with ‘NO’.

Disable Dashboard

The Dashboard can be useful and you may not want to disable it, but most people don’t use Dashboard often enough to justify the significant cost in RAM and processing power which it exacts. To disable the Dashboard, enter the following into Terminal.

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES; killall Dock

To return the Dashboard, repeat the above command but replace ‘YES’ with ‘NO’.

OS X Maintenance

Update & Disk Permissions

Always make sure that your PPC Mac is fully updated through the ‘Software Update’ interface in OS X so that it’ll run with the latest bug fixes and security patches. If installing any major updates and after installing a lot of software (such as after a clean install), it can’t hurt to Disk Permissions and might even help. To do this, navigate to Disk Utility, then click on your hard drive and select the ‘Repair Disk Permissions’ button, as shown in the above screenshot.

Cache Cleaners

Whether you choose my own personal favourite CleanMyMac or the also excellent (and free) Onyx, it is important to perform basic maintenance on occasion – however, this should be done infrequently, such as twice a year, or if your system feels slower than usual.

Delete Utility

Dragging and dropping applications into the Trash to remove them from your Mac is fine and won’t do any harm to your machine, but using an unobtrusive (and free) uninstaller such as AppTrap will ensure that all residual system files and preferences are also removed.

Final Thoughts

I think that when attempting to lighten the load of OS X on your older Mac, some people make the mistake of taking away so many of the cool OS X features that you end up with a functioning computer, but one which is nowhere near as fun to use. So with that in mind, be sure to ignore any advice above which you think you’d miss – just pick and choose the ones which you feel make sense for you.

When it comes to CPU, there are only two main players in the market: Intel and AMD. You may have seen reports saying that Intel is better, and on the next day, another report saying AMD is better.

You are confused…which one is better? AMD or Intel?

Both AMD and Intel CPUs are built on different circuitry and for that, it is impossible to compare apple to apple. If you were to ask me which one is better, I can only say that both are equally good and whether you choose an Intel or AMD CPU depends entirely on your needs and preferences.

Below we will discuss the unique features of each CPU brand.

Core Frequency

If you have noticed, Intel’s speed always seems to be higher than AMD. Be careful, this does not imply that the Intel CPU is better.

The higher clocker speed simply means that there are more work cycles per second, not the amount of work done per second. Intel CPU has the tendency to divide its task into many small parts for easy processing. As such, the amount of work done per cycle is relatively small. On the contrast, AMD has lesser work cycle, but it processes more data per cycle. Thus, when it adds up, the amount of work done can be quite significant.

Unless we do benchmarking to determine the performance of each AMD and Intel CPU, it is definitely not a good idea to say that a particular Intel model is better than another AMD model just because it has a higher clock speed.

Socket Type

The main reason why you can’t use an AMD and Intel CPU on the same motherboard is because they don’t have the same pin configuration. Because of the different in circuitry, the number of connection pins for both brands of CPU is also different. Even within the same brand, a specific model might use different pin configuration from another model.

The newer generation of AMD chip has 938 pins and uses the AM3 socket. Intel chip (the newer generation) has 1366 pins and uses the LGA1366 socket on the motherboard. Thus, when choosing the CPU, it is important to bear in mind the socket type used by your motherboard.

Price

When comparing an Intel and AMD CPU of about the same specification, AMD processors always come out cheaper (probably because Intel uses more L2/L3 cache in their CPUs). If you are looking to save money without affecting the performance, get an AMD processor.

Performance

As soon as AMD acquired ATI, they started to integrate the graphical processing capability to the CPU core and that effort has paid off. If you are using an AMD chip for gaming, you will generally get a better graphical performance than an equivalent Intel chip (assuming you are using an ATI graphics card).

When it comes to multi-tasking, Intel have an edge over AMD with its HyperTreading technology. However, that advantage is only valid if the software/application supports multi-tasking (the ability to split its tasks into smaller pieces).

Summary

In general, for equivalent models, Intel will give a (slightly) better performance than AMD, but at a higher price range. For gaming purpose, if you are using the AMD-ATI cpu graphics card combination, it could yield a better performance than an equivalent Intel cpu.

In the next and last article of the Hardware CPU guide, we will show you how to choose a CPU that suits your needs and won’t break your bank.

Keep in tunes.

Image credit: Wikimedia

In this three part guide, we will give you a good overview of “the factors that affect a CPU’s performance”, the differences between an Intel and AMD CPU and how you should go about choosing the the CPU that is best suited to your needs.

