text:
Samsung SSD 840: Testing the Endurance of TLC NANDby Kristian Vättö on 11/16/2012 10:18 AM EST
- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Samsung
- Samsung SSD 840
46 Comments
Back to Article
Mumrik - Friday, November 16, 2012 - link10GiB a day would be a very slow day for me, so these numbers are a little scary looking. Not that I expect to have a smallish SSD for 10 years, but still... Reply
jmke - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkUsing a PC drive 5 years is not a very long time with the IT industry stagnating hardware wise. I would avoid these drives for anything you plan to have work for more than 5 years :) Reply
irev210 - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkjmke, the numbers are based off SMART, not actual, which is conservative.
Second, 20GiB of writes a day for 5 years is very aggressive for a typical client workload.
Anyone that is doing that sort of writes is probably doing specialized work that requires something a bit higher-end than your typical office client.
Alexvrb - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkExactly. If you are doing something like 30GB+ of WRITES per day, you should have a good MLC drive like the 840 Pro, or even an SLC scratch drive + larger MLC drive.
The non-Pro, TLC 840 is strictly a consumer drive, and it will easily last 5-10 years in a typical consumer system. Reply
robmuld - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkI don't understand how you can assume SMART values are worse than actual ones? How many times has a product had a problem when it's "supposed" to be working.
This is something Anandtech should test for themselves, rather than take the manufacturer at their word. Do a continuous write test and see how many weeks it takes to fail. I'm pretty sure you'll encounter some surprises. Reply
Kristian Vättö - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkA premature death is always a possibility but usually that's not due to the NAND endurance.
Totally killing the drive is obviously the best way to test endurance but the problem is that it will take weeks, possibly even months to complete and I couldn't test any other SSDs during that period. Reply
robmuld - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkJust setup a cheap box with SATA3 and let it run. Why does it have to occupy the main test rig? After doing the main benchmarks stick the drive in the torture chamber. It would add a lot of value to reviews.
Remember when the stuttering problem was first discovered? It took some extra effort but it was worth it, and drive manufacturers ended up changing their products as a ersult Reply
Sivar - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkRead the link xtremesystems link and then decide if Anandtech is blindly taking manufacturers on their word. Reply
MrSpadge - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkI don't think you understand which SMART values are being talked about here. Sure, if SMART doesn't find a problem with an HDD it doesn't have to mean anything. But if it finds a problem, you can be sure there is a problem.
Here, however, we're talking about the amount of data written to the drive logged and reported via SMART. And the manufacturer is calculating the wear level indicator from these values. However, they have to be conservative here - a dying drive still showing 50% SSD life left would get them into troube. Hence real world write endurance will be better than the wear indicator reported by SMART implies (as that link at XS shows). Reply
UpSpin - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkYour calculations look nice but are they really how SSDs will get used in real life?
If you have a 128GB SSD with your OS and programs installed on it, you probably have used about 60GB. Then load some other data on it or even games and let's say you're left with a generous 20GB free space on the SSD.
Most of the occupied space in the NAND won't change because system/prgram files don't get changed at all.
So you probably only change 10GiB per day as you said, but the 60GB system files won't get changed, ever.
So if data gets changed it will occur on the latter 60GB.
Because 'only' 20GB are free, wear leveling will have to use the remaining 20GB most of the time.
So finally the first 60GB won't wear at all, whereas the latter 60GB will get written to all the time, and the last 20GB will wear the fastest.
And because SSDs are expensive people tend to not waste space on a SSD, so I think 20GB free is luxury.
Or how do SSDs handle this? Reshuffle the content? But this causes additional writes and wear, too. So I think TLC SSDs lifespan is much much shorter than 12 years, maybe just the 2 or 3 years most people keep their computers nowadays. Reply
twotwotwo - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkYes, they reshuffle the content. The crazy thing about SSDs is that they look like hard drives do your OS, but they're doing totally different stuff underneath. Look up 'wear leveling'; here are a couple links:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/6 Reply
UpSpin - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkThanks, didn't knew about the 'static wear leveling' which, just as you said, also reshuffles the static content, thus makes my concerns invalid and TLC NAND a usable less expensive alternative to MLC. Reply
Impulses - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkThis is why Anand talks about write amplification... Because of all the wear Keeling"leveling algorithms, and those do indeed cause more wear, it's a balancing act. Reply
Visual - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - linkNo, write amplification has little to do with wear leveling. The most major cause is the fact that flash is organized in blocks that must always be written to entirely. You may want to write just a single byte, but the drive would internally have to read the whole block (say 4KB) and then erase and white the whole block with that one byte changed. Reply
bwat47 - Saturday, August 03, 2013 - linkThe SSD's firmware actually does "Reshuffle" the content, so you don't need to worry about the SSD trying to just wear-level the same 20gb, they are much more intelligent than that. Reply
David.Sucesso - Monday, August 19, 2013 - linkUpSpin what you are talking is so true that really scares me...
i have registered just to confirm that i only have an ssd drive 120gb ( and the space that is normally free is as 35GB to write every day. the other are files that doesnt get moved on
now this is serious for the consumer Reply
gevorg - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linklooks like I have to find a sweet deal for Samsung 830 while its still available Reply
alextall - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkFor anyone concerned about a short lifespan, I have put an SSD in all three of my machines now. My daily use can generate 10-50GiB of data. While that means I may have considerably shortened life on these drives (which is still 7-10 years according to the MLC data above), the increased productivity more than makes up for the difference. I don't even plan on keeping these computers half that long.
Besides, with the current prices for SSDs are, and where they are (very quickly) moving, it really isn't a difficult value proposition to switch. Reply
name99 - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkDon't waste your breath.
The psychology here is not that of "let's have an honest discussion about usage patterns, cost, and change". The psychology is "I want to be a contrarian to show the world that I'm a deep thinker who doesn't follow the crowd".
It's the same psychology that drives the non-ideological pundits (the one's who say stupid things attacking both parties) and, as you may have noticed, those people have not altered their shtick one bit, even after fifteen years of the internet shaming them with their atrocious record of insight.
It's the same thing here. These people, if they were old enough, were very concerned that we were replacing floppy disks too soon. They felt that maybe we shouldn't be so quick to ditch VGA. They felt that sealed batteries were definitely going to cause trouble.
If they knew anything about the technology, they'd be bleating that "sure, Haswell's lock elision looks good, but how can we be SURE that it won't occasionally miss a memory collision?"
Whatever it is, they are sure that gut instinct trumps engineering skill and actual knowledge of the relevant statistics every time.
The only way to deal with them is to avoid them (and on sites like Ars Technica) filter them out of the comment stream. Reply
bebimbap - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkIf you think about it, even if it were to last 5 years, it's quite long enough.
in 2007 SSDs were $7.5/GB for the cheapest drives or about $1000 for 128gb worth of drive.
in 2010 128gb drives were about $400?
Today 5 years later 128GB 830s drives are as cheap as $70 on sale. that's $0.55/GB
so 5 years from now you'll probably be going to buy a 2TB drive will cost you <$100
As drive capacities increase so will their longevity due to wear leveling.
