Two questions

On 9/17/2015 9:21 PM, Eric Stevens wrote:
On Thu, 17 Sep 2015 19:59:51 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

Re the USB, you need a *lot* of ports straight off the bus.

no you don't.

It's
amazing the number of devices which don't like being run through a
hub.

almost none.

For a start:
http://support.datacolor.com/index.p.../List/Index/34
Spyder: Ensure you are utilizing a rear USB port; on laptops unplug
all USB peripherals. Do not utilize front ports, powered hubs, monitor
or keyboard ports

Nikon D750: Copied from the manual
"Connect the camera diectly to the computer; do not connect the
cable via a USB hub or keyboard."

Dikon D300: Copied from the manual
"Connect the camera directly to the computer; do not connect the
cable via a USB hub or keyboard.

I have encountered this kind of thing with other devices also.


I always thought that in theory, using a hub should not make a
difference. I wonder why.

--
PeterN

On 2015-09-17 15:26, PeterN wrote:
On 9/17/2015 1:29 PM, Alan Browne wrote:
On 2015-09-16 16:23, PeterN wrote:

Thanks, sounds like good information. Since I am doing pre-purchase
research, I will not be doing the experiments. I am thinking quad core
with about a 3.5 - 3.8 CPU. I know there are faster, but I am not yet
convinced that the additional price is worth the extra cost.

Typically it's not. If you're trading RAM for CPU always go for more
RAM and less clock. More cores and less clock is good too.

8 GB is not expensive. 16 GB is affordable. (Generally it is cheaper
to buy a desktop computer with 8 GB and then eventually add 16 GB in the
3rd and 4th slots for 24 GB total. Then you're talking - and it leaves
you the option to swap the 8 GB bank for 16 in the future)

Even under high loads a dual core (HT) (most recent i5's for example run
4 threads) computer won't use 99% of all the CPU resources - certainly
not in Photoshop - or when it does it's a fleeting thing.

If you do a lot of video processing, then by all means more cores,
higher clock and more memory is the way to go.

GPU use is also increasing in many photo apps like Photoshop.
For example, Adobe will be adopting OS X "Metal" in upcoming versions of
Photoshop/Lightroom, and so on. Under Windows Adobe GPU use is done by
the less efficient OpenGL in Lightroom and camera raw.

Nope. No video. Just stills. I have no objection to spending money, if
it is worthwhile. But I don't want to throw it away either.

Offhand you'd be fine with a higher clocked i5 (rather than an i7),
plenty of memory (16 better than 8) and as much SSD as you think you
need. But a lower clocked quad core i7 with HT will be much more
responsive.

As to SSD and photos, my opinion is less SSD is fine - you really want
the OS and application in there - and store photos on cheaper spinning
mass externally. So 256 - 512 GB of main disk SSD is probably ample
unless you really want a lot of other stuff on the main disk SSD.

On 9/17/2015 9:25 PM, Tony Cooper wrote:
On Thu, 17 Sep 2015 17:43:50 -0700, Bill W
wrote:

On Thu, 17 Sep 2015 20:35:58 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Bill W
wrote:

It's
amazing the number of devices which don't like being run through a
hub.

almost none.

I think Eric is thinking the same as me - there are devices that have
instructions that tell you not to run them through a hub. Spyder is
one of them, and I'm too lazy to try to remember the others. That
doesn't mean they won't work through a hub, and I've never bothered to
try with any of them. It's likely that some, or even most of them
would work in spite of the warnings. So anyway, with lots of ports,
there's no need to give it any thought.

i've used spyder thru a hub without issue.

the only thing i can think of that might not work with a hub are
devices that sink more than the usual amount of current and are plugged
into a bus-powered hub. the solution there is to use a self-powered
hub.

note that there are ****-quality hubs out there which could cause some
devices to not work, not because the device is plugged into a hub, but
because they're **** quality.