This is the first part of the CPU guide.

What is a CPU?

The CPU (Central Processing Unit), or sometimes known as processor, is one of the most important component in a computer system. Being the brain of the computer system, its task is to take care of all the data calculation and make sure they are processed in the fastest time possible.

CPU is not something you can see from the outside of the computer. In fact, you won’t be able to see the CPU on a fully-assembled PC. To see it, you have to remove the computer casing, unplug the wire and remove the heatsink (and fan), only then can you see the surface of the CPU. The shape of the CPU is a small square chip with lot of connector pin underneath.

The images below show the back and the top of a CPU.

How CPU works

To keep it simple, the way a CPU works can be illustrated with the following 3 steps:

1. When you click to execute an application, the raw instruction is first fetched from the hard disk (sometimes from the memory) and sent to the CPU for processing.
2. When the CPU receives the instruction, it will execute the logic and compute the result.
3. Once the CPU finishes processing, it will send the result to the respective device to output to the user.

While it may seems easy, all these 3 steps must be completed in split seconds. Delay in any of these steps will result in a lag in the computer.

Factors that affect a CPU performance

It is easy to think that the speed of the CPU is directly link to the performance of the CPU. This is only true to a certain extent. A CPU with fast speed will not be efficient if it has only a limited data to process. To achieve maximum efficiency, the hardware (especially the hard drive and memory) that are linked to the CPU must supply data as fast as the CPU speed. Failure to do this will result in a lagging computer, regardless how fast the CPU is.

1. CPU Clock Speed

The operating frequency of the CPU (also known as the clock speed) determines how fast it can process instruction.

The speed is measured in terms of Hertz, and it is usually lies in the megaHertz (MHz) or gigaHertz (GHz) range. A megaHertz means that the CPU can process one million instruction per second whereas a gigahertz CPU has the capability to process one billion instructions per second. In today technology, all CPUs run in the gigahertz range and you seldom see CPU with speed in the MHz range anymore.

Theoretically, a 500 MHz CPU is six times slower than a 3 GHz CPU and a 3.6 GHz CPU is faster than a 3 GHz or a 3.4 GHz CPU. In general, the higher the frequency of a CPU, the faster the speed of the computer.

2. Cache

Remember we mentioned above that for the CPU to work at its maximum efficiency, the data transfer from the other hardware must be as fast as its speed. The purpose of a cache is to ensure this smooth and fast transition of data transfer from the hardware to the CPU.

To understand the importance of a cache, it is necessary to understand how the whole process works. The main bulk of information comes from the hard drive. When an application is requested, the motherboard will fetch the required information from the hard drive and deliver it to the CPU for processing.

Since the hard drive processing speed is much slower than the CPU, data transfer often takes a long time. To speed thing up, the RAM is used to store temporary information from the hard drive. Instead of heading straight to the hard drive, the motherboard now checks and retrieves the data from the RAM. Only when the required information is not found in the RAM then will the motherboard go to the hard drive.

As CPU speed increased to the point where the RAM is no longer able to catch up, the transferring of information again become a serious problem. To solve this issue, a cache, which was effectively a small and extremely fast memory, was added to the processor to store immediate instruction from the RAM. Since the cache runs at the same speed of the CPU, it can rapidly provide information to the CPU at the shortest time without any lag.

There are different levels of cache. Level 1 (L1) cache is the most basic form of cache and is found on every processor. Level 2 (L2) cache has a bigger memory size and is used to store more immediate instructions. In general, the L1 cache caches the L2 cache which in turn caches the RAM which in turn caches the hard disk data. With the newer multi-core technology, there is even a L3 cache that is bigger in size and is shared among the various cores.

L2/L3 cache plays the greatest part in improving the performance of the processors. The larger the cache size, the faster the data transfer and the better the CPU performance. However, cache is very costly. That is why you don’t find 1GB of cache in your system. The typical cache size is between 512KB to 8MB. The latest Intel Core i7 Extreme Processor comes with a 12MB L3 cache, which also explains its hefty price tag of approx. $1,000.

3. Multi-Core

In the past, if you want to get a faster computer, you have to get a faster CPU. Today, this is only partially true. The reason being, CPU speed can’t increase forever. There is limitation as to how fast the transistors can run. When it reaches a plateau, you won’t be able to increase the speed anymore.