When 2TB SSDs come out even 250-500 P/E cycles might be more than enough Reply
jonjonjonj - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkim in the market for a 256GB ssd and wanted to get a 830. when the 840 was first release the price of 830's dropped. you could get a 256GB 830 for as low as $150. the problem is the 830's price went back up and now the 840 is now cheaper then the 830. not to mention the 830 is sold out at newegg. samsung shows a MSRP of $259.99 for the 840 on their website but you can get it $80-100 cheaper. do they know something we dont? the 840 pro is too expensive compared to the other drives. it just concerns me that the 840 is cheaper then the 830 and im not sure what to do. Reply
MrSpadge - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkIt's using TLC NAND and a more advanced (smaller) process technology. This is done to bring the cost down, so when ever the yield in the new process is good enough, cost should naturally be lower than the elder brother. Reply
jonjonjonj - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkthats the whole problem. i would rather buy a MLC samsung/marvell drive for the same price as the TLC 840. i figured the retailers would be trying to get rid of their 830's but the prices are going up as the 840's price got slashed. you can get an 840 for $150 right now. Reply
Impulses - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkThen get an M4 or Plextor M5... I bought a second 830a few weeks ago because I knew the 840 was being positioned as it's direct price replacement and the 840 Pro would carry a premium for a while. Reply
MadMan007 - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkThe lower price of the 840 is simply MSRP versus street price. Reply
Beenthere - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkWith the compatibility and SSD reliability issues, NAND endurance is of little concern. Most folks will be replacing their SSD numerous times over the course of 3-5 years due to reliability issues. When consumer grade SSDs become as reliable as enterprise class SSDs, then NAND eundurance might be of concern. Consumer grade SSDs are disposable goods right now. Reply
fuzzymath10 - Friday, November 16, 2012 - linkMany of us have been running first-gen X25-M drives for 3+ years, and will probably continue to do so for a few more, since 80GB is still sufficient for a system drive. I think the capacity will be the first restriction resulting in replacement; speed and reliability will be secondary issues unless you own an SSD for the sole purpose of benchmarking. Reply
Iketh - Saturday, November 17, 2012 - linkyou've been purchasing the wrong SSDs haven't you Reply
Death666Angel - Saturday, November 17, 2012 - linkStill running my original OCZ Agility and OCZ Vertex 2 here without issues. Reply
iwod - Saturday, November 17, 2012 - linkis there a software that records how many data i actually write per day or over a week?
With a 16GB Memory system and No Virtual Memory. While Windows 7/8 are already doing its job trying to prefect as much data as possible i rarely sees my system memory being fully ulterised. So i am guessing i am doing very little write per day. Reply
Kristian Vättö - Saturday, November 17, 2012 - linkMany SSDs report Total Bytes Written (TBW) or Host Writes SMART value, of which both can be used to determine the amount of writes. I'm sure there are applications that record IO activity as well but I'm not aware of any good ones (the one we use is under very strict NDA). Reply
iwod - Saturday, November 17, 2012 - linkI was wondering when i am reading 2bit allows 4 signals while 3 bits allows 8 signals, doesn't that means 3bits should actually double the capacity of 2bit cell? Reply
Kristian Vättö - Saturday, November 17, 2012 - linkWith MLC, you need four voltage states because there are four possible values (""00", "01", "10" and "11"). However, that is only two bits of data.
TLC stores three bits but they can be organized in eight different way ("000", "001", "010", "100", "011", "110", "101" and "111"), hence you need eight voltage states.
In other words, the increase in capacity is linear but the amount of voltage states (and thus the endurance) is exponential. Reply
quixver - Saturday, November 17, 2012 - linkI work with fairly large c++ code bases, and my compiler makes gratuitous use of the disk. With a traditional hard drive - a full rebuild of one of my projects took around 4 hours. With an SSD that time has come down drastically - under an hour in fact (the code base has grown since I switched to SSD - so the actual improvements are more than 4x ).
So - if my SSD lasts me a year - it's more than paid for itself. And replacing the data is no biggie - all my data is either on dropbox, git/hg repos or a raided NAS. Reply
spixel - Sunday, November 18, 2012 - link10gb a day?????
I have only windows 7 installed on my ssd, all games get installed to my caviar green. I have 20gb per 24 hours according to ssd life, and that's just windows doing its thing while the pc is on. Reply
haukionkannel - Sunday, November 18, 2012 - linkWell, the normal user use his machine 2-3 hours in a day... max, so if you use your machine 24 hours a day, 20 gb seems to be guite low usage!
(1-2 hours seems like good estimation of "normal" user usage in a day ...) Reply
spixel - Sunday, November 18, 2012 - linkI don't have my pc on 24 hours a day, I have a total of 10 days worktime and 220gb, which seems on the low end looking at other pictures of ssd life.
I always wondered though, is its lifetime based on total worktime hours, or an estimate of say 3hr per day. Reply
hurleydood - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - linkThe worst part is the host writes are 20GB per day but the actual NAND writes it could be close to 3.5 TB a day. My drive has 11GB a day writes or 3.2TB of host writes over 7105 hours on (296 days 24/7). By my calculations I have a write amplification of 175x and burned 4498 average P/E cycles, 11% drive life. That would be 2TB per day of NAND writes for 11GB of random host writes to the drive. 4498 average P/E cycles multiplied by 128GB drive size should give me 562TB total NAND writes. Divide that by my 3.2TB host writes and you get 175x write amplification. Reply
hurleydood - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - linkHere's the pic from CrystalDiskInfo i49.tinypic.com/n48geq.jpg Reply
Laststop311 - Monday, November 19, 2012 - linkI knew people have been over acting the nand endurance issue. SSD's should last longer then hdd's with all their moving parts something is bound to fail on a hdd before you run out of writes on a ssd. In a week I probably use about 50GB of writes and thats a high estimate, more like 30GB a week unless a buncha good movies release that week. So my 256gb crucial c300 which is a 34nm MLC product should basically last me a lifetime. Reply
Laststop311 - Monday, November 19, 2012 - linkCan anyone tell me how much longer the 34nm MLC nand should last compared to the 20nm MLC evaluated in this article? Reply
Kristian Vättö - Monday, November 19, 2012 - linkIMFT's 34nm MLC NAND is rated at 5,000 P/E cycles, whereas IMFT's 20nm MLC NAND is rated at 3,000 cycles. Using the same math as in the article, a 256GiB SSD with 34nm MLC NAND would last for 116.8 years if you write 10GiB a day (WA=3x).
Obviously, that's theoretical. Reply
Ao1 - Monday, November 19, 2012 - linkThe theoretical P/E count is not just based on how many times the cell can be written too; it's also based on the ability to retain data over time. Whilst it's possible to write well beyond the theoretical P/E count no-one (publically) knows how long data retention will last once the theoretical P/E count has been exceeded. The full picture on endurance is not available until someone can show the relationship between the P/E count and the duration that a cell is subsequently able to retain data. Reply
htwingnut - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - linkAny user that is writes a lot of data shouldn't even consider one of these drives. Just buy the 840 Pro or a Crucial M4. I see the 840 as more of a casual user's SSD. I put a 120GB 840 in each of my kids' netbooks. Over the course of a year they'll likely average less than 10GB writes a day and their systems go on hibernate once or twice a day. Most users that just browse the web, do basic MS Office stuff probably won't even encroach 10GB/day, and remember that's 10GB/day 7 days a week, 365 days a year.. Most users buy a new computer or laptop every 3-4 years anyhow, so I don't see it as a big deal. I wouldn't trust any HDD that is over 4-5 years old either. I have an Intel X25-m 80GB that's been used as a "casual" OS drive for about 3 years now, and it has less than 1TB of writes on the drive. It basically housed the OS and a few apps. Reply
Kaos11 - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - linkI would like to partition my 840 into two partitions as this is my normal setup on a Spinner.
The question is does wear levelling treat the partitions as separate or is it smart enough to still wear level the whole SSD? Reply
phil13 - Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - linkI have one that failed, only show 0.9GB, SN: 000000000, Firmware: DXT06BO0, even samsung Magician software can see it, but say that there is no samsung SSD drive.
It does look the firmware problem, all feel ok.
Any solutions and help? appreciate, thanks. Reply


text:
66 Comments
Back to Article
Scannall - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkIt seems to me that $500 is really too high for that. Microcenter often has the Auria 2560x1440 IPS in stock for $400, with the warranty and all that.
