So, because I couldn't find any guides for quite what I did I figured I'd write a quick summary in the hopes that it can help someone else. Also, I feel like procrastinating a bit. It is hardly a comprehensive tutorial, and I can only speak for my specific setup.
The situation: I have a MacBook Pro 15" Core2Duo running 10.6.7.* I recently swapped in an 80gig OCZ Vertex 2 SSD for the boot drive in place of the old hard drive and moved the hard drive to the optical bay slot using an OptiBay.** I have been having kernel panics every time I try to wake it up from Safe Sleep*** after power loss (swapping batteries w/o power cable). It seems this is a known issue with the OCZ Vertex 2 (and other similar) SSDs. A firmware update**** seems to fix the problem. Unfortunately OCZ has shit-awful support for updating firmware on any non-Windows platform.
I found a few helpful forum discussions, but this is what I did:
First, check your firmware version: In System Profiler (Apple menu --> about this mac --> more info) under the Serial-ATA window in hardware you should see your SSD. Look for the "Revision" next to "Model" and "Serial Number." That is your current firmware version.
To actually change the firmware you need to deal with Windows. I already have Windows 7 installed via Bootcamp on the hard drive, and NTFS-3G installed so OS X can read and write NTFS (the Windows file format). The OCZ firmware updater is a small Windows program. For it to work, the SSD can't be the drive that Windows is booted from, and the SSD needs to have at least a small Windows-formatted partition.
Using Disc Utility I shrunk the existing OS X boot drive partition and added a second partition that was about 6 gigs big. It could probably be smaller. I formatted it as NTFS (possible thanks to the NTFS-3G plugin), but FAT may work or you could format the partition as NTFS from Windows or the Bootcamp Utility app. You don't need to instal anything onto the partition, it only needs to be Windows-formatted (I'm not sure if it must be NTFS or if FAT will also work).
I booted into the existing Bootcamp Windows instal on the hard drive, and ran the OCS firmware updater program following their instructions. (When I first tried I didn't know you had to have a Windows-formatted partition on the SSD, and the program didn't recognize the SSD even though Windows saw it just fine.) Somewhere along here you'll probably have Windows or some antivirus program you installed and forgot about yell at you to register or update or whatever because you haven't booted into Windows in months and never bothered to put in the license key. I cursed a couple times, mashed some buttons to make the dialogs go away, and rebooted into OS X.
I checked the firmware in System Profiler again, saw a higher number, and felt triumphant. A quick test of the Safe Sleep issue was successful, so hopefully that fixed it. Now you can remove the extra partition on the SSD in Disc Utility and have a sandwich.
* I believe this guide applies to all Intel MacBooks, including unibodies, running any OS X, but this is the only unit I have tried.
** The OptiBay has adequate but mediocre build-quality, and at $100 w/ external drive case included is rather over-priced, but it did the job. I have since learned that there are alternatives, but I don't know the specifics.
*** Technically Deep Sleep I believe, but the Mac automatically enters that from Safe Sleep under default settings (I think).
**** In my case the current firmware is 1.32, I believe I started with 1.22 or 1.24 but I didn't keep good notes because I fail at life.
[Edited to fix NTSF to NTFS because yay dyslexia]
Showing posts with label windows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label windows. Show all posts
3/24/2011
2/09/2010
handy Windows program brings over some Mac features for Bootcamp users
(or those who have the misfortune of not being able to hackintosh their inferior hardware... well, and I suppose those odd people who prefer Windows... ::shudder::): maComfort [via TUAW]
10/26/2009
10/08/2009
UMass students/faculty: free access to Windows 7 now
UMass Microsoft Developer Connection (after you've installed that go install a real operating system like Mac OS X...)
8/16/2009
8/14/2009
Operating Systems and Learning Styles & Keyboarders vs Mousers
Very interesting thought courtesy of Caroline:
Mac is designed to be intuitive for visual/spatial learners which Windows (and even more so Linux) is designed for non-visual linear text-based learners. She commented that her mother found Windows more intuitive than Mac specifically because she was looking for a text-based way of completing an operation while she or I would look for a visual mouse-based way of doing the same thing.
(There is also a very strong argument to be made that many users are simply more accustomed to Windows and had they started off using Macs instead the situation would be much different - it has been shown through UI studies that our first interaction with a device shapes our internalized paradigm for how that device works and is supposed to be used - see the book The Design of Everyday Things for more)
This certainly seems to fit with my own experience: My mother and I find the Mac much easier and we both have nearly-identical spatial-non-linear learning styles while my father who is a linear thinker doesn't. And my sister who's learning style is a hybrid of mom and dad find the Mac just as frustrating as the PC (I think neither one is well-suited to her style of learning... whatever exactly that weird style is...). Most of my engineer and other linear learning style friends prefer Windows or Linux, while any artist/designer I've ever met is a Mac person. Having used all three I can definately conclude that the Mac is designed for the way I think while I have to work much harder to figure out how to use the others - I just know where to look for a given feature or option on the Mac because it was designed by and for people who think more like me.
