The team at Bare Feats may never win a Nobel prize for this but if you're a consumer on the market for a new computer, we suggest you check out their findings. The team put the 2.66GHz Mac Pro mano-a-mano with the 2.5GHz G5 Quad-Core Power Mac through a series of CPU intensive tests that include running:

Non-Universal Binary Apps

• PhotoShop CS2
  
• After Effects 7.0

Universal Binary Apps

• iMovie HD6
• Final Cut Pro 5
• FileMaker Pro 8.5
• Cinebench 9.5

And the results are...drumroll please...

Quad-Core G5 Power Mac beats Mac Pro Xeon/2.66GHz when running Photoshop CS2 and After Effects 7. Between the 3.0GHz Mac Pro and the Quad Core G5 Power Mac, Mac Pro is 5% slower on the Photoshop but 8% faster on the After Effects test.

Both versions of the Mac Pro are faster than the G5 Power Mac running iMovie, Final Cut Pro, FileMaker and Cinebench with the Mac Pro 2.66GHz up to 62% faster than the 2.5 GHz Quad-Core G5 Power Mac. The Mac Pro 3.0GHz was even faster by as much as 85%.

The Bottomline: If money is a big issue and the machine will be used for non-UB pro apps (like Photoshop CS2), Quad-Core G5 Power Mac is a good choice. If the machine is destined for heavy Universal Binary apps (like Final Cut Pro 5.1) and cost is not a factor, go for the new Mac Pro plus the expensive memory (the team recommend at least 4GB). However, expect a 5-week wait for the optional Radeon X1900 XT and the scarcity of correct memory from upgrade sources.

Sometimes, you never really know what you'll find in a thrift store.

Adam Guha recently picked up a 25$ iMac from a thrift shop, amid bulky CPU towers and 10-year old PCs. Not knowing even the kind of Mac he picked up, he booted it up and found a six-year old iMac DV Special Edition in pretty sweet shape. After a bit of tinkering with the OS and adding a mouse and keyboard, he realized it would be the perfect upgrade to his grandparents' Performa 630, a Apple creation from the early 1990s.

The iMac itself was a big step up from the Performa. Unlike the Performa, the Mac had USB ports to use with digital cameras and printers. It was also DVD-capable, which is definitely a bonus. Since it also only needed two cords, a power cord and a cable cord, this replacement was also going to be a lot friendlier to grandma and grandpa than their previous comp. Of course, it needed a bit more functionality, so he added the latest versions of Safari and Firefox as well.

With far more features than their old computer, all Adam needed to sell the idea of the new Mac to his grandparents was to add their favorite game or two. Of course, if they weren't going to get on the internet to email their grandkids, it was still going to be a great computer for a solid game of solitaire.

With the coming of newer and more complex gadgets these days, we tend to forget how overwhelming it can be for people who are new to it. Buying some old, but not obsolete, computers and sprucing them up can sometimes help to close that gap between newcomers and average users.

Who knows? You may just end up getting the family together to mod a computer for grandma.

MenuMeters is a set of CPU, memory disk and network monitoring tools for the Mac OS X from Raging Menace. It is under the GNU General Public License, making it free for all.

What sets it apart from other monitors that uses the menubar is that most of those monitors use the NSStatusItem API while MenuMeters uses SystemUIServer plugins (Menu Extras), meaning they can be re-ordered using command-drag and remember their positions in the menubar across log-ins and restarts.

Other notable features of the MenuMeter is that the CPU meter can display system load, either as a total percentage or broken out as user and system time. It is hotplug aware, and will show activity on FireWire and USB disks as they are mounted. The Memory Meter can display current memory usage as either a pie chart, thermometer, history graph, or as used/free totals. You can even optionally display a paging indicator light. While the Net Meter can display network throughput as arrows, bytes per second, and/or as a graph.

You will need MacOS X 10.2 (Jaguar), MacOS X 10.3 (Panther), or MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger) or PowerPC or Intel based Macintosh (Universal Binary) to install this monitor. And if you are installing over an older version of MenuMeters make sure to logout and login after installation in order to load the new version.

Download: [MenuMeters]

It looks like a busy week for Intel. The Godfather of Chips is expected to ship its new Core Duo T2700, a 2.33GHz dual-core 65nm Yonah-based CPU for high end notebooks and desktop replacement (DTR) devices sometime this week. The processor should start showing up in high-end notebooks in the near future.

Intel's new, dual-core Yonah processor has been voted most likely to be the CPU found in the first Intel-based Macs. Early test-drives showed it was a fairly strong candidate to replace the single core Pentium M offering performance equal to that of AMD's Athlon 64 X2 without an on-die memory controller.

The company will also comically release its Core Duo U2500 ultra-low voltage (ULV) CPU. The U2500 is a 1.2GHz Yonah processor with 2MB L2 cache and a 533MHz FSB consumes only about 0.75 W during normal operation.