I'm one of those that went the Korean monitor route. My budget was $300, and I ended up spending $295 delivered. I do acknowledge there is a little risk there. But mine arrived and works perfectly. And it looks far better than anything else I could have bought for the same money.
piroroadkill - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkI agree. Either you go dirt cheap and you take a risk, or you buy a Dell U2711.
I don't see the point spending more than the cheapest and getting something which is barely better, and still has a slightly cheap appearance.
If I'm going to spend money on a monitor, it better look the part too (I have a Dell U2410). Reply
PubFiction - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkI went the Korean way but I heard alot of people cry about the warranty. So I think they will have a niche. Also the Auria seems to be hit or miss for availability. In fact even searching for it on the website is hit or miss, sometimes in the same day I can find it one minute and not the next.
Also Korean monitors can be had for under $300, and $400 will get you the much better crossover stand. Reply
DigitalFreak - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkThat Auria you say Microcenter has isn't on their website, and I've never seen it in my local store. Where are you located? Reply
Octavean - Saturday, September 22, 2012 - linkThe $399.99 AURIA EQ276W from Microcenter appears to be virtually identical to the the Nixeus NX-VUE27 reviewed here. The only difference appears to be the stand (no rotation or hight adjust) and the ~$30 to ~$100 markup.
I don't see the point in paying more for the NX-VUE27 or taking a risk on the Korean single input solutions. Reply
jhoff80 - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - linkYeah, I don't care what Nixeus has said, but this is definitely a rebrand of the Auria (or whatever initial product the Auria came from).
Even the OSD is identical. Reply
lowlymarine - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkI find it strange that you wouldn't include the measurements taken from the Korean panels (http://www.anandtech.com/show/5885/the-achieva-shi... especially since they're the most obvious competitor here.
That said, I have (had?) a Catleap Q270 and can't recommend the experience either. Due to a questionable design decision (the side panel where you connect both the DC power plug and the DL-DVI panel was made of a conductive metal), it shorted out, causing sparks to erupt from the DVI cable when it touched the metal surface of the connector - mercifully, my video card was not damaged, even though that was the end of the DVI I was plugging in when it happened. So I contacted the eBay seller, who offered to pay for return shipping to Korea and to send out a replacement unit. That was a month ago today, and I still haven't received the replacement unit, although the seller did finally acknowledge receipt of the defective one and his intent to ship out the replacement "as soon as possible" on Tuesday morning. And of course, even when/if I do receive a replacement, it's likely to have the same potential for disaster. Reply
TheJian - Friday, September 28, 2012 - linkYet, Ryan tried to argue these are a popular thing in the forums last month...LOL. I debated it, and his 660TI remarks & conclusions in their 660TI launch review comments sections, until they (ryan and Jarred Walton) were reduced to insinuating I was an Ahole and uninformed etc...LOL. They really couldn't argue with my data :) EBay monitors...Jeez. If I'm that cheap or plain poor, I don't risk my money on some dude from Korea...ROFL Reply
Mygaffer - Friday, June 07, 2013 - linkIts funny, you do you come off as an ahole. Reply
lowlymarine - Saturday, October 20, 2012 - linkSince I happened to come across this post again while looking for the name of this display, I figure I'll update on what happened with my Catleap Q270. I did finally receive the replacement from Korea on the 18th of October (so just shy of two months without my display), and it DOES NOT have the same design flaw as the original unit. The side panel is now plastic, which should alleviate the path for arcing between the power jack and DVI port. Furthermore, color accuracy and backlight bleed on the replacement unit are much improved. Sadly, it does have a single stuck green subpixel in the top right quadrant, but it's hardly noticeable.
I'd still say spending the little extra for a display where your warranty service (if necessary) will take a week instead of two months is probably worth it. But if you can't swing an extra $200 - not an insignificant sum, to be sure - there's a lot less chance of the same disaster I experienced befalling you, hopefully. Reply
Karman - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link"I wish they would have used different screws for attaching the support column to the display than they did for the base, to make it easier to differentiate."
If the screws are all the same (as the text implies) there is nothing to differentiate. Selecting the correct screw couldn't get any easier! Reply
cheinonen - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkThe screws are different, but only slightly different, so it's easy to get the two confused if you were to mix up the bags, or disassemble it. For connecting it to the display, I'd prefer something like a thumbscrew that you can easily install, and then use a screwdriver for the final tightening like the Antec P182 case has for keeping the panels on. Just something that looks more distinct. Reply
Bateluer - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkEnded up being 290 each with shipping. With the warranty/support questions, I picked up the 3yr SquareTrade Warranty for each as well. They are definitely cheap, the stands wobble, the two displays aren't level with each other on the unadjustable stand, and I had to adjust the calibration manually. But all in all, they have no dead pixels and no back light bleed, so I'm very happy with the purchase.
The major downside is how poorly some of my games run at 5120x1440 on a Radeon 6950. :( Damn EyeFinity. Reply
Sabresiberian - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkWell at that resolution you really need more than one video card, and as strong as you can afford. It's also possible to reach 2GB of memory use in some games. The PCIe 2 interface can effect your results as well, though again, I wouldn't expect it to make a huge difference for you.
You might be able to use the cheaper monitor, but there is no cheaper video card solution to match that kind of price range. Really, switching to one 7970 would make a big difference for you, and might give you good enough performance that you are satisfied with your gaming experience.
;) Reply
hechacker1 - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkFor that kind of money, I'd just go get the certified 120Hz version from Korea. Sure the warranty and build quality won't be as good, but they do guarantee their best A- panels along with 120Hz and not "too many" dead pixels for that price. Reply
Doh! - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkBe aware that some of these inexpensive "Korean" panels are actually Chinese panels (made in China by Chinese OEM manufacturers and supplied to Samsung/LG and sold as Samsung/LG panels).
In Korea, the tech-savvy buyers always investigate the origin of the panel as the quality of the panel varies significantly between the Samsung/LG-manufactured ones from the OEM-supplied panels made in China.
Besides the panel (or sometimes including the panel as noted above), every other components such as the stand, case are made in China by the way.
It's a shame that better manufacturers using the genuine Samsung/LG panels and high-quality workmanship are not yet available outside of Korea as the price is not much more than these "knockoffs" monitors. Reply
trynberg - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkhttp://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.a... Reply
jackstar7 - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkI wouldn't call that a great deal though as it is only:
1920 x 1080 at 60 Hz Reply
trynberg - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkFair enough. Reply
Roland00Address - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkWhich is not the same as 2560x1440 panels that Chris is referencing. Reply
sheh - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkToo bad they kept the size and reduced the resolution rather than vice versa. :) Reply
Confusador - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkAmen! I really want this resolution, but can't stand anything bigger than 23" Reply
falko2904 - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkBut that Dell is significantly lower resolution. It is only 1920x1080 (actually fine by me for what I would want). The class of monitors being talked about have 2560x1440 resolution.
LIke I said, for my purpose, I actually like that Dell. Reply
ikoss - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkDude.. that's 1080p crap, not to mention not likely to be an IPS! Reply
DanNeely - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - linkIt's listed as IPS on the spec page; might only be eIPS though. Reply
Sabresiberian - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link1920x1080 @ 27" might be fine for a TV across the living room, but it's crap for a monitor. Reply
RaistlinZ - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkPoor contrast, poor color gamut, high input lag, high power draw, mediocre build quality.
You get what you pay for. Reply
cheinonen - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkI'm just going to suggest you didn't fully read the article or didn't look at similar displays in the results tables. The contrast was poor in comparison to the HP 27" display, but was close to the results from the NEC and DoubleSight panels. The color gamut is sRGB, exactly what it was specified for, and exactly what you get. The power draw was lower than all the other tested 27" displays, so that was good, and I commented plenty on the build quality.
