MacBook Air :: Multi Tasking - Enough In / Out Bandwidth
Oct 26, 2010
I really need to upgrade my old 15" MBP and have been really impressed with what I have seen so far with the 13" MBA. After seeing the MBA I cannot imagine buying a new system with an internal HDD and Optical drive. Just does not make sense. On the other hand, I am a pretty serious at multi-tasking and wonder if the MBA will be able to keep up. I've been using higher end MPB class Macs for around 10 years now, and may be taking certain things for granted. First, here is my current system: 15" MBP Early 2008 2.5 GHz C2D 6 MB L2 8600M GT, 320 GB 7200 RPM
Now, here are the list of apps I almost always have open at work:
- Mail with one browser, 3-4 notes windows open and 4-5 messages open
- Adium
- MS/Entourage
- MS/PowerPoint with 5-10 slide sets open
- MS/Excel with 5-10 spreadsheets open
- MS/Word with a couple of docs
- Preview with 3-5 docs
- Camino with 3-5 windows open (Flash blocked)
- Firefox with 3-4 windows open (Flash blocked)
- Address Book
I quit usingFusion, so good so far? Then I go home where I start doing video editing with my 1080 HD AVCHD footage. I don't close any of my work stuff, because I often have late night and early morning calls. At home add the following apps.
- iMovie for video editing
- Toast for burning Blu-ray discs
- Voltaic (AVCHD video encoding)
While pulling in AVCHD footage via an SD card reader in my ExpressCard slot and writing to a Firewire 800 disk I am burning a Blu-ray movie from Toast via my FW400 port. At the same time I might be using Carbon Copy Cloner to update my system to a different 2.5" external Firewire 800 drive. Time Machine comes around once an hour and wants to backup to my Airport Extreme over ethernet.Will I be able to do all of this with a MBA? I am especially interested in knowing if I will have enough I/O bandwidth. I'll be going from a machine with FW800, FW400, 2 USB2 ports, and ethernet to a machine that just has 2 USB2 ports. I did do a little test with USB and it takes 2.5x the time to copy a file compared to FW800. I also verified that iMovie will let me scrub HD video in with data connected via USB2. The only problem was that I did all of this on a MBP. The biggest let down for me from the Air announcements was the absence of a FW800 port.
i was just wondering i am planning on get a macbook but a refurbished one. Im planning on getting the lower end model but I am just getting started on web design. The question i have is it going to be sufficient enough with the task Im going to be doing. Meaning Multi-Tasking
If I have an event, starting on Friday, going on Saturday and and finishing Sunday, is it not possible to get this to show in the month view? I know it shows up in the weekly view, but it would be more helpful for me to have it up show up like this so I can get an overview of the month's forthcoming events. Or if it, are there any mods/addons etc that can enable this?
I'm thinking of making the jump and making my first Apple computer purchase. Time machine will be a welcome native backup solution, especially since I can do it over the network automatically. However, I've read that Time Machine naturally requires HFS+ formatted disks. But I will still have my Win7 laptop for gaming purposes, and of course that requires NTFS or FAT32 for writability. My question: Can I just take a TM compatible external drive, split it into two partitions, and then specify that each computer backup onto its own partition with its own file system?
When the MBP is not turned on, I have an 15Mbs connection. When turned on (doesn't have to have any internet activity), it goes down to below 1Mbs for other computers. What causes this?
From time to time I see my internet bandwidth go unexplainably high, and I would really like to have an app that could tell me what's happening in more detail. What I'd like is a bandwidth equivalent of what Activity Monitor is for CPU usage.
This doesn't have to do with OS X as much as it does my ISP (Comcast 15Mbps/3Mbps Down/Up). Comcast states you get speeds "Up to" those advertised which basically means you will never get those speeds but once in a blue moon it could happen.
I've been watching my Router activity for a few minutes (see Top graph of the attached image) and I never get near either of those advertised speeds as expected. I am downloading Xcode DMG from Apple and a few torrents are running with no bandwidth restrictions.
