To combat my new nemesis, I searched the Google and found the most promising article at this website here. I read with excitement until I clicked on the link for the software – it’s a paid app called DiskTester… and not a cheap one at $40.

The free option…

I believe there’s always a free way to get what you need, so I began racking my brain. It occurred to me – OS X has Disk Utility.app built in. Duh! It can create volumes of very specific sizes, which seems to be the same function DiskTester is performing when it’s running its “recondition” option.

Here’s what I did:

• used CarbonCopyCloner to clone my SSD to a nice 1TB drive on a Firewire 800 dock.
• booted from the external drive into my clone OS.
• opened Disk Utility and selected the SSD.
  • ran the “erase” function on the SSD.
  • ran the partition function – selecting 1 partition for the volume scheme.
  • repeated the partition with 16 partitions
  • reduced the drive back to one Mac OS Extended Journaled partition.
• erased free space on the drive (seems unnecessary in retrospect)
• clicked on the “New Image” icon at the top of Disk Utility’s screen. I selected the SSD as the target volume and made a DMG file to the size of the SSD itself, 128.04GB. Disk Utility created the image and the SSD was left with about 21.61MB remaining. I repeated the action with a 21.6MB image file on the SSD. This left the SSD with only a few KB of empty space. Sufficient.
• insterted the OS X Snow Leopard DVD in my MacBook Pro and rebooted to the installation DVD. I ran the OS X setup as a new computer, not using the CarbonCopyCloner image. I figured a fresh installation would eliminate any detritus from tons and tons of use. I was right. The fresh copy was much better.
• during the Snow Leopard installation process, I opted to import settings, apps, emails and documents from the 1TB clone. OS X put everything in perfect order for me. My work environment was back to the way it had started.

The entire process took about 90 minutes. I got it done during two episodes of Castle.

Here are some pics:

So what happened?

The Disk Utility-reconditioned SSD was indeed much faster than before the whole process. Boot times were almost back to day-1 speeds, applications opened super fast and I was able to get back to hard core production.

One caveat - I learned that the SSD should not be used as a target disk for bittorrent files or for other apps that intentionally create highly fragmented files. Literally hundreds or thousands of files downloaded in countless tiny fragments simply screw the SSD sideways. It just can’t handle that kind of intentionally fragmented data, not in that kind of volume. So now I use an external 1TB drive for my bittorrent and other downloads. The SSD seems way better off without that constant pounding.

Hopefully my sharing this with you folks helps a little. You may opt to buy DiskTester for $40 (I’m not saying you shouldn’t – I’m sure it has TONS of useful features and all with shining merit), but if you’re like me, you may want a free option that does a similar, if not nearly identical function. As an old friend used to say, “Free is the best price.”

Glass building…

Church tower…

I did some Googling and found very few alternatives – some looked flimsy, some were bulky, some were plain ugly and they were all way too expensive for what they are – molded plastic nubs.
 

What to do…

As you can see here, the MacBook Pro has less than half a millimeter of airspace underneath. It’s part of Apple’s super sleek design, but it naturally restricts significant air flow.

I’ve used two 3M “Self Stick Rubber Pads” under the laptop and right next to the paper-thin feet Apple supplied.

Here you can see the MacBook Pro with the 3M rubber pads – the back is raised by about 1/4″. The pads hold up under moderate heat. Super warm laptops may eventually turn the 3M glue a little gooey. It takes a bit of heat, though. The 3M rubber pads cost $2.50 for 12 – enough for 6 laptops or 6 applications.


 

The solution I went with…

The MacBook Pro is lifted by roughly 1/2″, providing extra air flow. The 3M mini hook is strong, gives a very comfortable angle of lift for ergonomic typing, etc. The 3M mini hooks are $3.50 for a set of 6, enough for 3 laptops or 3 applications.

Here are the two 3M packages. I got mine at The Container Store, but they’re available in lots of stores. And not to be too obvious, but #1 is the 3M rubber feet ($2.50) and #2 is the 3M mini hooks ($3.50).

 

I recloned my hard drive and prepared to wipe everything and install a fresh copy of Snow Leopard. Literally on the verge of rebooting for the clean-sweep, I opened Disk Utility and ran the “Repair Disk Permissions” and “Verify Disk” functions.