With input lag, other than the HP ZR2740w, which has no scaler, the input lag on all the other 27" models is almost identical (and the new review has the same issue). Whatever scaler is being used isn't incredibly fast, and combined with the response time of the display, the absolute minimum you are going to get is 1 frame. If you run at 1440p, you might get exactly 1 frame, but as I said, I have no way of knowing this. So in comparison to 27" displays, the lag, gamut, contrast, and power draw are either close to the same or better in most cases, with the build quality being the main issue in comparison. Reply
sheh - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link...in case manufacturers scour the web for public opinion. :)
Still waiting for hi-res in DPI rather than absolute number of pixels. And enough with 16:9. OLED aside, wanted: 3840x2400 in 24". If they don't start upping the DPI in desktop, soon enough cellphones will become higher-res (in pixels) than desktop monitors. Reply
magreen - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkThis.
It's long past time for graphics drivers and operating systems to treat displays as a resolution independent output device, the way printers are. When you print a document to a printer that can print 600 dpi, it looks just like that same document printed on a 300 dpi printer except a bit sharper.
I'm so tired of having to blow up pdfs and word documents to much larger than their actual size because otherwise I can't read the smaller text (even if I put my face close to the monitor). Reply
magreen - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkEspecially given that there appears to be a real surplus of compute power in computers these days. The vast majority of users have no need for the compute power an i7 can deliver nor what most discrete GPUs can deliver. It's time to harness that power to finally give us resolution independent displays! Reply
peterfares - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkWindows fully supports DPI scaling since Vista. Most Microsoft programs fully support it and a few third party ones do, too. You can also try forcing high DPI mode on unsupported programs and see which ones work. Otherwise you can run them at their original pixel size or you can pixel scale them.
Microsoft made a small push for higher DPI screens back during Vista's launch (along with hybrid hard drives) and it's only now when screens are finally moving up in DPI (look at the new laptops and tablets with 13" 1080p screens). Hybrid hard drives are also coming into play, though it's a bit late since SSDs are becoming big and cheap enough to completely replace them. Vista was just far ahead of its time. Reply
cosmotic - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link"vista was just far ahead of its time"
Yeah, *thats* what vista was. Reply
Malphas - Monday, September 24, 2012 - linkActually it was, try Vista again today and you'll find it a near identical experience to Windows 7. The reason it was so awful at the time was due to underpowered hardware (made worse by the Vista Ready scheme Microsoft stupidly went along with to appease OEMs), incompatible hardware and software, buggy third party drivers, software that didn't play nice with UAC, etc. The actual OS itself is sound and again only cosmetically different from Windows 7, which received near universal praise. Reply
Penti - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkReadyboost is still horrible and should die, seriously just give me an mSATA SSD + HDD if cheap storage is needed instead of 5400 rpm drives and small sub 64GB SSDs for caching. It's worse then a fast HDD. DPI-scaling is by no means an nice and clean way of scaling elements in Windows, not even all Microsoft apps support it. Though it's standard to have it scale on OEM-PCs since a long time now. Metro still scales horrible though. Reply
madmilk - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - linkIt supports it in basically the same way the retina Macbook does (assuming Vista-style scaling): show natively high-res apps at full resolution, and scale up the rest.
The difference is, Microsoft hasn't gone out and made noise about it, so pretty much everyone's apps are just using ugly scaling. Reply
Sabresiberian - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link"Resolution" has been perverted since LCDs came out. It used to be tied to pixel density. So, correctly speaking cell phones already have higher resolutions than monitors.
;) Reply
jeremyshaw - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkHello,
I've noticed you mentioned HDMI 1.4 support in the specifications list. Does that mean an AMD GCN or Intel Ivy Bridge (do the Ivy Bridge drivers support that, yet?) can output, via a HDMI output, a 2560x**** image at 60Hz? Reply
peterfares - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkIt's been stated that this display supports those resolutions over HDMI as long as you have a device capable of sourcing it. I don't know what can source it, if anything, yet. Reply
atotroadkill - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkFrom what I can find on the web, if you are using the CPU's embedded GPU for the HDMI output then no - only displayport can.
To power 2560x1440 over HDMI you may need a descrete Nvidia 600 series card. Reply
Death666Angel - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkOr AMD 7xxx. :) Reply
Penti - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkNo, just no. Only 3 GHz HDMI 1.4a support above 1920x1200. Don't confuse the two, the monitor does not support it. DVI-DL or DP that rules here. The Nixues might accept a higher res signal over HDMI but it doesn't have the bandwidth to handle it so it causes issues. DP or DVI-DL recommended and is the only one's supported by the vendor. It's basically like trying to run SL-DVI at a higher res then specced here. Skip HDMI-connections whenever you can, skip notebooks with only HDMI whenever you can if you want to run over 1920x1200. Even if you happen to have stuff supporting HDMI 1.4a 3GHz (3GHz part is vital here) in your portable stuff the monitor isn't yet supporting it. They need a new generation of chips driving the displays. GCN and Kepler might be practical if you like to run above 2560x1600 though, but most monitors still requires two DP-connections for 3840x2160/2400 when they don't have true DP1.2 support. There isn't really much of any hardware around to support all the other DP1.2 features either such as daisy chaining.
HDMI is essentially useless here unless it can scale your console (1280x720/1920x1080) good enough on that screen to be usable and correctly viewed. VGA isn't really any use either. You simply have to use a lower res screen if you don't have access to DL-DVI and or DP supporting stuff. Reply
atotroadkill - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkThanks for the clarification... I currently use the displayport connection from my GTX 670 to my NX-VUE27... before when I was using HDMI 1.4 I did experience artifacts and some sync issues at 2560x1440. After that I tried Dual Link DVI but I couldn't see my bios... but after switching to Displayport those issues went away. Reply
Despoiler - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - linkToo much processing lag. 2 FRAMES!!! Glad I held off. That is a non-starter. Reply
atotroadkill - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link"Because I have to run at a non-standard resolution compared to the Nixeus, you might see some additional lag being added to the input than if you ran natively, but there is no way for me to actually test the native input lag time. There is also no way on the Nixeus to set a 1080p image to be centered and not scaled, which might reduce lag by doing 1:1 mapping and bypassing the scaler but at the expense of only using part of the screen."
The 2 Frames and processing is because of Non-Native resolution testing and testing it 1080p...so if you are gaming at 1080p on the monitor then yes it will bother you - and gaming on this monitor at 1080 you shouldn't get this monitor anyways.
I'm using it at 2560x1440 playing BF3 and it has no affect on my shooting and timing (with V-SYNC off) Reply
abhaxus - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkI wonder about this also. Since the author doesn't have a CRT capable of 1440p for reference, why not just compare the input lag using the HP as a reference at 1440p? Seems like a solution that might get answers for those of us who are quite interested in this monitor. I suspect it's as you say, that without scaling it can do ok. Reply
cheinonen - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkWell, testing that would require that I still have the HP monitor, but since I didn't buy it, that isn't really an option for me to do. The only CRTs out there that can do 1440p are probably projectors with 9" CRTs, and unfortunately installing a 100+ lb. projector, not to mention the cost of finding one in great shape to test it, precludes that. Reply
trynberg - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkNot that I expect you to get one, but there are plenty of 19-21" CRTs out there that can do 2048X1536 resolution for dirt cheap...I have two sitting at home right now (19" Mitsubishi and 21" Sun/Sony). Reply
cheinonen - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkIt has to be 2560x1440, though, for the exact same native resolution, and something that can do that is incredibly hard to find. Reply
Sabresiberian - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkHmm well okay the Sony GDM FW900 runs at 2304x1440, not 2560, but wouldn't that give you better results?
(I'm not sure this is a huge issue, as long as your testing methodology is consistent across LCD displays.) Reply
Sabresiberian - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkUh, can you say Sony GDM FW900?
