News for Monday, 3 November 2008

The French website Macbook-fr.com released the detailed procedure to change the LCD panel of a MacBook:

If the procedure might not be accessible for most people, details and photos should make it a true alternative to the expensive LCD panel exchange program offered by Apple Support.
Such LCD exchange can not be carried out with the new MacBook as the glossy glass plate is now glued to the LCD panel and its enclosure.

We finally found some time to run a proper test of the Samsung SSD installed as a BTO in the MacBook Pro. Hereafter are the tests we have performed:



In reading mode, (108 MB/s), the SSD is faster than any 2.5" HD, and is not that far from the performance level available from 3.5" Velociraptor. In writing mode, with transfer speed of 60 MB/s, it is not as fast as a Velociraptor; however it remains higher performance level. Random access times in reading/writing mode are also excellent.
On a more user-oriented benchmarking, the SSD is much more responsive than a 2.5" HD. Booting time as well as launching applications is completed in a breath, even with Photoshop CS4. Indeed, despite Adobe claims or limitations, one can install the CS4 Suite without any problem on a SSD. We will continue our tests and keep you posted.

For NVidia, 2008 will have to be tagged as the darkest year. After the manufacturing defect affecting 8x00M GPU, the company is now facing another problem. Due to patent infringement, NVidia will have to disable in all its nForce chipset the "PCI prefetch function" for which the company does not hold the license. This feature speed up PCI performance, and without it, all nForce 500-series and onwards-based motherboard will be affected.
This mess will only affect PCI-based motherboard, and the current PCI-Express-based MacBook models should not be affected. However, NVidia would have much prefer not to have its name mentioned once more in the news associated with another problem.