Lo and behold, the zip archives are now opening with Snow Leopard’s built-in Archive Utility (which no longer freezes up). I re-installed Unarchiver and reset it as the default unzip app. All’s well, and I saved myself an evening of reinstalling all my apps. Phew!

If anyone else out there Googles “Snow Leopard won’t unzip” or “Archive Utility.app not working”, I hope they land here for the quick and easy fix.

At the tick of 5:44pm, I rebooted my MacBook Pro 1) with the USB memory key attached and 2) while holding the alt/option key down to select a boot drive. I selected the OS X installation partition and opted for the “erase and install” option.

The installation was complete and the system rebooted at 5:53pm. I got through the final setup screens and had the new OS X desktop under my control at 5:54pm. Total time: 10 minutes!

Why was this clean installation so fast? The USB flash memory to SSD flash memory data transfer is much faster than DVD to SSD, and dramatically faster than DVD to spinning HDD.

As a side note, when installing OS X from a flash drive, you don’t have to wait for the standard integrity check of the installation DVD – the verification effort is automatically skipped. I’ve always ditched that step anyway, but for those who allow verification to continue, a good deal of valuable time can be lost. Just another benefit of going all-flash.

There were two things that really sold me on the Corsair P128: the 220MB/s read and 200MB/s write speeds and the 128MB cache. The read/write speeds are near top of the line for SSDs. The Corsair’s 128MB cache is simply staggering compared to the average 8MB or 16MB cache on standard laptop hard drives (16MB cache for the 500GB Seagate).

The P128 is the exact length, height and width as the 500GB Seagate. The P128, however, is much, much lighter.

Here are some simple before and afters:

Here’s the P128 getting mounted in the drive bay:

Dropping from 500GB storage was a bit of a mental hurdle, but I really value speed over size. That’s what external drives are for.

After a few days using the P128, I’m very satisfied. The price still makes me wince, though. Ouch.

Using Carbon Copy Cloner, it took roughly 3 1/2 hours to clone the contents of my 320GB drive to the 500GB. 120GB of photos was the #1 slow down, and #2 was the 320GB drive dragging its proverbial feet. Once the cloning was done, replacing the 320 with the 500 took about 2 minutes – 5 little screws (1 brace and 4 stabilizers on the drive).

The first thing I noticed was that the 500GB Seagate drive boots about 40% faster than the 320GB Hitachi. Apps open up a little faster – not 40% faster, but certainly 20% or so.

Once I’d booted up, I ran several tests and scans on the drive to make sure the drive was going to be stable and error free. Nothing sucks quite so much as banking on a new hard drive, only to have it melt down. Tests showed no drive flaws.

I then ran an XBench test to compare the two drives. The 500GB drive scored well over twice as fast as the 320GB with sequential and random reads/writes. For the non-techies, this simply means that this new Seagate drive whips the snot out of the Hitachi drive.

(XBench is a free utility that every Mac user should have, even if it’s rarely used.)

On the down side, the Seagate drive is just as loud as the 320GB Hitachi. That was a little disappointment to me. That said, the drive isn’t “noisy” per se, it’s just that the spinning is clearly audible in a near silent room or if one listens within 6 or 7 inches of the laptop body. No huge deal.

Other positives? XP boots and runs faster in Parallels. So does Windows 7. So does Linux. Photoshop CS4 opens up 25% faster and runs actions in an instant. File transfers to other 7200RPM drives are way faster. In short, pretty much everything is better and faster.

The best part of all? After Leopard, tons of apps, tens of thousands of photos, etc. I’ve got about 300GB free. Awesome!!

If you’re considering buying the Seagate 500GB drive, I hope these comments help. And hopefully you wind up with a good stable drive that passes any tests you subject it to.

Over the last few years, Apple has been reducing the size of it’s product packaging. Some packaging has been reduced by well over 50% – iPod/iPhone cases, MacBook and MacBook Pro boxes, etc. Software packaging (like that for OS X Leopard, iLife, iWork, etc.) has been dropped by about 75% in size, which is really great for the environment (and for Apple’s profit margin – win win).