;) Reply
hcforde - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkI got one of the first shipments and have ordered 2 more. I use mine mostly for productivity but have run a number of games just to see how they look and feel. I am mostly playing Crysis 2 with all the eye candy turned up(no AA as it is not necessary). Coming from a 1920*1200 monitor, I do not notice any lag either. I am running 2-2GB 5870's Xfired.
A bit disappointed that other "bargain" monitors were not shown against this one. Apples-to-apples comparison are always better in my opinion.
I would recommend it to gamers that want to play at 2560*1440 Reply
Scannall - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkThey did a review of one of the bargain ones earlier this year.
It looks like, from the results the bargain one did a lot better. Reply
atotroadkill - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkThey used a different new testing method for the NX-VUE27 than the one for the achieva. Reply
atotroadkill - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkSome of the testing methods used for the NX-VUE27 was different than that review. Reply
cruzinbill - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkI think that I will just stick to korean monitors. 2 for 550 shipped and it seems to be actually nicer quality than this one. If you go through a good seller for the Korean models you can normally get one with 0 dead pixels as well.
Only complaint on them is the base could be more sturdy..... but I dont flash dance on my desk so its not an issue. Reply
Wkstar - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkTwo Catleap 2703's for $600. delivered
They are Perfect !
I do Not have any Pixel or Lightbleed issues
The stand is good, I do not dance on my desk so they do Not wobble
I have never wanted a stand that rotates, or pivots, So No problem there
I do Not rub the Bezel like some people do slot machines, So there is no fingerprint problem
They do Not make me coffee in the morning so that is a Major problem Reply
IceDread - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkThe price is too high for what you get.
Looking at the input lag alone however makes this monitor not acceptable. 2 frames of input lag.. ! Reply
cheinonen - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkI'm away from home and will update the article when I return, but some notes from Nixeus after the review went up:
- A few monitors in the initial batch suffered from the "no backlight below 19" issue I mentioned. For anyone with this, Nixeus will RMA it and repair the issue, and so I will have mine fixed after I return and then update the appropriate sections. This also makes it clear that my display was straight off the line and not hand-picked as well.
- The packaging has been updated since I received mine. The stand was updated late in production, and so custom packaging couldn't be completed in time it seems, but now it is packed better.
- The price of $500 is being set by the reseller due to current demand, but will drop back down to the $430 original price in the future once production catches up with demand.
I'm also going to mention that lag on a 27" is going to be an issue for testing going forward until I find something else to test with. Right now I can get the response time measured, but not the lag time correctly when using the scaler. Since I have to use a CRT to measure it, and the CRT is only 1920x1200 at the maximum, that presents an issue. I keep the aspect ratio the same as the display under test (16x9 or 16x10) but the LCD has to scale using this method. I would assume you would get faster results with the native resolution, but that's just a guess unfortunately. Reply
Sabresiberian - Friday, September 21, 2012 - linkThese aren't actually out yet - first run is expected to be in the hands of those who pre-ordered first week in October - but they are selling their base model for $319.99. That includes a 1-year warranty. Shipping is extra, unlike the Korean models, but for continental U.S. buyers it's less than $30 so not bad at all. Their panels are "A" grade, not "A-".
Supply is limited and you need to pre-order to be sure to get one at this point. I have one of the "Pixel Perfect" and "Overclockable" monitors ordered which I should get mid-October or so.
I'm hoping you guys at Anandtech will test these Overlords out. It would be great for you to run an overclocked one @ 120Hz and see what you get.
;) Reply
Jjoshua2 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - linkI'm interested in these overloard and catleaps too. I'll second that Anandtech needs to get their hands on one and review it. Reply
BrazenRain - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link"tolerances might not be as" LOW, not high. Reply
DanNeely - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - linkHow much would a good 3rd party stand for one of these or the cheaper Korean panels cost? Reply
AbRASiON - Monday, September 24, 2012 - linkI do not buy products that are defective by design, no sirree I do not. Reply
kneedeep248 - Saturday, March 02, 2013 - linkHi,
I enjoy this monitor, but I have not figure out how to set the default display. For now, it default to HDMI. I can change it in the OSD menu to DVI which I use for my computer, but it always default back to HDMI. Help. I have done a google search but did not find my answer, so I am trying here.
Thanks, Reply
sloother - Monday, April 18, 2016 - linkI've had a Nixeus Vue 27" IPS for over 3 years and it has worked superb over the years. An internal component, not exactly sure what part in particular, did go out about 2 years into owning it. Nonetheless, I took it into Nixeus, they treated me like a valued customer the moment I walked in the door and I was in and out within 15 min with my monitor working like new. It's always a risk buying a monitor and hoping it lasts, but when something does finally go wrong you want to make sure you don't have to jump through hoops to have an under warranty claim or get charged an arm and a leg to repair it. Nixeus fixed my monitor at a very cheap rate after my warranty had expired and were extremely accommodating while doing it. I will not buy any other product because Nixeus has excellent products but even better customer service! Reply

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Apple's Redesigned MacBook and MacBook Pro: Thoroughly Reviewedby Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/22/2008 12:00 AM EST
- Posted in
- Mac
65 Comments
Back to Article
MacMatte - Sunday, June 21, 2009 - linkFor those of you who insist that Apple brings back the matte screen option, please leave a comment at http://macmatte.wordpress.com">http://macmatte.wordpress.com - it's a website solely focused on the issue of bringing back the matte screen. See the number of pro-matte comments already at the MacMatte website. Reply
drbrady63 - Thursday, June 18, 2009 - linkI am trying to identify if a new macbook pro 13" would be adequate for editing with Final Cut Express, and for that matter, Final Cut Studio. Unfortunately, it has a 5400rpm hard drive and that is not good for editing. But, I wonder if an optional ssd would be fast enough??
I would use the 13" for more mobile work and dock it with a larger monitor for more involved editing work.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Dan Brady Reply
richmoffitt - Sunday, November 09, 2008 - linkThis is an uneducated guess, but I'm pretty sure that Quartz works in ways similar to X11, where changing graphics drivers requires a restart of the window manager.
You're right though -- this is only a software problem and can hopefully be fixed in the near future (if it's a big enough issue for their user base anyway). Reply
scipi - Monday, October 27, 2008 - linkHope the quality of the components is better than the first gen MacBook Pro's. Mine is on its second H/D, gone through 2 logic boards and now needs a third, this time outside of warranty. Wont be buying another Apple again which is a pity because OSX is great. Reply
Zebo - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - linkVista is bloated resource hogging junk - You should have tried the OS many of use still use - Windows XP for battery life. I get over 4 hours on my R31 thinkpad with winxp pro.
Ronbo13 - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - linkYou photos comparing the glossiness and reflection on the screens was not fair, though. Please notice that the laptop on the right (the new MBP) is reflecting a portion of wall that has direct sunlight shining on it, and the laptop on the left is reflecting stuff that's in shadows. So even if the screens were equally reflective, the one on the right would show tons more reflections.
Come on, people. Normally you guys pay more attention to details. That's just sloppy. Reply
ioannis - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - linknop, you are wrong. Both of them reflect stuff that have direct sunlight. Notice Anand's reflection for instance, or the wall on the left hand side of the old MB and the wall on the right hand side on the new one.
I'm referring to this:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mac/MacBookPro...">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mac/MacBookPro... Reply
Enrox - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - linkAnand, why don't you test Vista installing it on the new MacBook Pro without using Bootcamp, you need to wipe out the drive and create a MBR partition and use Vista x64 SP1 (it supporta EFI), the only thing you need to know is that at startup you have to press the Alt key and manually select the Windows disk in order to boot from it, beside that everything else seems to work just fine with the Vista native installation (tested on a white MacBook Penryn 2.4 GHz 4GB ram).