To tackle this problem, CPU manufacturers adopted a multi-core technology, which literally means putting multiple cores in a CPU chip. While increasing the CPU speed resulted in faster data calculation, putting more cores in a chip resulted in more work done at the same time.

What’s next?

This ends the first part of the CPU guide. In the second part of the series, we will cover “the differences between Intel and AMD chips” and which one you should choose.

Image credit: steve.grosbois

When I first set out to try MeeGo, I had hoped to boot up the live USB image on my netbook. What I soon discovered, however, is that it would not work. My netbook (an EeePC 1201n) has an Nvidia Ion graphics chipset, which is not supported by MeeGo (along with ATI and Intel GMA 500 chipsets). I further found that my other netbook (EeePC 900) was also not supported because it was a pre-Atom model, and MeeGo only supports Intel Atom processors.

No worries, I thought. Surely MeeGo would run in VirtualBox on my Quad-core system that can run Linux and Windows simultaneously with VirtualBox. Unfortunately, it does not. MeeGo will not boot in VirtualBox. Finally, after searching, having not even started my review, I found a site with a MeeGo Qemu image that would let me test it. You must download all six parts and extract them into one image. Then, follow the instructions on the website.

Booting

MeeGo reportedly boots fast, very fast. The boot I performed was simulated by KVM, so it was not an accurate measurement of actual MeeGo boot speed. Having said that, it booted immediately. I did have to make one change. According to the listed instructions, one of the KVM flags is “-std-vga“, but this has been deprecated and replaced with “-vga std“. After I made the change, it booted correctly.

User Interface

The user interface looks very similar to Moblin. In fact, most users would have difficulty distinguishing the two at first glance. The opening screen after login is called Myzone. It includes an area for social media content, appointments, tasks, and the favorites (quick launch) bar for applications at the bottom.

At the top, MeeGo’s navigation bar is divided into tabs:

1. Myzone
2. Zones – Rather than having a task bar, MeeGo divides running applications off into zones. The user can then click the Zones button or use Alt-Tab to switch to a different zone. Multiple applications can be dragged into a single zone, much like Linux virtual desktops.
3. Applications – MeeGo’s application launcher. Users can run apps, search, or add them to the favorites bar.
4. Status – MeeGo’s social media integration. From here, you can login to Twitter, Facebook, and more to update your status.
5. People – Connect with others for chat.
6. Internet – MeeGo’s Internet component uses Google Chrome browser (or Chromium if you prefer not to agree to Google’s license). This, however, was the most disappointing feature in terms of aesthetics. Google Chrome is known for being light and taking up as little screen real estate as possible, but, for whatever reason, MeeGo adds a thick, nasty title bar above it. It takes up a ridiculous amount of space and would be awful on a netbook. Th top tabs already take up enough space by themselves.

   

7. Media – Play music, video, and view photos.
8. Devices – Here you can configure your battery, check disk space, adjust the sound volume, manage files, and connect external storage, such as USB drives.

What Was Not Tested

Because I was using Qemu, there were certain features I could not test, namely:

• wireless connectivity
• battery life
• general power management
• suspend

Final Thoughts

MeeGo seems like a pretty decent operating system. On the surface, however, it does not seem very different from Moblin, which would make it appear to be a one-sided Intel affair. Underneath, however, Nokia has integrated it with the QT widget set and underlying Linux kernel development merged from Maemo. All of this makes MeeGo very fast, which I was not able to accurately test in Qemu.

Overall, it seems good, but it will need some screen size improvement to work well on netbooks. For tablets, the large tabs at the top will work nicely. Assuming Intel and Nokia plan to support a larger number of devices than they currently do, MeeGo will be a nice addition.

To solve this issue, the trick is actually very simple (though it took me two months to find out). Simply append “nomodeset” to the grub entry. Here’s the whole procedure.

(Note: The following procedure only applies to those who have Intel driver and have the black screen issue. Do not follow this tutorial if you do not have the issue. You are asking for trouble.)

Installing Karmic via the LiveCD

If you intend to wipe your computer and install Karmic fresh from the LiveCD, follow the procedure below.

Boot up the LiveCD

Press Enter to select English as the language.

At the main screen where it asks you if you want to try or install Ubuntu, press F6, follow by the ESC key. You will now see a command line at the bottom of the screen. Enter “nomodeset” (without the quote) at the end of the command line and press Enter.

You should be able to boot into the Ubuntu desktop now.

