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I think this looks great. The MacBook Pro finally got the two things I sorely missed in the previous version: FireWire 800 and 64-bit CPU. The disappointing thing, however, is that it only supports 3GB of memory. I guess I'd manage with 2GB for now until the prices on the 2GB sticks drop, but the option of 4GB would really be sweet. I have 1.25GB on my current PowerBook, which is rather on the painful side. (I constantly have 2-3GB in swap.)
And, from what I've heard, Mathworks have a beta version of Matlab for Intel Macs out now, so that's no longer a huge obstacle for me either. Now, all I need is money. :-P
Windows was worse ;-) I do think that Linux is nicer on the memory consupmtion than either, though. Don't know if this is a fact, but that's my impression.
In a typical session I have:
* Opera with roughly 100 pages open.
* Colloquy IRC program with 4-5 channels open.
* TextMate editor (brilliant!) with 10-15 files open.
* Emacs.
* Adium messenger, connected with 5-8 different accounts/protocols.
* Mail.
* Safari, for testing purposes.
* Terminal, 5-10 open sessions.
* QuickSilver.
* iTunes.
* VLC.
* Dictionary.
* Preview.app with about 5-10 PDFs.
* Azureus.
* VirtueDesktops.
* Various Menu applets like Menumeters, etc.
* Various other apps from time to time, such as Matlab, Vim, etc.
It all adds up to quite a lot, especially a hundred web pages. I mostly do surfing, programming, research, and LaTeX.
Linux tends to use less memory because Linux installs share as much code as possible. However, Linux handles high memory loads better than OS X as well. OS X's VM is ancient technology and its showing. It's still not as bad as XP under load, but it's not like Linux where I could often fail to notice swapping unless I was listening to the hard drive.
Wow, thats a lot of stuff. I typically have open:
* firefox + about 15 extensions + ~30-50 websites
* 2 or 3 instances of PuTTY connected to various remote servers via ssh or telnet
* WinSCP connected to my shell
* notepad++ with 3 or 4 files open
* mediaplayer10 with about 5k MP3s in the playlist
* POSE (palm os emulator)
* several palm os programming tools (prcedit among others)
* South palm os debugger (its a java app)
* palm hotsink manager...
few other things... and I'm typically only using about 500mb of RAM... (this is with windows XP)
Guess most of my apps are smaller in size 
> * Emacs.
Well there's your problem
EMACS: Eight-hundred Megs And Swapping.
;-D
Seriously though, do you really need to keep everything running all the time? The Dock is there so you don;t have to keep stuff running 24/7.
I have Safari, iChat, and WoW (a ram and CPU hog) running on my 17" PowerBook 1.66 (The last-gen PB) with 1GB ram.
(I'm getting a new MBP 17" soon, but I'm in the Silicon Valley, so naturally the Apple Stores are sold out :-) )
Edited 2006-10-28 05:02