My question is currently I'm getting about 50% of my advertised bandwidth, if I reduced down to the 1.5 Mbps Comcast package would I probably still only get 50% of that bandwidth? I think I already know the answer but was curious what you guys thought.
alright my internet company has a 10gb monthly transfer limit, i need a program that will monitor how much bandwidth i am sending and using. not hte speed, but the ammount
Does anyone know of any application that will allow me to see details on how my bandwidth is being used? For example, I'd like to be able to track how much data I use when streaming Netflix (via a wired connection to my AirPort Extreme), browsing the web (wirelessly), or making a Skype call.
ive been looking an application which shows traffic per applications. i have installed istat menus and sometimes the traffic goes up and i dont know which application is downloading/using.
All jokes aside, I read in Snow leopard (perhaps incorrectly) that two finger and four finger gestures on the trackpad can be used, is there any program on Leopard (10.5.8) that enables these? Specifically it would be great if I could go back in my internet browser by swiping with two fingers.
I have a brand new MacBook Air which currently has a Superdrive attached to the USB port. I'd like to get a mac compatible digi camera and my wife wants an ipod. Can I simply disconnect the drive and connect the camera/ipod at will or do I have to buy a hub? On my old XP machine it seemed to me the ports were dedicated to their peripherals.
I have started using spaces quite a bit recently and I'm not a huge user of expos�. I was wondering if there was a way to change the 4 fingered swipe to switch between spaces? So swiping 4 fingers up would go to the space above and similar actions with left, right and down.
I am able to monitor my wireless network no problem using something as simple as iStat pro but, for example, my xbox is connected to the router via ethernet cable so doesn't appear on any of the apps I have for found for monitoring network traffic. Is there an app that i can use to monitor the source i.e. the router itself, to see what speed/bandwidth the ethernet ports are using?
Is there any program to monitor how much bandwidth is being used on the external IP for a Mac, some how my home network goes through 1gig a day without trying, and well 12gig a month you can see whats wrong with that
At the moment I'm sharing a house while waiting for some pretty serious repair work to be done on mine. Therefor I am sharing an ADSL line, but its only 568Kbps (ish) and I don't want to use more than my fair share of the somewhat limited bandwidth. Dose anyone know of an app that I can use on my iMac to set a maximum upload and download speed for my connection. ADSL line -to- BT Voyager WiFi router -to- 1x LAN XP pc and 1x Wifi Vista PC and 1x imac in sig.
Ive been calling comcast over and over telling them that they have been throttling my internet's upload speed to the mid 40kbps range and they tell me no they havent. Finally they have been exposed in the past week, but they claim it is only to bit torrent traffic. This is not the case. I cant video chat for more than a minute or two before my internet gets throttled and the other person cant see me. The same goes for file transfers to a remote server for my graphic design stuff. Does anyone know a work around for this? Maybe changing the outgoing ports for iChat?
what i want is to be able to limit skype to use 20kbps or something like that, if its even possible. there are no guides on google, nor any programs that i can use.
I'm just wondering if there is a bandwidth monitor widget that doesn't reset itself on a reboot. I feel like I've tried hundreds from the Apple widget download page, but all reset themselves. It's not vital that I know how much bandwidth I use as I've got unlimited broadband, but it would be interesting to see how much I get through in a week/month/year.
Is there a monitor that will allow you to view the bandwidth on an IP address you specify? I want to be able to monitor all traffic coming in and out of my router, but I can't find an App that does this either. All they monitor is my local IP address 192.XXX.XXX.XXX (Specific to my iMac). I have a static IP address with my broadband so can I monitor traffic flowing through that? Or would I just need to monitor the routers network and/or broadcast address?
I am looking for a Software to detect if I have Internet and at what speed, the Wi Fi of my computer detect the connection of the computer with the router but I need no know if I am connected to the Internet and at what speed
After searching around on these forums, google and versiontracker, I still cannot find what I'm looking for. I found many network monitoring tools, but none of them did what I wanted it to do. I would like to find a program that simply shows how many MB/GB of upload/download I have used. The programs I was finding showed me the current amount of data being transferred and other information that is useless to me.
if 4 finger touch will be available through a software update? Now that I am spoiled by gestures on the track pad, I want four fingers for things like switching spaces, tap for dashboard, double tap for time machine etc etc...