Note: If you have followed the exact same procedure and still see the black screen, most probably this method don’t work for you.

Play around with it and make sure everything works fine. Proceed with the installation. Once it is done, restart your computer.

During the restart, when you see the “Grub Loading” message, immediately press “ESC” to get to the grub menu.

Highlight the first entry and press “e” to edit the entry.

Scroll down to the line that starts with “linux…” and move the cursor to the end. Enter “nomodeset”.

Press Ctrl + X to continue the booting process.

Once you are in the desktop, launch a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal).

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Scroll down to the line: “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT” and add “nomodeset” at the end.

Save and exit.

In the terminal, type

sudo update-grub

Done. You can now boot up your Ubuntu Karmic without any problem (hopefully).

Upgrade from Jaunty to Karmic

I strongly advise you to do a clean installation of Karmic rather than upgrading from Jaunty. But if you really must, here’s the procedure. Before you begin, remember to test your system with the LiveCD first.

When upgrading from Jaunty, things are slightly different as you will be using the legacy Grub (instead of Grub 2) and there is a need to amend the xorg file. (Note: Ubuntu 9.10 does not use the xorg file)

Upgrade your Jaunty from the Update Manager. Once it is done, DO NOT restart your computer.

Open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal),

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Scroll down to the end until you see the line starting with the word “kernel”

Add “nomodeset” to the end.

Save and exit the file.

Next, type

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Scroll down until you see the video section
Add in the line

Driver   “Intel”

Save and exit.

Close the terminal

Restart your computer. It should work (hopefully).

PS: If you have noticed, there have been very few articles on Ubuntu Karmic for the past 2 months. The reason being, I can’t get it running in my computer. Now that this issue is solved, you will expect to see more Karmic articles from me.

Image credit: nasa1fan/MSFC

Dual monitor setup in Linux has never been easier. While methods such as the xinerama extension sometimes drive people insane, using RandR (Resize and Rotate) is quick and painless. This will allow you to use both monitors as one big screen instead of two identical ones (cloning). Follow these simple steps to get started.

Note: This HOWTO assumes that you are using the opensource drivers for your video card (ATI or Intel). Nvidia and AMD proprietary drivers come with their dual screen components.

1. Setup your xorg.conf configuration file:

Edit it as root:

gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

(in GNOME) or

kdesudo kate /etc/X11/xorg.conf

(in KDE)

2. Create a subsection under the “Screen” section with the following.

SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1440x900" "1440x900" #the resolutions of your monitors
Virtual 2880 800
EndSubSection

Xrandr will function without these xorg.conf lines, but it will limit the size of your desktop.

For my computer, I am using two monitors with 1440×900 resolution. If you have a different resolution, put those resolutions under “modes” and then combine the width of both for “virtual”. In other words, if you have a 1280×800 monitor, it would be “Virtual 2560 800″.

3. Save your changes, exit and restart X.

4. Now, you can setup your dual screens however you like. First find out some information about the screens. Open a terminal emulator and type:

xrandr -q

It should tell you the name of each screen and its current resolution. On my computer, my screens are “DVI-0″ and “DVI-1″.

5. To make one large desktop including both screens, run this command:

xrandr --auto --output DVI-0 --mode 1440x900 --right-of DVI-1

DVI-0 is on the right, and DVI-1 is on the left.

6. Create a script called “startxrandr” to run this command whenever you want.

#!/bin/sh
xrandr --auto --output DVI-0 --mode 1440x900 --right-of DVI-1

7. Make sure to make the script executable

chmod a+x startxrandr

That is all it takes. You can play around with it and see all of xrandr’s commands by running “xrandr -help”.

Notes:

There are also a few GUI applications that allow you to control xrandr.  Check with your Linux distribution.

You can set xrandr to run when your display manager or desktop environment starts. See the its documentation for startup applications.

KDE and GNOME will automatically configure two screens correctly so that maximizing a window will only fill one of the screens. Some desktop environments do not yet have support for this. You will have to test the one you use. You should have no problems with Compiz.

You can have two monitors with different resolutions, which is useful if you are using a laptop connected to a larger monitor.

In KDE, each screen will automatically be a different activity, and you can apply different widgets on each.

Some applications, especially those that rely on SDL (like many Linux games), may not honor your xrandr settings. If you are lucky, it will just clone the game on both screens. For applications like Boxee, you will need to set the environment variable before starting it:

export SDL_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_HEAD=1