It would be very interesting to see if you get the same exact battery life numbers bypassing Bootcamp. Reply
JonnyDough - Friday, October 24, 2008 - linkUntil Apple stops being so shady, I won't have anything to do with them. Reply
aos007 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - linkI have brand new Vaio Z laptop and I can get 5 hours battery life IF I disable Vista sidebar. It does not matter whether there's no widgets running, it seems to use 10-15% of CPU time no matter what. This translates into a big loss of runtime - I'd get 3.5 hours versus 5. Unfortunately, I like Sidebar as there are some useful widgets, as well as for eye candy so I feel Vista is crippled without it.
So the question is whether you disabled Sidebar during Vista testing? I am guessing not since it runs by default and if so, that may be part of your answer. Reply
plonk420 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkcould anyone test this with the new (and even old) Mac Book Pro to test for CPU usage?
h.264 high profile (QT supports this now, right?) level 4.1 720p60, fairlight/the black lotus's demo Only One Wish (2nd place at Intel's second demo compo) .. has some really handsome bitrate spikes :D ~mid 20s mbps spikes (but not as good as the 60mbit spikes in a 6 or 8mbit (average) encode of ASD's Antisize Matters) Reply
michaelheath - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkHaving spoken to a few Apple developers I know, the reason for this oddity is Nvidia's software implementation for Mac OS 10.5. While the ideal situation was for them to be able to switch on the fly, the agreement between Apple and Nvidia to develop for the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros happened so quickly it left little time to create a proper application that would allow for this (think of how you had to restart your computer to turn SLI on or off: same slapdash type of programming).
The hope is that quick-toggling between integrated and dedicated graphics will come with Mac OS 10.6 as it may be too large of an update to patch Mac OS 10.5. It also makes sense in this aspect as Mac OS 10.6 also includes OpenCL GPGPU algorithms, which Nvidia is already promoting and developing under their CUDA platform. Reply
RDO CA - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkOn my Thinkpad T-400 with switchable graphics all that is needed to switch is to go to the taskbar icon and click switchable graphics and choose what you want and the screen goes dark for a second and thats it. Reply
cliffa3 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkI'll test it sometime this week, but on my Lenovo T61 it seems like I get much more life out of Ubuntu than I do Vista 64-bit. Could be a windows thing in general, not just something that OS X does better.
How was the battery life comparison between XP and Vista? Reply
PilgrimShadow - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkAnyone know if the 9400M and 9600M appear in Vista's Device Manager? Reply
TallCoolOne - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkI bought the new 2.0GHz MacBook last week as my first Mac and can say I'm not disappointed. The whole chassis feels as solid as, well, a block of aluminum! As Anand said, it feels like you get what you paid for. I actually like the multi-touch gestures, such as swiping with 3 fingers to flip pages and for back/forward when web browsing. I'd like to see iTunes also support that gesture. Two finger scolling is another great feature not mentioned in this article. What I don't like though is the stiffness of the mouse click. It takes far more pressure than any mouse and that required pressure is uneven in different areas of the trackpad. Pressing near the top requires more pressure than near the bottom. As for lack of standard SSD, Anand, perhaps you're a little too spoiled by that speed! I would not expect that as standard on even the fastest MacBook Pro at current prices. That is, unless you'd like to see the asking price for a MBP $500-600 more than it is now. Reply
vlado08 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkIt is interesting was vista side panel running during the test. Also was this fresh install of vista os. If it was fresh then was the indeing enabled. Reply
vlado08 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkedit indeing - indexing Reply
jmpt2 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkVery interesting to read your conclusions about better power management in MacOS vs Vista. This matches my experiences running Vista on the BootCamp partition of my Core Duo MacBook, and is the first time I've seen this discussed anywhere on the web. I found that with a main battery in quite poor condition after two years constant use, it became impossible to use Vista on battery power for more than a minute without the battery deciding it was empty and putting the machine into sleep mode. Under MacOSX the system could still be used for 30min+ (light use) before the same thing happened.
I'd come to the conclusion that Apple were deliberately playing games with the ACPI tables to confuse Vista's power management code and make their own OS look better. This seemed to be supported by the fact that Vista is unable to correctly detect the charging state on my MacBook - running on battery power it would always report "Connected to mains, not charging". Does it still work that way on the latest MacBooks? In any case, your data does seems to suggest the problem is a more general issue with Vista. Sounds like you should investigate further...
BZDTemp - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkI wonder if OS X lasting longer on a battery can be transfered to the world of none portable?
In other words say I run OS X on my daily, none laptop, work machine doing surfing, writing and perhaps listening to music(FLAC prefered over MP3) or even watching an episode of The Daily Show. Will this draw less power from the wall with a PC running OS X than with the same machine running Windows (and is there a difference between Windows versions). Also Linux should be included in the test.
Imagine the perspective - with the whole green computing movement this could really make a difference not just in the server rooms.
Please do check this out - this is not only interesting for us geeks but could make Anandtech something referred to by none-tech news media. Reply
joey2264 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkUhm, Apple charges $150 to upgrade from 2 to 4 GB. A 2 GB 1066 DDR3 notebook dimm is about $60 on Newegg. What are you smoking?? Reply
strikeback03 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkHe didn't mention how many slots are populated in the standard configuration. If standard is a pair of 1GB sticks, then you need a pair of those $60 2GB sticks to get 4GB. Reply
joey2264 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkIt doesn't matter. 2 GB of memory (2 Dimms) cost about $80, and 4 GB cost about $120, as stated in the article. But Apple is charging $150 to upgrade from one to the other, when it only costs $40 more.
Thanks for correcting me, because Apple is raping their customers even more than I thought. Reply
strikeback03 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - linkMight be true, but as you can't choose zero RAM as a shipping configuration, from the customer perspective (assuming 2 2GB sticks are needed) you either pay $120 to Newegg and do the work yourself or pay $150 to Apple.
Also, I highly doubt Apple is paying Newegg prices for components, so even more profit. But RAM upgrades seem to always be something the manufacturers have raped customers on. Reply
Brucmack - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkIt'd be nice to provide a couple of extra data points...
- Macbook battery life on XP
- Lenovo battery life on XP & Linux Reply
wolf550e - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkAnand, please perform same test on Ubuntu 8.10 and tell us whether it's closer to OS X or Vista. Reply
R3MF - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkbut i live in hope of a response:
Is this integrated nvidia chipset the same as was rumoured to work with the Via Nano CPU?
Kind regards Reply
boe - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkI'm curious to how XP would compare to Vista/ OS X. Reply
snouter - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkNo 1680x1050? When will Apple step up and offer this? This is even more egregious than the lack of an SSD option, although, an SSD could be added to the MBP later, and the screen is forever.
The MBP should only offer the CPU models with 6MB cache. This would have been one more way to differentiate the MBP from the MB. Put the Pro in Pro dammit.
No matte option on the MBP? Please.
I upgraded my 2.16GHz Merom to a 2.4GHz Penryn, largely for the LED screen, but, now I've even more glad that I did.
If Apple does not add some flexibility to the 15" MBP build options, I'll be waiting for the 17" MBP. My workplace bought me one, and... 1920x1200 LED is pure love, though I could live happily with a 1680x1050 on my preferred form factor, the 15".
Apple has a knack of diminishing their gains with some weird regresions and non-moves. It's love hate for sure. Reply
iwodo - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkWith much increased battery life, ( not that it uses that much less power, but you accomplish the same task in less time would means less power usage )
I hope Intel hurry up with their controller chip. Reply
Imaginer - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkAnd you have the options of the new iMirror or the new iMirror! :P
But all iJokes aside, this article did not really had me until it is mentioned of the new trackpad. Initially, I thought that Apple went off the deep end by going from one button to NO buttons. But in the end, the right and left click is simply a finger or two down away from touching the pad to make the click.
