2.26 GHz vs. 2.53 GHz CPU...will I be able to tell?

[wisersam]

No. That's what Apple wants.

Would I do that? H3ll, no.

That's what every hardware vendor wants. They always charge a lot higher prices for upgrades ...

 

[magnesium]

As far as free-fall sensors, those are completely OS-independent. They require no drivers, and they change nothing as far as the interface is concerned (so I wouldn't worry about them). As far as 7200rpm, they do run a bit hotter, and they slightly shorten the battery life. You could definitely get one though (with the same warranty and installation difficulty caveats as with the RAM). 5400rpm is quite slow, but depending on what you do, it may still be adequate. I would say stick with the Apple HD for now, and upgrade later if it is painfully slow. Oh, and the 250 does seem to be a good balance there.

That's what I would think, but according to that wikipedia article, there were problems. Maybe Apple implemented it is a software dependent way, and everyone else have the sensor control the HDD directly within the device. It wouldn't surprise me that Apple would do something like that...

For example, there seem to be problems (and solutions) here and here.

No. That's what Apple wants.

Would I do that? H3ll, no.

That's what every hardware vendor wants. They always charge a lot higher prices for upgrades ...

I would think that a hardware vendor would like for me to upgrade during purchase from them, or after purchase using their own parts.

Depends on how important battery life is to you.

Pretty important...let me rephrase it as: would upgrading to a 7200 rpm hard drive decrease battery life by 5%? 10% 20%? I know that it depends on a lot of variables, but what general order of magnitude are we looking at?

And by what approximate percentage does the upgrade improve HDD read/write speeds?

Also, what do y'all think about this oddity? I asked my friend to help me figure out the exact CPU in the MBP (he has one just like I'm looking at), and sysctl gives that the processor is a model P7550 (Intel's spec sheet). According to Intel, VT-x is not available on this model, which I didn't like. However, in the sysctl output, VMX (the virtualization flag) was listed as one of the CPU flags! What is that supposed to mean? Which one is more likely to be wrong: sysctl's model #, or the flag list?

Any ideas here?

 

[magnesium]

#7200 vs. 5400 rpm:

Using some physics (I should know 😗 so should our aerospace engineer cjl 😛 ) a 7200 rpm drive has 7200^2/5400^2=1.77 times as much energy as a 5400 rpm drive. But that doesn't tell us how much power is needed to keep it at that speed. Looking around (here, here, and here), it looks like the power consumption is very similar between the 2 speeds...anybody here with the same (or different) experience?

 

[cjl]

Well, going off of the Seagate specifications for their 500GB 7200 vs 5400rpm notebook drives (as a representative sample - I don't know what brand Apple uses), here's the power differences:

Seek power: 2.2 vs 1.54 watts
Read power: 2.1 vs 1.4 watts
Write power: 2.2 vs 1.78 watts
Idle power: .69 vs .67 watts

In all cases, the lower number is for the 5400. For most users, the hard drive will be idle much of the time, so as you can see, the power difference is insignificant. If you do have something that is using the hard drive all the time, the 7200 will have a slightly shorter battery life. If the Apple uses a 66 watt hour battery (a guess based on their battery life and the capacity used in other comparable models from other manufacturers, with a slight adjustment to make the math easier), and has a 6 hour battery life when the 5400rpm hard drive is used constantly, that gives an average power consumption of 11 watts. In the worst case circumstances (read), the 7200 draws an additional 0.7 watts, giving 11.7 watts as the new power consumption. This would use up the 66 watt hour battery in roughly 5 hours 40 minutes. So, in the worst case scenario, you lose 20-30 minutes on the 7200, and in most cases, you effectively lose nothing.

