went from PC to Mac.....why?????

[2Deep]

i just recently purchased the 1.5 GHz 15" powerbook G4, marking my first step into the Mac world....BUT, i have a few very important concerns!?!?!

without installing any additional software or hardware (except for OS X of course), i've noticed 7.7 GB of my harddrive is in use. Is this normal?

also, the CPU and memory is almost fully in use when i run this very basic "garage band" program which comes with OS X. i plan to run cubase sx2 (professional audio sequencer program) on this unit and expect some heavy CPU crunching. my friend has the same powerbook and is experiencing audio clipping and distorted delays after only four VSTi plug-ins, because the CPU is at a max performance. Did i miss something here? I though Mac is famous for it's awsome multi-media performance, and i hope there is a solution for this.

please help shed some light on these matters! your input will be much appreciated!

 

[nicholas]

As for the 7.7GB being taken up, I think that's perfectly normal. That much space is needed for all the pre-installed programs and apps and whatnot. When I got my G5, my 160GB HD only had 149GB available for me.

As for the CPU...hmm...that seems a little odd. I've never used garage band, but I would guess that it actually is a little more computational intensive than most might like to believe. Try going into your system preferences and going to "Energy Saver." Make sure the "Processor Performance" is set to "Highest" and not "Automatic."

And of course, RAM is key. Try this simple little test (if you plan on getting more RAM soon). Go into your applications folder, hit "select all," then select "open all." I believe this is the weird flower key + A, then the flower key + O. Every single application and folder selected (and there are lots!) will open. With 256MB RAM, your computer will freeze. With 512MB, it'll lag like a mofo. With 1GB or more, you'll barely see that spinning beachball.

So in conclusion to your thread title, don't start to cry and bitterly ask why. Have a pat on the back, cause you got yourself a fly mac.

 

[trpnmonkey41]

GarageBand is actually a very CPU/Memory intensive program...I was running 512 ram on my 867 g4 and it didn't have enough power to do several tracks (i think it was around 6 tracks)

 

[TylerMoney]

they need to make a patch for garage band....it's quite a sucking (as in sucking power from the computer) program...it's nothing unusual......for some reason it just hasn't been twicked quite well enough. You shouldn't have any problems with anything else.

as for cubase....my roommate uses it on his g3...and it's not horrible on that...so it should be real nice on your powerbook...don't know why your friend is having problems..how much memmory does he have?

 

[hype.it]

i just recently purchased the 1.5 GHz 15" powerbook G4, marking my first step into the Mac world....BUT, i have a few very important concerns!?!?!

without installing any additional software or hardware (except for OS X of course), i've noticed 7.7 GB of my harddrive is in use. Is this normal?

Yup... this is quite normal. My PB come with 60Gb originally, but after formatting you'll end up with something like 55Gb, the rest of the space is taken up with the portion tables and whatnot.

OSX requires a Scratch Disk or Disk Cache of around 1.5Gb, then you have all those standard applications and the OS itself... if you install other applications, you have to account for all the support files too.

 

[PowerbookG417]

you might also want to check what version of garageband you have..it seems as if there has been an update " What’s New in this Version This software update will upgrade your version of GarageBand 1.0 to GarageBand 1.0.1.
This update clarifies specific alert dialogs regarding system performance. " < - direct from the apple website...check the update section that might help you out a little...i think i run garageband to record my demo's and i never have any problems at all and thats also with running final scratch aswell

 

[MacHat]

i just recently purchased the 1.5 GHz 15" powerbook G4, marking my first step into the Mac world....BUT, i have a few very important concerns!?!?!

without installing any additional software or hardware (except for OS X of course), i've noticed 7.7 GB of my harddrive is in use. Is this normal?

also, the CPU and memory is almost fully in use when i run this very basic "garage band" program which comes with OS X. i plan to run cubase sx2 (professional audio sequencer program) on this unit and expect some heavy CPU crunching. my friend has the same powerbook and is experiencing audio clipping and distorted delays after only four VSTi plug-ins, because the CPU is at a max performance. Did i miss something here? I though Mac is famous for it's awsome multi-media performance, and i hope there is a solution for this.

please help shed some light on these matters! your input will be much appreciated!

Garage band alone is almost 2Gigs.

You should also boost your cpu performance in the energy saver.

 

[dtx3000]

it is absolutely normal for gband to suck all of your cpu. it's basically a toned-down version of logic. tracks are only limited (very limited!) by RAM. i've got 512 and often get errors.

 

[witeshark]

I think it's rather amazing that Gband can be run on a sweet thing like an iBook and Powerbook, I mean that's impressive!

 

[Aptmunich]

Well GB runs alright on my new stock ibook 12" (1ghz)
, but i plan on treating myself to 512MB extra ram when i can afford it...

apps like imovie, idvd and Gb are a little slow, i'm guessing due to RAM.

p.s. i am loving this little machine, the whole opening the box thing was really sweet, the little sound it makes when you first switch it on is a nice touch too!

-designed by apple in california- how cool!

 

[Yuniverse]

Calculating HD space

I'm sure most of you already know this, but advertised HD capacity in any platform(because that's what the HD manufacturers use) is misleading.

Let's say you have 120GB HD... However, that equates into about 117.2 GB
It's because, 1GB is not 1000MB... it's 1024MB. so, 120,000/1,024 = 117.18...
So you lose about 3GB there already on definition alone. Plus when you format the disk, it loses some more...

So, if you have 80GB HD, that's 80,000/1024 = 78.125 GB ... GarageBand takes up almost 2GB, so there goes 4GB already without counting OS X.

As I have mentioned before, this is not specific to Macs... Same calculation goes for any other platforms that uses HD(including Win XP, etc.) Take a look at your My Computers in win XP. My 80GB formatted HD is displayed as 74.5GB and 120GB as 114GB. Just after formating in NTFS.
I think apple does a better job of saving space when spaces are compared after being formatted.

I'm not an expert by any means, so please correct me if i have made an incorrect assumption.

 

[rman]

You are half right. I have stated this in another thread. Disk space is also depends on how the file system is created. File systems can be created with different blocks sizes (i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32,....). if you create the file system with the wrong block size you can loss a lot of space.

 

[witeshark]

I have come to simply accept that our hard disks are not exactly the size they say... It's ok, I never got close to using up a hard drive once

 

[TTK]

I'd just like to say Congrats! You'll love the PowerBook, I have a 15" PowerBook G4 1Ghz Combo drive model, and I love it.