Ars Technica's Exhaustive Look at OS X "Snow Leopard"

Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" was released last weekend to a lot of mixed reaction. While the $29 price tag is undoubtedly easy to stomach compared to the $100+ consumers usually pay for a new OS, many still don't believe that they got their money's worth. Our friend Cyril Kowaliski at The Tech Report, a Mac user, had only one thing to say... "So that's why it only costs $29".

The reason for the mixed reaction is simple... there are few new features in 10.6. When Apple first announced Snow Leopard at last year's WWDC conference, they actually showed a slide that stated, "0 New Features", which you could imagine sparked quite a bit of questioning. The lack of features was replaced with brand-new APIs and other developer-specific additions, as well as a near-complete re-write of the underlying OS. The latter non-feature feature is the reason for noteworthy performance-boosts.

If you'd still debating on whether you should purchase the latest version or not, or simply want to read up to find out what's new and notable, down to the most inane detail, Ars Technica has posted an exhaustive 23-page review that gives new meaning to an "in-depth look". I'm not kidding. Unless we start publishing articles over 30,000 words in length, I'm not sure we have the right to use the term ourselves!

The article tackles everything from its pricing to its 64-bit nature to its base 10 numerical system for filesizes to developer-specific information to OpenCL support to the revised dock to finder updates to... whew. I'm actually quite tempted to read through just to get a better grasp on how an OS I don't use works. For now, I'm going to take a few Aspirin, as I somehow have developed a headache...

A major operating system upgrade with "no new features" must play by a different set of rules. Every party involved expects some counterbalance to the lack of new features. In Snow Leopard, developers stand to reap the biggest benefits thanks to an impressive set of new technologies, many of which cover areas previously unaddressed in Mac OS X. Apple clearly feels that the future of the platform depends on much better utilization of computing resources, and is doing everything it can to make it easy for developers to move in this direction.

Windows 7 Family Pack Available for Pre-Order

Last month, we posted about Microsoft's Anytime Upgrade and Family Pack pricing for Windows 7, and it looks like the latter is kicking off right now, in pre-order form. It's not yet available on Amazon.com, but both eCOST.com and Provantage have them listed - both for a price lower than we reported about before. eCOST's price is about $147, while Provantage's is $140. The latter is also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, so you can be confident about ordering it there.

As a refresher, the Windows 7 Family Pack is suited for those who already have a copy of Windows installed on their PC, up to three. For Windows Vista, the upgrade path is simple, as long as the editions and architecture match. If you're running XP, you can still upgrade, but it will have to be via a clean install (which I'd opt for - who doesn't love a clean machine?).

At $150, the cost per copy is $50, which is a relative steal given that a single upgrade copy of Home Premium sells for $120. Essentially, you're getting two extra copies for $15 each. The downside, is that these copies are supposed to be limited, so if you want to hook yourself up, you shouldn't waste anytime at all. If you missed the original half-price sale, don't make the same mistake twice!

Windows 7 is still set to be released on October 22, and I'd estimate that into the new year, we'll convert all of our test machines over to it from Vista, unless some good reason creeps up to stop us. Because Windows 7 supports TRIM, we're likely to begin using the OS well before the official release for our SSD content, since unfortunately, Microsoft is not planning to support TRIM in any previous OS, including Vista.

Credit: madstork91

Microsoft originally said Family Pack would only be available in North America. However, earlier this week the company extended its release to eight countries in Europe -- U.K., Ireland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden -- because of its decision to release Windows 7 with Internet Explorer 8 installed in those countries.

Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD

Earlier this year, Anand Lal Shimpi posted an article at his site called, "The SSD Anthology". It was a ridiculously comprehensive look at the current (at the time) state of solid-state disks, from their perks to the leading issues. It was also interesting because it was the first time an article was published that caused multiple friends to e-mail me to tell me about it. I guess it's no surprise that it was read over 2 million times.

Since that article was published, a lot has happened, not surprisingly. "Indilinx" is a name out of everyone's mouth nowadays, hatred is shown towards Samsung, Intel is still reigning supreme and JMicron... who? So it was time for Anand to follow-up to his successful article, and it also happens to be a great read. I admit I didn't read the original, but the second one was hard to put down (not that I picked my monitor up).

There's a lot to glean from this article, and since we are soon going to be publishing SSD content of our own (stay tuned!), it was nice to be able to catch up with the SSD scheme of things. Interestingly enough, even though Intel's X25-M G2 happens to have a weak sequential write speed compared to, well, everything else, it still comes out on top for various reasons. I find it actually rather incredible that Intel's first product was so good, that even more than a year later, others still haven't been able to truly compete with the overall performance.

A few points from the article that I found really interesting was that OCZ's upcoming Solid 2 series would be utilizing Intel's 34nm flash chips, but production hasn't yet began because apparently those chips have slight issues with the Indilinx controller. Hopefully we'll see those to market soon. Also interesting is the OCZ Vertex Turbo... an SSD with an overclocked controller (which makes a difference, but doesn't scale with the price premium).

One major issue tackled is Write Amplification, which is explained in some detail in the article, and really highlights why companies need to create smarter controllers... and why TRIM couldn't get here any sooner. If you have a few hours, the article is definitely worth the read. Thanks to On_Wisconsin for the heads-up on the article.

Credit: AnandTech

The write amplification factor is the amount of data the SSD controller as to write in relation to the amount of data that the host controller wants to write. A write amplification factor of 1 is perfect, it means you wanted to write 1MB and the SSD's controller wrote 1MB. A write amplification factor greater than 1 isn't desirable, but an unfortunate fact of life. The higher your write amplification, the quicker your drive will die and the lower its performance will be. Write amplification, bad.

Tech Roundup - September 1, 2009

Motherboards & Processors
• AMD Athlon II X2 250 - Overclock3D
• Gigabyte GA-GC330UD Mini-ITX - TweakTown
• Gigabyte MA770-UD3 - iXBTlabs

Displays & Video Cards
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 x2 2G/1G - Motherboards.org
• VisionTek HD 4890 OC - Bjorn3D

Memory & Storage
• Corsair 32GB Flash Survivor USB Drive - ModSynergy

Peripherals & Gadgets
• ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3 Slim Audio Card - Bigbruin
• Genius EasyPen i405 4" x 5.5" Graphics Tablet - DragonSteelMods
• Logitech G9x Laser Gaming Mouse - i4u
• Logitech Harmony 900 Universal Remote Control - i4u
• SoundMagic PL30 In-ears Headphones - techPowerUp
• SteelSeries Ikari Optical Gaming Mouse - ocaholic

Cooling
• Cooler Master NotePal X2 and U2 Cooler - Overclocker Cafe
• DeepCool IceWing 5 Pro CPU Cooler - FrostyTech
• Zalman CNPS10X Extreme CPU Cooler - Hardware Logic

Chassis & Power Supplies
• Cooler Master HAF 922 Chassis - XSReviews
• In Win X-Fighter Chassis - DreamWare Computers
• Patriot Corza NAS - Bjorn3D
• Thermaltake Max4 3.5" SATA HDD Rack - DragonSteelMods

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• MusicSkins for 13” MacBook Laptops - TestFreaks