News for Thursday, 26 February 2004

Following numerous requests related to the previous news, hereafter are more info and details regarding components and procedure:

References of the components available on internet (may vary from one country to another): Artic Alumina paste /glue Heatsink from a Zalman CNPS5700D-Cu (Cu means copper model) 12cm fan Papst 4412 FGL (26db) 8cm fan Papst 8412NGML (19 db) for the PSU and the heatsink (for the latest, you will have to extract the fan from its frame and glue it on the heatsink with the Artic alumina paste. Note: the original cooling system of the QS is badly designed. The 12cm fan located on the box is indeed re-injecting part of the hot air that it has just extracted... Some procedure details: For the Papst fans, you will have to weld the original cables to power them. The original fans were heat-regulated for their rotation speed, which in most of the time was not effective since they were almost immediately shifting to the high speed mode due to the bad hot air extraction system of the G4 QS; so I simply removed them. I also removed the original fan which was blowing on the original heatsink, since with the new heatsink it was simply useless. Replace the original fan of the PSU by one of the 8cm Papst. Gluing the other 8cm Papst to the heatsink is easy, since it takes only 6 minutes to the Artic Alumina to solidify complete while insuring a really good heat transfer capacity. The size of the heatsink is small enough to leave the access to the fixation devices processor card accessible, but due to the weight of the Copper heatsink, I will advise to avoid any vertical shock, or acceleration Once installed this new cooling system, the sound of silence is really impressive... the heatsink remains cold, and most of the noise generated is coming from the HDs. I will advise to avoid >60GB HDs, otherwise you will get vibrations, and the whole computer box will vibrate (another original bad design), Seagate's HDs are a good choice due to their really low noise factor. Thanks again to macbidouille.com (hardmac.com for international version) for their comments, info, tips and tricks; as the one I used to flash a PowerColor Radeon 9100 PC into a Radeon 8500 Mac!!!!

Tomtom.B is talking to us about a company named P.I. Engineering which is proposing in addition to its standard products catalog, to produce on request pads or other joysticks for professional applications 5you have dreamed about it they will do it...). What is interesting, and that is also part of the reason for this news, is that all devices proposed by this company are Mac-compatible, and even officially supported thanks to MacOSX drivers!!

Thx tp Julien for letting us know the latest SVM (PC) issue [French computer magazine title which also exists for Mac], Steve Jobs image has been used in quite a strange way. The main subject they deal with is "a portable or nohing!", comparing many portable computer as the title implies.
QThe fact there is no Apple portable Mac in this comparison is surprising in itself, given Apple their reputation on that matter. No PowerBook and no iBook in the tests.
Well then, why do they show Steve Jobs on the magazine cover, standing on top of one of the PowerBook "competitors"? We doubt he would agree that his image would be used that way...

Olivier made an interesting trove:

I put an Apple 1 Go extra RAM in my G4 iBook which is supposed to be bound to 640 RAM and I discovered the computer would detect and use flawlessly this RAM, thus making it to 1.12 GO de RAM :) Here are the test photographs.

Actually, theoretically, nothing may prevent the install of a 1 Go RAM as long as it is a PC2100 DDR 266, and is no longer than 1.25 inches long. This length criterium is by the way the same for PowerBooks which are officially able to take advantage of 1 Go RAMs.

PC-Tests has put online an article (in French but with many photos) that we Mac users may find useful too, provided the machine is in a dusty environment, as this will let you know how to clean a CPU radiator and its fan, where the dust usually gets stuck so it may prevent it from dissipating the heat normally.

PC-Test article.

Here's Mani telling us of an interesting trove :

I've been watching the partial Mac compatibility of Logitech Bluetooth products for a while(especially the MX900 mouse). I just discovered a wonderful 15 $ shareware, GamePad Companion from Carvware (http://www.carvware.com/) ! It is a system preference panel which will identify the MX900 and allow you to configurate ALL of its buttons. For the past few days my MX900 have been fully Panther compatible and works flawlessly with my Bluetooth inside G5. The Bluetooth Logitech base, directly plugged on the wall socket, will only be requested to resplenish batteries. One should have a try with other Logitech Bluetooth peripherals to check if their compatibility would be as high as that of the mouse.

[Upd.]
Antoine gives us a little contribution to this interesting news:

After reading the news on the MX 900, I went to a shop which sold this mouse, and I'd like to say I noticed that no software was requested to configurate Exposé on the mouse various buttons. As a matter of fact, the Button 4 to 8 are displayed among configurable devices, and they work!! As Exposé is obviously the most interesting application this mouse will have, couldbe worth knowing (I use Mac OS X 10.3.2). Antoine Switzerland

On a market where Linux seems to seduce enterprises, where regional structures initiate massive migrations to Linux, where such companies as IBM or HP offer Linux solutions that are ever more competing, Microsoft is probably starting to wonder if they shouldn't think of it.
The French site Mac4ever for instance tells us of a rumor pretending that Redmond is currently developing a Linux version of their Media Player. But the researches on that matter may also apply quite easily to the presence of Windows Media Player on Set Top boxes (digital recorders and stuff like that), which sometimes work under Linux.
On the other hand, and with much more certainty, IBM and Microsoft are reportedly working together on a solution for porting MS Office to Linux ! Unfortunately, it would'nt happen to be a real "port" of the application, but the solution of an emulation would have been chosen.
Though Microsoft claimed there was no such cooperation, has encouraged IBM for this project.
No radical change in Microsoft policy toward Linux then, but if it may be a way for them to sell more Office licences or Windows Media contents, why not reconsider their point of view on that matter?

As we'd foreseen in former news on the matter, for the first time over a long period, Intel acknowledged they've come to a dead end with their current CPU line. The heat the Pentium dissipates has become completely absurd, according to one of the company leaders, as it would reach, taking into account the thermical power dissipated per square inch, a level as high as the surface of the Sun by 2010 ! To insure their future, Intel thus announced they'd have to make important changes to the architecture of their x86 chips, unfortunately giving no more details.
Afterusing technologies similar to the ones developed by AMD as they coulnd't imagine anything else to do to carry on their move to a general public 64 bits chip, we could expect them to buy a PowerPC licence...
(Thx to Romain for the link on clubic)