Local networking
In my new work setup, one of the things I did was to upgrade the switch between the two laptops to a D-Link Gigabit switch (less than €30 at a local discount shop if I remember correctly).
I did some benchmarks to compare the speed of copying a 2.4 Gbyte Parallels XP image in several scenarios:
On the old TiBook, local disk to local disk:
$ time cp winxp.hdd winxp.hdd2
real 3m24.703s
user 0m0.032s
sys 0m29.427s
On the Macbook (IM going on, iTunes, a bit of Safari), local disk to local disk:
$ time cp winxp.hdd winxp.hdd2
real 4m15.725s
user 0m0.019s
sys 0m9.391s
From the Macbook to the TiBook over Gigabit Ethernet:
$ time cp winxp.hdd /Volumes/melo/Drop\ Box/
real 5m29.288s
user 0m0.018s
sys 0m23.898s
Nice.
So I moved a lot of FireWire external disks and DVD burners to the TiBook, my "server" and when I want something I just copy it over the network. Less cables to plug in when I get to the office.
Probably the best €30 I spent in the last weeks.