Another interesting comparison is between mouse users and keyboarders (and trackpad, pen-tablet, and touchscreen users). I suspect that like the OS's, visual learners like myself are more inclined to use the mouse since is it inherently more visual/spatial, while more linear/non-visual learners prefer the keyboard. Both are quicker and more intuitive to their respective users. I remember and learn everything spatially/visually so I even remember my keyboard shortcuts by their physical locations on the keyboard (give me a different keyboard and I'm screwed!) and have to use a shortcut quite often before I can remember it. My Dad can remember a keyboard shortcut after only the first or second use though. For either user it is most efficient to keep one's hands in the same configuration instead of switching back and forth, so naturally we each try to find the best shortcuts for our preferred device. For keyboarders there are tons of excellent shortcuts built into all the OS's and great add-ons like Quicksilver and Butler for the Mac that make keyboard users efficiency gods.
Unfortunately mouse shortcuts have failed to keep pace. Users of the Mac at least have a fairly good starting point, and with customizations like hot-corners (so handy!!) can be pretty efficient. But the only equivalent of apps like Butler or Quicksilver that I know of is CocoaSuite which enables mouse-gestures for all Cocoa apps in Mac. (Cocoa is the native coding language of OS X and most new apps use it but there are some legacy or ported apps like Finder that use alternative languages.) There are app-specific mouse gestures available for Opera (ugh) and Firefox (ick), but these are limited in scope and power. I have to say that CocoaSuite is my new favorite add-on to the Mac, and I can't imagine computing without it.
(interestingly, I use keyboard shortcuts much more when I'm just on the laptop - the keyboard is much closer to the trackpad and there is no mouse to move back and forth between so clearly most of us can adapt to both conditions if the conditions warrant)
All of this clearly warrants further thought and research - sadly I'm unaware of any user testing on this subject though it would be the perfect research experiment. Are you listening Nielson Norman Group?
Mac is designed to be intuitive for visual/spatial learners which Windows (and even more so Linux) is designed for non-visual linear text-based learners. She commented that her mother found Windows more intuitive than Mac specifically because she was looking for a text-based way of completing an operation while she or I would look for a visual mouse-based way of doing the same thing.
(There is also a very strong argument to be made that many users are simply more accustomed to Windows and had they started off using Macs instead the situation would be much different - it has been shown through UI studies that our first interaction with a device shapes our internalized paradigm for how that device works and is supposed to be used - see the book The Design of Everyday Things for more)
This certainly seems to fit with my own experience: My mother and I find the Mac much easier and we both have nearly-identical spatial-non-linear learning styles while my father who is a linear thinker doesn't. And my sister who's learning style is a hybrid of mom and dad find the Mac just as frustrating as the PC (I think neither one is well-suited to her style of learning... whatever exactly that weird style is...). Most of my engineer and other linear learning style friends prefer Windows or Linux, while any artist/designer I've ever met is a Mac person. Having used all three I can definately conclude that the Mac is designed for the way I think while I have to work much harder to figure out how to use the others - I just know where to look for a given feature or option on the Mac because it was designed by and for people who think more like me.
Another interesting comparison is between mouse users and keyboarders (and trackpad, pen-tablet, and touchscreen users). I suspect that like the OS's, visual learners like myself are more inclined to use the mouse since is it inherently more visual/spatial, while more linear/non-visual learners prefer the keyboard. Both are quicker and more intuitive to their respective users. I remember and learn everything spatially/visually so I even remember my keyboard shortcuts by their physical locations on the keyboard (give me a different keyboard and I'm screwed!) and have to use a shortcut quite often before I can remember it. My Dad can remember a keyboard shortcut after only the first or second use though. For either user it is most efficient to keep one's hands in the same configuration instead of switching back and forth, so naturally we each try to find the best shortcuts for our preferred device. For keyboarders there are tons of excellent shortcuts built into all the OS's and great add-ons like Quicksilver and Butler for the Mac that make keyboard users efficiency gods.
Unfortunately mouse shortcuts have failed to keep pace. Users of the Mac at least have a fairly good starting point, and with customizations like hot-corners (so handy!!) can be pretty efficient. But the only equivalent of apps like Butler or Quicksilver that I know of is CocoaSuite which enables mouse-gestures for all Cocoa apps in Mac. (Cocoa is the native coding language of OS X and most new apps use it but there are some legacy or ported apps like Finder that use alternative languages.) There are app-specific mouse gestures available for Opera (ugh) and Firefox (ick), but these are limited in scope and power. I have to say that CocoaSuite is my new favorite add-on to the Mac, and I can't imagine computing without it.
(interestingly, I use keyboard shortcuts much more when I'm just on the laptop - the keyboard is much closer to the trackpad and there is no mouse to move back and forth between so clearly most of us can adapt to both conditions if the conditions warrant)
All of this clearly warrants further thought and research - sadly I'm unaware of any user testing on this subject though it would be the perfect research experiment. Are you listening Nielson Norman Group?
7/19/2009
4/03/2009
3/01/2009
2/16/2009
2/09/2009
Very Interesting and Indepth Look at the Windows 7 Taskbar and OS X Dock
here. There's also a very nice background comparison of their contrasting window = program vs. window = file paradigms and the resulting implications for the entire UI that any power user should look at - I especially like their critique of the Dock.
1/25/2009
I've never been a real fan of the Dock (too little utility), and Gizmodo argues that the new Widnows 7 taskbar is superior to the Dock (something I hope pans out in reality so Apple improves OS X in response - or just goes ahead with OS 11!!)
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