It is a SHAME that Anand had many troubles with the fickleness of the pad - and even moreso in Windows. Big deal breaker (alongside the annoyance of the newly adopted displayport with no included adapter (nickel and dime? at the very least monitor manufacturers include BOTH the DVI and VGA cable with each monitor, wmy not Apple?).
Features aside, I do agree while that many (including myself) equate Apple to the USSR of the computing world, they do put together a nice OVERALL package compared to other manufacturers. Next revision Apple.... you almost had me with this one... ALMOST. Get your windows stuff and hardware support together and well talk (yes and that includes supporting ALL of your "gestures" in the Windows platform too - yeah fat chance in hell). Reply
ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkThe Windows issues should hopefully be fixed with the next BootCamp driver update.
But I have to agree about the glass/glossy reflectiveness. I really hope Apple brings back a matte option, which is unlikely, or at least find some way to reduce the reflectivity in the next refresh. Reply
andreschmidt - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkThe first reports are coming in at MacRumors and they are definitely Samsung SSDs...didn't they use that horrible controller? Reply
Voldenuit - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link"In testing the first batch of Centrino 2 notebooks that Jarred received he noted that he can't seem to find a mainstream notebook with a 50 - 60WHr battery that can come close to offering the sort of battery life you get out of the Macs."
You're not looking hard enough. The lenovo thinkpad T400 registered 6.5 hrs with wireless on using a 56 WHr battery.
That's about 30% longer than the Macbook Pro. Reply
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link"With the T400 you can reach 9 hours and 41 minutes with the wireless enabled, screen backlight at 60%, and the laptop in integrated graphics mode using only the 84Wh 9-cell battery. In this situation the notebook is only consuming roughly 8.5 watts of power. In dedicated graphics mode under the same settings battery life falls by exactly 2 hours down to 7 hours and 41 minutes, and power draw increases to 10.5 watts. The 6-cell battery managed 6 hours and 4 hours and 28 minutes respectively."
No mention is made of actually *surfing* the web - WiFi is merely enabled. Without knowing more about how they conduct their battery life testing, I can't say whether their numbers are comparable to ours. What I do know is that on the notebook I mentioned in an earlier comment, battery life almost doubles (142 minutes vs. 261 minutes) when I go from web surfing to idle. Reply
quanta - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkThe buttonless mouse is the dumbest idea. For example, if I have to press 1 finger for left click, 2 fingers on the pad for right click, how do I press both buttons? In addition, if scroll is done by moving 2 fingers, how does it not get confused with dragging with right mouse button? Furthermore, the lack of tactile feedback also reduces productivity. So much for another innovative design. Reply
aj28 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link1) Why would you need to do a simultaneous left and right click?
2) Why would you drag with the right mouse button? (also refer to below)
3) It DOES have tactile feedback. The whole trackpad is a depressible button...
Take your biased ideas elsewhere, thanks. Apple does good for the PC industry and provides an alternative to Microsoft-based solutions. Whether they're better or not is entirely a matter of opinion, but the bottom line is that they provide competition, and competition is good for everyone. Reply
hb18 - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - linkAnother good use of simultaneous button clicks is mouse gestures in web browsers. Reply
Johnmcl7 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link1 - For pasting in *nix applications, at least that's what I use on a conventional mouse.
2 - Right click drag in Windows lets you choose the file behaviour (move, copy, create shortcut) whereas a standard left click drag will just do a default action.
John Reply
headbox - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link1. newflash: this isn't *nix. There's nothing preventing you from getting a mouse either.
2. keyboard shortcuts are faster than mouse actions. Get to know them. Reply
Johnmcl7 - Thursday, January 15, 2009 - linkI didn't say it was for *nix, that's why I said *nix applications which still use the middle mouse button in other operating systems. There are many times when there isn't space for using a mouse, hence it's a laptop.
As for keyboard shortcuts, they're not faster when using a mouse as it means a break from the sequence rather than just clicking with the mouse that's in use anyway Reply
themadmilkman - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkWhy don't you head to a store and try it? It's much more intuitive than you give it credit for. Reply
Sunrise089 - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkThere was a time when cars were changed and tweaked every single year, often for purely aesthetic/emotional reasons. That is no longer true. The average enthusiast car shopper is no less spec-conscious than PC geeks. And likewise the majority, and especially in the high-end/luxury market (Lexus, Apple) that is composed less by knowledgeable enthusiasts and more by people craving a certain image or experience, tend to shop based upon style, price, or other easy-to-understand factors. Reply
headbox - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - linkwrong. If people were "spec-conscious" about what they drive and getting performance was priority #1, then we'd see thousands of motorcycles on the freeways instead of dozens. You can spend $8,000 and get a motorcycle that is faster than any car made, gets 50 mpg, and can still carry a few bags of groceries.
People buy nice cars because they can afford it and like the aesthetics.
RaynorWolfcastle - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkJust a note, but I've read elsewhere that under Windows, the graphics on the MBP always use the 9600 chip; I'm sure this accounts for part of the difference in battery life (assuming you ran the OSX tests using the integrated 9400 video. Reply
ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkThe Windows vs OS X battery life tests were done on a MacBook Air so discrete GPU has no effect. Reply
jonmcc33 - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkMaybe you should test the power settings with Vista on Power saver setting? My Latitude D610 lasts over 3 hours with Vista. I wouldn't use Balanced unless it was plugged into the AC adapter. Reply
Calin - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkWhat about testing under XP? Reply
jonmcc33 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkNobody cares about Windows XP and it would be REALLY bad to compare to the latest Mac OS X product. Reply
BushLin - Tuesday, October 28, 2008 - linkI don't see why, XP isn't a limitation on anything useful unless you were just talking about the eye candy of OS X... See how many businesses still supply their laptops with XP rather than the junk they're supplied with because they're not tethered to Microsoft like the manufacturers. Reply
Calin - Friday, October 24, 2008 - linkWhat about testing power use under XP I mean
XP compares more favourably to Mac OS (or anything else) than Vista, and I wanted to know if that excessive power use is Vista-only, or if it does appear on Windows XP too Reply
strikeback03 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkOr some version of Linux? Reply
wilkinb - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkyeh I agree the diff will be how the OS is set to manage each device etc etc...
On my Sony laptop i get around 2 hours on high performance and a bit over 5 hours on battery saving...
The results they posted dont really tell us much other then a bootcamp vista install isnt as good as an osx install at managing power on apple laptop... amazing right?
I am sure if i dont use the Sony install and tool/drviers etc I will also get less battery life on my laptop. So the question would be do you think apple put more effort into power management on their OSX install then they did for Vista? Reply
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkLet me just say that I've tried testing various power saver setting under Vista on several notebooks (see review on Friday) and I just can't get anywhere near 5 hours of battery life. Sure, the CPUs are a bit higher spec on some of the notebooks, but as one example a 12.1" laptop with 55 Whr battery, 320GB 5400RPM HDD, 4GB RAM, LED backlighting, and P8400 pulls an "amazing" 138 minutes of DVD playback and 142 minutes of web surfing... though it does manage 261 minutes when sitting idle at the desktop.
As best I can tell, the CPU and HDD just don't seem to be entering sleep modes much if at all, unless the system is 100% idle. Even then, 261 minutes idle battery life doesn't compare favorably to the MacBook pulling 286 minutes of web surfing.
