"The new OS for both platforms requires more RAM, more HD free space and more processor power than ever (even though streaming music is not really processor/memory intensive)."
No, new Snow Leopard requires 100MB less disk space than Leopard. Also Snow Leopard runs faster - check here: www.macworld.com/article/14242...
Thanks for the link, Kijanki. I was aware of the improvements there. To be clear, I never said it was slower or inferior in any way. Just that the requirements were different. I don't use SnowLeopard as my tower is a dual-core PowerPC and they dropped support for the older processor. I did not say anything about how fast the OS ran. I also did not mean the actual space it requires the OS takes up, if that's what you are referring to (100mb is nothing these days anyway)...I meant that all the new OS run much better with more free space available on the native drive. Minimum requirements are just that (minimum does not mean optimum), but when you start filling up that native drive everything may work, but the OS slows everything down. That's been my experience with all versions of 10.5.X - and I'd bet had something to do with Rwwear's GF's laptop bogging down. That's another good reason to store your music library on an separate drive (among other reasons).
Snow Leopard Minimum Requirements are 1gb RAM and 5GB free HD space, and of course a 64-bit processor. Since it's optimized to take advantage of the processor it does not surprise me that it's faster. That's double the RAM required by the previous 10.5.8 OS, but indeed less HD space than 10.5.X required (9GB vs 5GB). Again, I'd caution that "minimum" and "optimum" are very different in my experience...then again, music streaming is not terribly demanding at all. I speak from experience of dealing with very large graphics files on a regular basis. I don't think it's unique to the platform... in general, the more bells and whistles they include with the OS (Windows or MAC) the more demanding they'll be of space/memory. Correct me if you think this is inaccurate, but it certainly follows the progress of the OS 10 development in real-world use.
As for firewire - in general firewire is peer-to-peer network where devices are inteligent and can negotiate bus conflicts. USB is a Master-Slave architecture where devices are dumb. Firewire has separate processing unit and can make transfers without loading main processor while USB always slows down processing (depends on main uP).
I am not worthy! Thank you for the lesson - You clearly know way more than I do on this subject. So how does that apply directly to streaming music where a buffer and reclocking is likely going to be involved? Would it suggest one were better than the other for that purpose? What about the implementation of asynchronous USB? And what of the conflicting observations in the review I cited, again, FWIW. Ultimately the proof is in what's coming out of your speakers I suppose. It would seem like most folks using a box for their music server are probably dedicating it to just that service. So I wonder how much processor demands, or bus conflicts come into play - perhaps I'm misunderstanding.
