On your bike. Again.

I have succumbed. The lure of the great outdoors has proved too much. I've just ordered myself a new mountain bike. Nothing like as flash as the one that I sold six months ago, but then that was the point.

The new one is a 2006 Scott Reflex 20 Disc. And the best bit is that I'm saving £200 off the £600 list price via a friend who works for Scott.

That means I've only spent £900 of the £1100 that I got for my old mountain bike, leaving £200 to spend on accessories. I've already spent some of that on roadie kit, and the rest will go on bits and pieces for the new one.

And Christmas is coming up, so I should be fully kitted out ready for the new year.

Excellent.

It's terminal (part 2)

Part two! The extra RAM stick is installed, and now Terminal says:

phil-laceys-imac-g5:~ Phil$ ioreg -p IODeviceTree -n memory -S | grep ram-
| "ram-layout-architecture" = <00000002>
| "ram-bus-width" = <00000080>

I'm slightly confused, as the "architecture" value is unchanged, but the "bus width" value is now 80 instead of 40.

So does that mean I've changed from 64-bit to 128-bit or not?!?

Startup from cold now takes 38 seconds (18 seconds faster), and iPhoto takes 9 seconds to load (6 seconds faster).

I'm not sure whether these speed improvements are down to just having twice as much RAM, a 128-bit pipeline or a combination of both.

I fear there needs to be some research done. I feel an email to Apple coming on. :o)

UPDATE:
Not sure whether this is at all relevant, but 00000040 is hexadecimal for 64, and 00000080 is hexadecimal for 128.

Clear as mud.

It's terminal (Part 1)

Okay, here's part one of the memory experiment. Terminal tells me the following:

phil-laceys-imac-g5:~ Phil$ ioreg -p IODeviceTree -n memory -S | grep ram-
| "ram-layout-architecture" = <00000002>
| "ram-bus-width" = <00000040>

Which allegedly means that I'm currently running on a 64-bit architecture.

Startup from cold takes 56 seconds, and iPhoto takes 15 seconds to load.

Standby for part two!

RAM bam, thank you ma'am

So there I was, casually browsing the Apple technical support pages (yes, I am a geek) I came across a knowledgebase article entitled "iMac G5: The benefit of using matching memory modules". Intrigued, I read on, and they have this to say:

"If your iMac G5 has matching memory modules, which are known as "DIMMs," it will operate with a 128-bit data path. If the DIMMs aren't matched, then it uses a 64-bit data path. A 128-bit data path allows greater throughput than a 64-bit data path, in the same way that a 4-lane highway allows more traffic than a 2-lane highway. This allows the computer to manipulate large files faster. With a 128-bit bus, you would see better performance from the iMac when you have multiple applications open at the same time."

So it would appear that, because I've just got the single 512MB stick of RAM that came preinstalled in the iMac, that I've only been working with a 64-bit data path. The sacrilege! I've been missing out of 64 bits of lovely data goodness ever since I got it out of the box!

Not wanting to be missing out on this potentially earth-shattering upgrade, I ordered another myself another 512MB of RAM from Crucial.com and it arrived yesterday. I haven't had time to install it yet, but when I do I shall report back to let you know about the amazing performance enhancement it has given me...

Foxy

I know that I keep harping on about the Firefox web browser, but there is a good reason. The BBC website reports that now 1 in 10 people use Firefox globally, and the percentage is still rising. And with good reason too - Firefox is a much better browser than Microsoft's tired old Internet Explorer. According to the article, 14.1% of US computer users browse with Firefox, whereas it is only 4.9% in the UK. COME ON PEOPLE! What are you waiting for?! Download the Firefox browser now! There's no excuse. It's very easy, it's free and it's better than the crappy browser you're using at the moment. Talk about a no-brainer!

I have both Firefox and Safari on my Mac, and both of them are leaps and bounds ahead of Internet Explorer. To be honest I can't decide which one is better, but I do know that I prefer both of them to IE. However, you only have that luxury if you've got an Apple machine, so if you're a Windows user this makes the choice very simple indeed. Firefox. Firefox Firefox Firefox.

So go on. Do yourself a favour. Get Firefox.

Okay. Browser evangelism over.

Let's take a moment...

I'd like to take this opportunity to send my heartfelt condolences to my friend and colleague OliTee, who has suffered once again at the cruel hands of fate. His iPod is no more. It is an ex-iPod.

My thoughts are with him at this difficult time.