And that last part is likely the reason for the warnings. Some tech
support centers probably got enough calls that ended in the discovery
that the (****ty) hub was at fault, that they decided to try to
lighten the load on their support team by telling buyers not to use
hubs at all. Easy way out, and why not?

My hub is a D-Link unit with a power supply. My Wacom tablet did not
function well plugged into it.


And yet, my Wacom functions fine, while plugged into a hub. I forgot
what model I have, but it is not the Bamboo.

--
PeterN

In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

I'm betting Apple abandon Intel within the next 5 years (possibly 3) and
that they go all ARM (under the Apple Ax processor line) for OS X. Note
that iOS has high source code commonality with OS X (kernel to just
below the UI)

low end macs will probably move to arm fairly soon to gain significant
battery life improvements as well as reduce components cost.

high end macs will likely remain intel for the foreseeable future.

In article , PeterN
wrote:

unfortunately there's no easy way to tell which hubs are garbage.

Sure there is. Just try them. They are not at all expensive.

some are, some aren't, and most people don't want to buy dozens of hubs
and test them, assuming they even know what to test *for*.

On 9/17/2015 9:32 PM, Eric Stevens wrote:
On Thu, 17 Sep 2015 17:15:36 -0700, Savageduck
wrote:

On 2015-09-17 19:52:40 +0000, "PAS" said:

"PeterN" wrote in message
...

I think you should buy a Rolls to make nospam happy.

I had my heart set on a Bentley but he'd claim it's substandard because
it's not a Rolls.

Well a Bentley is a VW after all, while a Rolls is a BMW.

You could always go for a Bugatti Veyron. Oh! wait, that is also a VW.

So it might be best to settle for a Koenigsegg.
http://koenigsegg.com

Or a particular Ferrari FXX with a reputed 1282hp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-8uAM4LWX0
If you haven't seen it before, it's worth watching.


A snail bought a Masaratti, and had a big S painted on it. During a race
the announcer yelled out, "look at that S car go."

--
PeterN

On 2015-09-17 11:22, Whisky-dave wrote:

But as a general rule it appears that buying a 'computer' with more cores
will be faster at getting a partucilar job done than one with lessor
cores of about the same speed. Not sure how effciciently OS X
yosemite is on multiple cores compared to W10, W8 or W7.

My SO has a recent MacBook Air with a 1.6 GHz dual core (4 thread) CPU.

She also had a recent Lenovo ThinkPad with a 2.2 GHz dual core (4
thread) CPU. (Win7)

The Macbook Air wipes the Thinkpad out.

(OK: the MBA has SSD. The Thinkpad has spinning mass).

Once the thinkpad had loaded an app - it's more than zippy enough.

On 09/18/2015 04:32 PM, PeterN wrote:
On 9/17/2015 9:21 PM, Eric Stevens wrote:
On Thu, 17 Sep 2015 19:59:51 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

Re the USB, you need a *lot* of ports straight off the bus.

no you don't.

It's
amazing the number of devices which don't like being run through a
hub.

almost none.

For a start:
http://support.datacolor.com/index.p.../List/Index/34
Spyder: Ensure you are utilizing a rear USB port; on laptops unplug
all USB peripherals. Do not utilize front ports, powered hubs, monitor
or keyboard ports

Nikon D750: Copied from the manual
"Connect the camera diectly to the computer; do not connect the
cable via a USB hub or keyboard."

Dikon D300: Copied from the manual
"Connect the camera directly to the computer; do not connect the
cable via a USB hub or keyboard.

I have encountered this kind of thing with other devices also.


I always thought that in theory, using a hub should not make a
difference. I wonder why.


Any additional active device in the electronics chain is going to
introduce a delay, possible noise, possible signal distortion. Whether
that will be important is another matter- it may not be. It's also
possible that the hub may reshape or amplify the signal and improve it.
Or not.

