cpu
Tuesday, March 22 2016
Apple talking smack about six-year old machines
[23:18:17] matt [wronka.org]/Psi+ Watching the "Loop-in Event" yesterday, Apple had a segment where the speaker made derogatory comment about people who owned computers that were six years old. At the time I was working on an EeePC that was from mid-2008 (about seven years old). It works for me, and frankly computers frive five years ago should work fine for 99% of computer users; but that's not the oddest thing about the statement.
My work laptop is a 15" Macbook, based on an Intel Haswell chip (two generations old) and is from 2013. In nearly three years since it was released (mid-2013), the current model has barely changed (the CPU speeds have changed from a base 2.0GHz to a top 2.6GHz, the currently line starts at 2.2GHz and tops-out at 2.8GHz). That means that buying a brand-new Macbook Pro Retina 15" gets you a three-year old machine right now. The previous model of the Macbook Pro Retina 15" was based on Intel's Sandy Bridge chip, and was essentially unchanged since the Macbook Pro Retina was announced in mid-2012, nearly four years ago. Feeling nostalgic, or simply want to replace your aged nearly six-year-old comptuer with something nearly four-years-old? The good news is that the mid-2012 Macbook is still available new from Apple today for $1099.
In general, Apple's on a 2.5-3 year major upgrade cycle on the Macbook Pro depending on how you define a "major" upgrade (I'm looking essentially at the chipset and processor generation). What a six-year old machine means in Apple-speak is at *most* two generations back. Chances are, a non-Apple PC purchased at that time would be closer to the upcoming generation of Apple computers, so most users with a six-year old computer are on-par with a previous generation Apple computer, or on par with the currently shipping non-Retina Macbook Pro.
[23:18:17] matt [wronka.org]/Psi+ Watching the "Loop-in Event" yesterday, Apple had a segment where the speaker made derogatory comment about people who owned computers that were six years old. At the time I was working on an EeePC that was from mid-2008 (about seven years old). It works for me, and frankly computers frive five years ago should work fine for 99% of computer users; but that's not the oddest thing about the statement.
My work laptop is a 15" Macbook, based on an Intel Haswell chip (two generations old) and is from 2013. In nearly three years since it was released (mid-2013), the current model has barely changed (the CPU speeds have changed from a base 2.0GHz to a top 2.6GHz, the currently line starts at 2.2GHz and tops-out at 2.8GHz). That means that buying a brand-new Macbook Pro Retina 15" gets you a three-year old machine right now. The previous model of the Macbook Pro Retina 15" was based on Intel's Sandy Bridge chip, and was essentially unchanged since the Macbook Pro Retina was announced in mid-2012, nearly four years ago. Feeling nostalgic, or simply want to replace your aged nearly six-year-old comptuer with something nearly four-years-old? The good news is that the mid-2012 Macbook is still available new from Apple today for $1099.
In general, Apple's on a 2.5-3 year major upgrade cycle on the Macbook Pro depending on how you define a "major" upgrade (I'm looking essentially at the chipset and processor generation). What a six-year old machine means in Apple-speak is at *most* two generations back. Chances are, a non-Apple PC purchased at that time would be closer to the upcoming generation of Apple computers, so most users with a six-year old computer are on-par with a previous generation Apple computer, or on par with the currently shipping non-Retina Macbook Pro.
Tuesday, July 3 2012
[12:43:49]
matt [wronka.org]/Trip
I think Hume's CPU finally went. It had been running for a about a year non-stop in a closet without proper ventilation, so this was quite likely to happen.
Thursday, August 25 2011
Encrypted Filesystems in Squeeze
[04:05:36] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.generay dm-crypt (and device-mapper) has replaced losetup.
A fresh install of squeeze makes this very easy, but unfortunately, with a VIA C7 this is painful as the install disk doesn't have kernel modules for the CPU's in-built AES/SHA/RNG support.
To do it by hand, basically follow:
http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/howto-disk-encryption-with-dm-crypt-luks-and-debian
And finally, update /etc/crypttab. If you're doing this on a remote system, you want 'luks,noauto' as the option. You can leave out noauto from /etc/fstab so that once you cryptdisks_start {device} you can just do mount -a.
[04:05:36] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.generay dm-crypt (and device-mapper) has replaced losetup.
A fresh install of squeeze makes this very easy, but unfortunately, with a VIA C7 this is painful as the install disk doesn't have kernel modules for the CPU's in-built AES/SHA/RNG support.
To do it by hand, basically follow:
http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/howto-disk-encryption-with-dm-crypt-luks-and-debian
And finally, update /etc/crypttab. If you're doing this on a remote system, you want 'luks,noauto' as the option. You can leave out noauto from /etc/fstab so that once you cryptdisks_start {device} you can just do mount -a.
Friday, May 27 2011
[03:17:57]
matt [wronka.org]/Merch
If you're wondering where jabber has been all day, vox1 was replaced after a CPU fan and stick of RAM failed.
Sunday, February 20 2011
[04:57:43]
matt [wronka.org]/Merch
It seems stable now, Fennec is usable, and despite running at 900MHz at the high-end, the CPU is running at only 34C rather than a baseline 36C that it was at before.