After getting a new MacBook Pro, I was looking at the installation DVDs for OSX and iLife. They’re still DVDs – ostensibly an aging medium, especially with USB sticks and other flash memory becoming so widely available and inexpensive.

I think it’d make sense for Apple to ditch future OS X installation DVDs in favor of a locked USB installation device (or even SDHC card with a USB reader). Every Intel-based Apple computer, whether an iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro or Mac Pro, comes with USB ports and can boot directly from those USB ports. USB data transfer speeds are much better than DVD transfer, so theoretically, OS X installation or repair could be greatly improved via USB.

Price is one thing to consider. I know USB flash memory is higher priced than DVD disks, but in bulk, USB drives can’t be too expensive. Besides, Apple would be able to drop packaging sizes by at least another 50-75%, saving more money and earning an even better reputation.

I’ll bet even Greenpeace would give a thumbs-up. Maybe. Those guys are tough to please! (I remember when Greenpeace was warm & fuzzy, all about hippies saving the whales and seal cubs. Seems like such a long time ago.)
 

The problem? When the MBP is connected to an external display and then goes to sleep for x-period of time and then wakes, something tweaks and the video card gets the delirium tremens, causing the external display to get all confused and flashing with static. Here’s what it looks like:

(Audio has been removed from this clip.)

Fortunately, unplugging the external display from the DisplayPort adapter and then plugging it back in seems to remedy the spasm, but it requires manual intervention (which is very un-Apple). Some folks on the Apple forums report that a full reboot or PRAM reset give temporary relief from the static.

Update: Within minutes of making this post, Apple released a firmware update for the unibody MacBook Pro that’s targeted (in part) at fixing this issue.
 

Update part deux: The firmware update fixed the video static. Thanks Apple!
 

I snapped this shot not knowing if it would turn out as good as it looked in real life. Not too shabby!

I used my Rebel XTi with a Canon EF 50mm lens (1.4) set at f/6.3 and 1/1000 second.

 
What I like about this photo is that it looks like the moon rising over the barn and trees, but it’s really the sun. Très cool.
 

Crucial and newegg to the rescue! I ordered a pair of DDR3 1067Mhz RAM chips for $125. That’s pretty affordable!

Here are a few shots to illustrate how easy it is to upgrade the RAM (and, coincidentally, the hard drive) in the new MacBook Pro and MacBook. Thankfully, upgrading RAM and hard drives on the new unibody MacBook Pro is easy and won’t void or risk the warranty. (Just don’t sneeze or drool onto the logic board when doing work and you should be fine.)

 
First, remove the battery plate and battery. This exposes the hard drive for easy replacement if you ever want to upgrade to a 320GB 7200RPM drive or even one of the new 500GB 5400RPM drives. (I wonder if the MacBook Pro could be run off an external 10,000RPM SATA drive like the VelociRaptor. That’d be awesome!)

Removing the battery plate does not expose the memory bay like in the earlier MacBook Pros, so there’s more work to do.

There are 8 screws to remove from the bottom plate of the MacBook Pro. You’ll need a simple jeweler’s screwdriver. Remember the order of screws as there are three different sizes.

Here you can see the inside of the MacBook Pro exposed. It’s gorgeous. I was pretty impressed with the exterior design of the MacBook Pro, but this shows it’s true inner beauty.

This is where the RAM chips go. There are little tabs on each side of the chips. Pulling those tabs apart by less than a millimeter will “eject” the RAM for removal.

You put the new RAM in and take the old RAM out. You do the hokey pokey and turn yourself about. (Gag, I know.)

Here you see the new RAM installed. Check out the logic board and fans. Everything is so compact, tight and compartmentalized.

Another inside shot.

Put the botom plate back on and put the screws back in. Tighten well, but not too much. You don’t want to strip the threads.

That’s it! It took less than 5 minutes for the whole operation. With 4GB RAM, boot time is marginally better, but the real benefit comes with running larger apps like Photoshop, Parallels, Final Cut, etc. I can have much more going at one time than I could before.