 

[magnesium]

Well, going off of the Seagate specifications for their 500GB 7200 vs 5400rpm notebook drives (as a representative sample - I don't know what brand Apple uses), here's the power differences:

Seek power: 2.2 vs 1.54 watts
Read power: 2.1 vs 1.4 watts
Write power: 2.2 vs 1.78 watts
Idle power: .69 vs .67 watts

In all cases, the lower number is for the 5400. For most users, the hard drive will be idle much of the time, so as you can see, the power difference is insignificant. If you do have something that is using the hard drive all the time, the 7200 will have a slightly shorter battery life. If the Apple uses a 66 watt hour battery (a guess based on their battery life and the capacity used in other comparable models from other manufacturers, with a slight adjustment to make the math easier), and has a 6 hour battery life when the 5400rpm hard drive is used constantly, that gives an average power consumption of 11 watts. In the worst case circumstances (read), the 7200 draws an additional 0.7 watts, giving 11.7 watts as the new power consumption. This would use up the 66 watt hour battery in roughly 5 hours 40 minutes. So, in the worst case scenario, you lose 20-30 minutes on the 7200, and in most cases, you effectively lose nothing.

Way to go Mr. Engineer... 😉 I would have guessed longer than that for continuous usage, but it looks like the speeds are quite similar in power draw. I guess that in both cases the manufacturers have got the friction down so much that the actual rpm's are kinda irrelevant. OK, but I still think I'll just go with the 5400 rpm one from Apple...in the future (when I get more $$) I will most likely upgrade to a 7200 (or maybe even an SSD), especially that I know it won't really affect battery life much. Thanks!

So the processor decision is made (2.26), RAM (4 GB from Apple) and now HDD (250 GB @ 5400 from Apple). Now I just have to click a few times on Apple.com.....

Any thoughts on the VT-x discrepancy with the processor? Could Intel's site just be wrong? (If it is wrong, though, I don't see any differences between the P7550 and P7570, which doesn't make much sense... )

 

[cjl]

Honestly, I haven't the faintest clue about the VT-X discrepancy.

 

[magnesium]

Me neither 🙁 but looking around the internet it appears that this particular processor is contradictory...Intel says it doesn't have VT-x, but the processor itself reports that it does....oh well.

OK, I think I'm going to buy it! Thank you everyone at Tom's Hardware for your help and information.

 

[Pro Llama]

Just to put something out there, have you looked at netbooks? It sounds like you are all about the portability and the performance of the note books isn’t that important. I have a netbook that I picked up for $300 and I have run photoshop and a few games on it. It is a little slower than my notebook, but my notebook is a gaming notebook. My friend also picked up a netbook from dell for under $300 (didn’t come with an OS) with a solid state HD and he is running linux on it. They have a 10” screen so they are small and the battery life is awesome. The only thing you would have to buy is a slim dvd drive (like $100), which you would only have to bring out when need.

 

[magnesium]

Just to put something out there, have you looked at netbooks? It sounds like you are all about the portability and the performance of the note books isn’t that important. I have a netbook that I picked up for $300 and I have run photoshop and a few games on it. It is a little slower than my notebook, but my notebook is a gaming notebook. My friend also picked up a netbook from dell for under $300 (didn’t come with an OS) with a solid state HD and he is running linux on it. They have a 10” screen so they are small and the battery life is awesome. The only thing you would have to buy is a slim dvd drive (like $100), which you would only have to bring out when need.

Thanks Pro Llama, I have considered a netbook. IMHO, though, the screens, keyboards, etc. on those are just too small...When you are at that size, there is a big difference between 10" and 13.3". Also I was under the impression that, while the weight and size are wonderful, the battery life wasn't all that super (~3-4 hrs)...am I mistaken on that? Plus an optical drive would be nice...for some reason the people I work with still use a lot of CDs/DVDs (I don't know why). And to have the performance of the MBP on cue is still nice.

Basically I'm looking at investing in a 6-7 year laptop. The one I currently have (Presario 906) was kinda that way when I first got it 8 years ago. And I get the feeling that the MBP will last me longer than a netbook....so I'm willing to pay more money for a product that will last me for a long time.