Ok, So I have this computer, which if you think about it is nothing more then a glorified word processor.  Be cause that is all we do with them is either surf the web, write blogs/emails, play games, or just watch/listen to some kind of media on them.  Now if you think about it is kind of sad.  The computers of today; laptops or Desktops can do so much more then that.  If all you really wanted to do that, in reality all you would really need is an old IBM PC,  IBM pc article,.  Add a Hercules video monochrome board, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Graphics_Card you could actually have a pretty decent display, 16 different shades of grey.

Ok, you probably couldn’t get that great of sound out of it so get a Commodore computer, it would do all that you need to do.  And it also had 16 bit color.
http://www.c64.com/

That in its self is kind of sad too.  Considering that a Cray 2 computer from the 1985 did 3.9  was clocked doing 3.9 GigaFlops, (billion floating point instructions per seco

So, I got to thinking, what can a MacBook really do, what kind of power do I have available to me?  So I started to look, first of all I was curious what kind of actual flops can it perform? unfortunately,  I got articles about will the mac flop, flop weekly etc.  then I added gigaflops, then I got a bunch of links to Macbook Pro…. Hmmm, this is not what I was looking.  So, I’m doing searches on the duo core processor, which of course I don’t what model it is. Ok after looking at the Apple website for macbook 13, it has a 2.26 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, dang, that is actually pretty impressive.
Looking at the intel site, http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/cs-023143.htm
I found the following information about my processor,

The number I was really interested in was associated with Gflops, (gigaflops)  Billions of floating point instructions per second.  The sixth column, it can do well over 5 times the processing power of a super computer of the 80’s.  Those are the computers Nasa would use to put men into space or map out the Mars’ Terrain.

 Ok, now I’m really curious, so what can it really do in bench marks :D.  My first search, pay dirt, I found a product Xbench, http://www.xbench.com.  After a quick download and install.  Found out that my processor can do about 3.05 Gflops, ok not 36.16, however I do have several apps open at the same time.  That might account for the system drag…  Ok not that much, however, looking at what it can do is still pretty good.  So this means to me, I probably could get an app to map the terrain on mars and feel pretty confident that my lap top is up to the task.

Thanks
John

Recently, I have become a proud owner of a Apple Mac.  So now what do I do?  Opposite of what you may think I’m not new to computers, I’ve been around them for a few years, since the 70s’.  Having seen the world go from not having a computer in a home to where most homes have one and sometimes several more then one.  Also I have owned several computer too.  However, I now have this new computer, it is newer operation system, and in a geeky sort of way it is a new adventure of learning how do something now.