How big is the Sony battery, if I may ask? (Just for reference, take Voltage * mAhr to get Whr.) What sort of CPU, GPU, HDD, RAM does it use? What we need to see to prove it's possible is a Vista laptop with a 20W TDP CPU, 2GB RAM, 5400 RPM HDD, and 13.3" LED backlit LCD that can still get close to five hours of battery life with a 55 Whr battery. If you think you have one, get the manufacturer to send me one for review! :) Reply
Spivonious - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkAre you guys turning off the Vista indexer and SuperFetch? Those two things would run the harddrives pretty constantly on a fresh install, which would definitely drag down battery life. Reply
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkDo normal users disable SuperFetch? I've disabled indexing as much as I know how, since I don't use it, but SuperFetch is part of Vista. Besides, it shouldn't run on battery power (and neither should indexing). Reply
Spivonious - Friday, October 24, 2008 - linkIf you want to actually test Vista battery life, install the OS and use it for a week before testing the battery life. I agree with the other poster that both the indexer and SuperFetch are great features, but they do spin the harddrive when the computer is idle until the index is built and SuperFetch learns what you use most often.
Spinning harddrive = lower battery life
Comparing battery life between Vista and OS X is like comparing the time it takes to eat a pomegranate and an apple. Reply
headbox - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - linkno, battery tests let people know how long they can use their computer without plugging it in.
You're not comprehending the article- the PC laptops are also being tested at idle, just sitting there doing nothing. If Vista is going to spend that entire time "superfetching" nothing, that's a problem. Reply
jonmcc33 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkNo, normal users do not disable SuperFetch. That's just bad tweaking advice, as much as turning Indexing off is as well. Both are amazing features added to Vista.
I tested a Latitude D630 (2.6GHz Core 2 Duo Penryn, 2GB RAM) with Vista Business and a 9-cell 85WHr battery. Life was over 5 hours. Reply
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - linkI wouldn't be surprised if there's just some glitch on many of the laptops that's keeping battery life down, but until some manufacturer can deliver Vista with 55 Whr and 5 hours (give or take) battery life I remain skeptical. Users shouldn't have to hack their laptop in any way to get the increased battery life; it should just work properly out of the box. You know, like the MacBooks with OS X. Reply
headbox - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - linkWhat about XP vs. Vista battery test or... install OSx86 on a few PC laptops :) Reply
acfoltzer - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkHi Anand,
I just want to point out that the keyboard on my 2.4GHz MacBook IS backlit. It seems to be a little-documented difference between the 2.0 and 2.4.
Adam Reply
andreschmidt - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkIndeed, that was one of the things I noticed in the article as well. The 2.4Ghz MacBook does have the backlit keyboard. Reply
themadmilkman - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - linkThank you for the honest assessment about whether to buy or wait. You just kept me from blowing $1300 by upgrading too soon. Reply
Ronbo13 - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - linkIf you're basing this on the reflectivity of the screens, you need to look at them in person. The pictures are misleading, in that the new MBP is positioned to be reflecting a wall in direct daylight, and the one on the left is reflecting a wall in shadows. The new MBP is a pretty glossy screen. I have one, and I used to have a matte MBP. But the screen is, nevertheless, beautiful. Don't make up your mind until you see it in person. Reply


text:
How to write an RSS aggregator
From ErlangCentral Wiki
How to write an RSS aggregator
In the article: What is RSS, they describe the various RSS formats and create a simple RSS aggregator written in Python. Inspired by this I decided to do the same in Erlang.
In this example I have been using OTP-R10B-3 release and the jerl Jungerl start script. By using the Jungerl start script I automatically get www_tools in my path. This will probably also make it possible to make the example work in older Erlang releases since Jungerl also contains xmerl before it was added into OTP.
Getting information from an RSS feed.
Let us use the RSS feed at Slashdot in this example. The RSS info can be reteived from the URL: http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot. We make use of a function in the ibrowse package to retrieve the file.
1> {ok,_StatusCode,_Headers,B} = ibrowse:send_req("http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot", [], get). {ok,"200", [{"Age","2"}, {"Transfer-Encoding","chunked"}, {"Date","Thu, 07 Sep 2006 13:07:50 GMT"}, {"Content-Type","text/xml;charset=utf-8"}, {"Server", "Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) mod_fastcgi/2.4.2 mod_jk/1.2.15"}, {"Last-Modified","Thu, 07 Sep 2006 12:54:15 GMT"}, {"ETag","MiaYBqfDcpuUu6jqri59Oyhorvc"}, {"P3P","CP=\"ALL DSP COR NID CUR OUR NOR\""}], "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding..."}
Parsing the XML content.
We continue by parsing the XML content of the retrieved file. This time we make use of xmerl. file.
2> {Doc,Misc} = xmerl_scan:string(B). {#xmlElement{name = 'rdf:RDF', parents = [], pos = 1, attributes = [#xmlAttribute{name = 'xmlns:rdf', parents = [], pos = 1, language = [], expanded_name = [], nsinfo = [], namespace = {"xmlns","rdf"}, value = "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"}, #xmlAttribute{name = xmlns, parents = [], .....
Note: Note that we have made use of the fantastic shell command rr/1
(as in rr(xmerl_scan)) before issuing the call to xmerl. This givesus the output in a nice record format.
Printing out the RSS information.
Now we have to extract the information we need from the parse tree. We will write some simple code to do this. But first, let us see at how the result looks like.
3> myxml:printItems(myxml:getElementsByTagName(Doc, item)). title: United Kingdom Leads the World in TV Downloads link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/18/0324238from=rss description: SumDog writes "The UK is known for many things, great food, a wonderful climate and beautiful women. However, according to a story on the Guardian, a new study puts the UK ahead in one more category: it leads the world in TV piracy, accounting for 38.4% of the world's TV downloads, with Australia coming in second at 15.6% and the US in third at a pitiful 7.3%" date: 2005-02-18T09:31:00+00:00 author: CowboyNeal title: Skype-Ready Phones From Motorola link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/18/0314225from=rss description: Hack Jandy writes "Seamlessly integrating VoIP and GSM might not be a fantasy after all, as Motorola announced their decision to build cell phones and handsets that have Skype Internet Telephony integrated into the devices. Obviously, one could use Skype for outgoing calls near wi-fi hotspots (essentially free) but default on GSM for outgoing calls in areas that lack coverage." date: 2005-02-18T06:09:00+00:00 author: CowboyNeal title: London Nuke Plant Loses 30 Kilos of Plutonium link: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/18/0027246from=rss ...........
Our first function will extract all item elements. To do this we create a function getElementsByTagName/2 which takes the XML parse tree and the Tag that we want to find.
getElementsByTagName([H|T], Item) when H#xmlElement.name == Item -> [H | getElementsByTagName(T, Item)]; getElementsByTagName([H|T], Item) when record(H, xmlElement) -> getElementsByTagName(H#xmlElement.content, Item) ++ getElementsByTagName(T, Item); getElementsByTagName(X, Item) when record(X, xmlElement) -> getElementsByTagName(X#xmlElement.content, Item); getElementsByTagName([_|T], Item) -> getElementsByTagName(T, Item); getElementsByTagName([], _) -> [].
Next we want to print each entry. The function printItems/1 walks through each item, exctracts and prints the info we are interested in.
printItems(Items) -> F = fun(Item) -> printItem(Item) end, lists:foreach(F, Items). printItem(Item) -> io:format("title: ~s~n", [textOf(first(Item, title))]), io:format("link: ~s~n", [textOf(first(Item, link))]), io:format("description: ~s~n", [textOf(first(Item, description))]), io:format("date: ~s~n", [textOf(first(Item, 'dc:date'))]), io:format("author: ~s~n", [textOf(first(Item, 'dc:creator'))]), io:nl().
The last two functions to implement first/2 and textOf/1
first(Item, Tag) -> hd([X || X <- Item#xmlElement.content, X#xmlElement.name == Tag]). textOf(Item) -> lists:flatten([X#xmlText.value || X <- Item#xmlElement.content, element(1,X) == xmlText]).
The RSS aggregator.
To go from here to a RSS aggregator is easy. You just have to extend the code above with the functionality to retreive info from several RSS feeds. You may also want to present the info in some other format, e.g HTML via a Yaws page. This however, is left as an exercise for the reader to do.