A side note: I also notice that the new MacBook Pro runs much cooler than the old versions. When running generic apps like Mail, Safari, Firefox, etc., the old MacBook Pro would usually keep at a warm 130°. When running Photoshop and/or Parallels for more than a few minutes on my previous MacBook Pro, the internal temp would rise to no less than 160° and would often top 185°. This new unibody MacBook Pro runs between 96° and 110° for normal apps and hasn’t risen above 130° even when running Final Cut. Very cool, indeed!
 

After experiencing months of crippling trouble with the video card in my 2.4GHz MacBook Pro laptop (resulting in multiple logic board replacements, LCD screen replacements, etc.), I was generously given a replacement laptop from Apple. Yes, a full replacement. Stunning level of customer service and tech support – clearly above and beyond the norm.

Here’s the new machine. So nice! This new design and the new specs are so far advanced that I look back to my “old” MacBook Pro with a sense of analog nostalgia.

P.S. By way of Google, I found this image of the new logic board for the latest MacBook Pro. Pretty crazy shape!

P.P.S. The only bummer about getting a replacement computer from Apple is that one’s Apple Care warranty doesn’t follow to the new machine. I’ll have to buy another extended warranty asap. It’s a minor factor, but still – darn.

The automatic bump never happened. I called Verizon approximately 8 times to inquire about it and every person I talked to had a different understanding of it, though truthfully, several FiOS service reps were totally unaware.

I called again today and immediately selected the option to talk to someone in billing. I got a very nice girl on the phone who was willing to listen to my gripe. A first time experience for me dealing with Verizon – she knew exactly what I was talking about. Oh My Frikin Gawd! A FiOS employee in the know! Wow! She checked my account, confirmed that the 20/5 option was indeed available to me and put the change request in. For free, by the way.

Now that was pretty awesome. It got even better when she told me when to expect the upgrade to take place. “Now,” she said. My reply was less eloquent – something like “Haruh?!”

Lo and behold, I popped over to speedtest.net and ran a quick test. I got a near perfect score. Here’s the result:

So if you have FiOS, you may be eligible for a free upgrade. Give them a call. Give the billing dept a call. The support guys are serving up a pretty dismal 10% success rate at solving problems.

P.S. It looks like I can upgrade to 20/20mbps for an extra $10 per month. I might just do that!

Fast forward a year or so, and you’d see me sitting at my computer, cursing the task of converting AVI files to Apple TV friendly format so I could watch important videos on my TV instead of my little MacBook Pro screen. Curses, wasted CPU time and wasted disk space from double files… that was the price I had to pay for the pleasure of watching AVI video content. Sometimes I would spend as much time converting a video as I would spend watching it. Bah.

A few days ago, I stopped by Best Buy (I’m slightly embarrassed admitting that I went to that store) and found a very nice Pioneer DV-410V DVD player with a little USB input on the front of it. The DVD player handles DVDs and DivX videos among other formats. It also has an HDMI port for connecting video and audio to my HDTV in one tiny cable.

I set up the DVD player and popped in a micro USB flash drive loaded with a few of my favorite AVI videos and voila! it played the video cleaner and better than the Apple TV ever did! Imagine my surprise! A weight was lifted off my shoulders – the world seemed bright and warm. No more wasted time converting files. No need to stream video. No need to keep my MacBook Pro turned on while I watch videos. Sure, I lost the ability to rent movies from the iTunes store directly from the Apple TV, but I had only done that a couple times in 18 months, so it’s hardly a sacrifice.

Now I can quickly load a dozen or more AVI files on a stamp-sized USB drive and watch amazing quality videos. Buh-bye Apple TV – hello HDTV sneaker net!

Some people may argue that the DVD USB option is lower tech and doesn’t really constitute an “upgrade”. In my opinion, anything that produces remarkably better video, faster prep time, fewer steps, less hassle, consumes less electricity and allows more free time for enjoying video… well, that is truly an upgrade; the best kind of upgrade.

If you’ve never tried one of those DVD players with an internal USB reader, you absolutely MUST. It’s awesome.

P.S. As for the $90 in my pocket, I promptly sold the Apple TV and had $90 left over after the cost of the new DVD/USB player. Nice.

P.P.S. The aforementioned $90 lasted about 12 minutes as I bought another cool gadget that I absolutely had to have. C’est la vie.