I vaguely recall a couple USB devices that recommend using an externally
powered hub, as the computer might not supply sufficient power. The only
one that comes to mind immediately is a Voice Over IP unit that has to
ring the telephone.

--
Ken Hart

On 9/18/2015 8:32 AM, Alan Browne wrote:
On 2015-09-17 15:05, PeterN wrote:
On 9/17/2015 1:11 PM, Alan Browne wrote:
On 2015-09-17 12:27, PAS wrote:
"nospam" wrote in message
...
In article , PAS
wrote:

what's more important is getting an ssd and a lot of memory, 16 gig
should be sufficient unless you're *really* pushing it hard.

16 gigs is a good amount of ram. If my motherboard supported 32
gigs,
I'd use it since the cost of RAM is cheap.

32 gig is certainly nice but it's not going to make much of a
difference if you're not pushing the limits of 16 gig and most people
don't.

Getting an SSD is not so
important.

nonsense.

an ssd is one of the easiest and best ways to boost performance,
and by
a *lot*, even for older computers.

For example, Photoshop will launch faster when it's
installed on an SSD but the app itself won't run any faster.

everything will be significantly faster because the majority of what
people do is i/o bound, including photoshop.

There's a
benefit to using an SSD as a scratch disk for Photoshop if the image
doesn't fit into RAM. If the image does fit into RAM and you've got
lots of RAM, there will be no performance benefit to having an SSD.

nonsense.

you've never actually tried it, have you?

The only nonsense is coming from you. Direct from Adobe's website:

You're using marketing hyperbole to cover your misunderstanding of
memory use by PS.

"Installing Photoshop on a solid-state disk (SSD) allows Photoshop to
launch fast, probably in less than a second. But that speedier startup
is the only time savings you experience. That's the only time when much
data is read from the SSD.
To gain the greatest benefit from an SSD, use it as the scratch disk.
Using it as a scratch disk gives you significant performance
improvements if you have images that don't fit entirely in RAM. For
example, swapping tiles between RAM and an SSD is much faster than
swapping between RAM and a hard disk."

Photoshop's aged scratchdisk implementation comes from a time when there
wasn't much RAM and a typical machine had many resources competing for
memory.

Given today's memory space on typical computers, the scratch disk is
probably not used at all in most photo processing by most people. And
high volume workload photo editors typically have machines with generous
amounts of RAM.

These days the cheapest boost to photoshop speed is RAM, RAM and more
RAM whether or not you have SSD. Given HD or SSD the later is better,
of course but in most machines it's not even touched.

I have 24 GB on this computer. So the scratch disk is an unused
afterthought.


That is true for a lot of cameras. But my D800 basic image is 34 mp.

Which is nothing. Even if you toil into the wee hours with it with
dozens of layers and edits, that one image will take far less than 1 GB
in the computer's memory while editing.

I know that most layers do not require very much space. However,
wouldn't a duplicate layer take up as much space as the original?



--
PeterN

On 2015-09-18 20:39:06 +0000, PeterN said:

On 9/17/2015 9:32 PM, Eric Stevens wrote:
On Thu, 17 Sep 2015 17:15:36 -0700, Savageduck
wrote:

On 2015-09-17 19:52:40 +0000, "PAS" said:

"PeterN" wrote in message
...

I think you should buy a Rolls to make nospam happy.

I had my heart set on a Bentley but he'd claim it's substandard because
it's not a Rolls.

Well a Bentley is a VW after all, while a Rolls is a BMW.

You could always go for a Bugatti Veyron. Oh! wait, that is also a VW.

So it might be best to settle for a Koenigsegg.
http://koenigsegg.com

Or a particular Ferrari FXX with a reputed 1282hp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-8uAM4LWX0
If you haven't seen it before, it's worth watching.


A snail bought a Masaratti, and had a big S painted on it. During a
race the announcer yelled out, "look at that S car go."

choke,...splutter...
--
Regards,

Savageduck