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My first bleeding edge computer

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by jerrymildred, Nov 27, 2020.

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  1. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    I never buy bleeding edge computer equipment. Or really any other kind of brand new tech. But I took the plunge today. My 2015 15" MacBook Pro is getting long in the tooth and the battery is down to about 2-3 hours depending on how hard I press it. I could put in a new battery; I'm perfectly capable of that. But then I'd still have a fairly old machine and a heavy one.

    Sooooooo ... I just ordered one of the new M1 MacBook Pros. According to Geekbench 5, my present computer is over twice as fast as the previous one and the new one will be over twice as fast as the one I'm using now. And cost a lot less. And weigh a lot less. Here's a speed comparison going from the previous to my present to the new machine.
    Geekbench Compare.png

    I figure that the difference between 13" and 15" isn't all that great. My wife has a 13" MBP and it's pretty nice. Besides, I almost always have the laptop connected to my 27" 4K monitor anyway.
     
    #1 jerrymildred, Nov 27, 2020
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  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    mine is a 2013 and the same problem. in what circumstances does the increased speed help?

    after 7 years of a $2,000. computer, i'm considering windows on a $3-400. asus/acer.
     
    #2 bisco, Nov 27, 2020
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  3. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    As we approach mid day ... it may very well be that bleeding edge tech has begun to move forward yet another increment.
    [​IMG]
    today's bleeding edge = tomorrow's stone hinge
    ;)
    .
     
    #3 hill, Nov 27, 2020
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  4. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    I think the difference between 13" and 15" is huge. Maybe not for the workspace display size, but the box size and weight difference would completely preclude the 15" and above laptop for my consideration. For me the laptop means portability. Anything too big or too heavy will not work. That being said, I had to set up my current work from home equipment in hurry back in March. I had a new desktop box on order, but it did not arrive on time. So I had to repurpose an older HP 15" laptop as my take-home machine. I would not want to lug this laptop in my briefcase but right now it is connected to a docking station and three 24" monitors with its lid permanently closed and AC adaptor connected 24/7. It is a desktop workstation for me.
     
    #4 Salamander_King, Nov 27, 2020
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  5. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    I recently stumbled on a whole website dedicated to my first bleeding-edge computer (though it wasn't, technically, mine ... the first I did serious programming on).

    This was a serious ad, I'm sorry to say:

    wff.jpg

    Sorry for the slightly potato-cam appearance ... for old-time's sake I applied image compression until it would fit in 8 kB, which is what ours had. All of it.
     
    #5 ChapmanF, Nov 27, 2020
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  6. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    Compared to yesteryear - 1969 iirc
    We put men on the moon & back - first in Apollo 11. Its Guidance Computer (70lbs) operated at 0.043 Mhz with 2kb memory & 32kb of storage.
    ;)
    .
     
    #6 hill, Nov 27, 2020
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  7. NewHybridOwner

    NewHybridOwner Active Member

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    My first computer (well, actually co-owned with a fellow grad student) was an "Osborne 1" "portable" (better called "luggable"): 64K RAM, two 92K 5-1/4" single-sided single-density floppy drives, 5" screen. I bought single-sided disks and cut additional notches so I could use the other side as well. At a computer show I saw an external 5MB drive costing $2K and thought to myself, "If only I could afford one of those, I'd never have to buy another floppy disk"!!!!
     
    #7 NewHybridOwner, Nov 27, 2020
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  8. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    I do a lot of photo processing from RAW images. Also audio production and the occasional video.

    That's an excellent point. When I think about it, the 15" isn't big enough for all day work anyway and it weighs a ton compared to the 13".

    I read somewhere a year or two ago that one iPhone 6s would have been able to to the computing work load of something like 10 million Apollo moon landings. I did a super-quick search just now and didn't find that article but this one, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, claims 120 million. Sort of. Your iPhone Is 120 Million Times+ More Powerful Than the Computer That Sent Men to the Moon

    I did that, too, with my 1st computer, a Commodore 64. I don't remember now how it formatted the disks but I remember having to use peek and poke commands to manually put data in specific addresses in order to format a floppy. :sick:

    PS. I just got it home and will start setting it up soon. Apple made in-store pickup of online orders really smooth.
     
    #8 jerrymildred, Nov 27, 2020
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  9. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    I still have a working Handspring Visor PDA.

    Fits in a pocket. Has the same amount of RAM and I think roughly the same CPU oomph as the VAX that 1,700 of us in college were sharing to do our assignments.
     
    #9 ChapmanF, Nov 27, 2020
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  10. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    I just finished transferring all my files, apps, login stuff, and so on to the new machine.
     
    #10 jerrymildred, Nov 27, 2020
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  11. RRxing

    RRxing Senior Member

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    My first work computer. Wordperfect 5.0 RULES!!!

    [​IMG]
     
    #11 RRxing, Nov 27, 2020
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  12. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    adding machine inside.jpg
     
    #12 tochatihu, Nov 27, 2020
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  13. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Saw lots of those growing up, but never had one.
     
    #13 ChapmanF, Nov 27, 2020
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  14. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    my dad repaired those
     
    #14 bisco, Nov 27, 2020
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  15. NewHybridOwner

    NewHybridOwner Active Member

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    We used mechanical calculators like that for a statistics class I took in the late '60s. Was "Monroe" the brand, perhaps?
     
    #15 NewHybridOwner, Nov 28, 2020
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  16. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    us too . . . . . slide rule - way more high tech than the abacus.
    even so ... the folks using those are by no means slouches

    ;)
    .
     
    #16 hill, Nov 28, 2020
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  17. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    The people who designed those mechanisms must have been flat out geniuses!

    And the ones who repaired them had to be pretty bright, too.

    I've been wishing for years that I still had the slide rule I used in high school. In fact, I just found a vintage wooden beginner's slide rule on Ebay and ordered it. (My rule was plastic.)

    Back to the new computin' machine: I think I have everything set up now and this thing flies. Battery won't quit. Fan never seems to need to run. And the keyboard seems a little better than my old one and my big keyboard with the wire. And it's far better than the one on my wife's 2-year old MBP with the dreaded and oft' maligned butterfly keyboard.

    AND ... I found a menu meter app that will give me a notice when the battery goes above a certain percent while charging or below a certain percent when discharging. I set it up to try to help me keep it between 40-80%. Only problem is that it can't seem to see the CPU temperature or fan speed. Probably in a future update. Looks like this but is very configurable.
    Screen Shot 2020-11-28 at 11.39.58 AM.png
     
    #17 jerrymildred, Nov 28, 2020
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  18. Rmay635703

    Rmay635703 Senior Member

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    My father’s first job as an electrician was running patch wires in the Weston 2 mainframe

    one guy would run a wire between 2 cabinets and 2 others would verify it was in the right spot and passed signal
     
    #18 Rmay635703, Nov 28, 2020
  19. RRxing

    RRxing Senior Member

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    What's the name of the app?
     
    #19 RRxing, Nov 28, 2020
  20. wjtracy

    wjtracy Senior Member

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    who remembers the orig "Leading Edge" 8086 PC, IBM PC Clone? talking probably 1986 here
     
    #20 wjtracy, Nov 28, 2020
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