CoachKevin
Member
See my post a few posts up. I went from a 13 to the 15 and didn't look back. The extra weight is a non factor and the extra power is a great value.
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Mac Hardware and Software |OT| - All things Macintosh
- Thread starter 3N16MA
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See my post a few posts up. I went from a 13 to the 15 and didn't look back. The extra weight is a non factor and the extra power is a great value.
Thanks for the advice, everyone. Also been reading through a lot of this thread and various other places on 15" vs 13" form factor. Everyone has a different opinion. Just gonna have to try myself and see what works best for me.
is good to know that most people think I'll be good to go with 8GB of RAM if i do decide to downsize.
A plus to the 15" inch, is no doubt Minecraft would love that extra CPU power.
I'll have the Macbook on Monday it seems. Apple didn't waste anytime shipping it out. Was free shipping too, really awesome.
is good to know that most people think I'll be good to go with 8GB of RAM if i do decide to downsize.
A plus to the 15" inch, is no doubt Minecraft would love that extra CPU power.
I'll have the Macbook on Monday it seems. Apple didn't waste anytime shipping it out. Was free shipping too, really awesome.
I finally took the plunge and ordered my first Mac. Windows 10 was just an utter catastrophe.
Will take a month and a half now to get hold of the MacBook Pro 13'. I'll be happy to have a somewhat lighter and smaller notebook (my current one is 14' and 2.3kg) and to have more up-to-date hardware. Compared to similar Microsoft ultrabooks, the MacBook Pro was also quite a bit cheaper.
Will take a month and a half now to get hold of the MacBook Pro 13'. I'll be happy to have a somewhat lighter and smaller notebook (my current one is 14' and 2.3kg) and to have more up-to-date hardware. Compared to similar Microsoft ultrabooks, the MacBook Pro was also quite a bit cheaper.
Is this your first time using OS X extensively? If so, it might take a bit of adjusting. I mean of course all OS do the same basic operations. but each OS has their own feel, too. Mac OS X and Windows feel quite different from each other. Different ways of doing things.
Working on OS X everyday is what finally pushed me to get a personal Mac machine. After you get used to OS X, working on Windows just doesn't feel the same. I look forward to learning even more about OS X now that I can tinker with the OS in my free time.
I used it before briefly, so it's obviously gonna be a change. But honestly, it can only be better than the clusterfuck called Windows 10. Wifi suddenly disconnecting, search function often not working, random crashes almost each day, no startup after standby mode. I'm so sick of this thing that I even considered downgrading back to Windows 7. But at this point, a new machine makes more sense even though the hardware itself is still working relatively well.
entremet
Member
Looks like Apple unlocked billions of colors for the new iMacs.
http://www.cbsmoto.com/apple-unlocks-billions-more-colors-in-latest-imacs/
http://www.cbsmoto.com/apple-unlocks-billions-more-colors-in-latest-imacs/
Mr. Wonderful
Member
Ehhh. It's hard to get excited about mobile discrete GPUs. Most of them aren't powerful enough for gaming, and if they are, they become inadequate within a year, which is terrible, given how much of a premium you pay for them. Meanwhile, a higher end Intel GPU is good enough for prosumer work. All the dedicated GPU does is take up more space and energy, and generate more heat.
Now if we were to get in really early on a 16nm Pascal card, minimizing the space, heat, and lifespan concerns, they would have my attention, but I doubt that's going to happen.
I'm not making any conclusions on the integrated GPU until next spring/winter, when the CPUs for the 15" MBP are actually released.
Any idea when this will trickle down into the iPod nano?
*Laughter*
But it is good to see Apple getting on board with 10b color, since it's been the main strike against the iMacs as professional display machines.
CrudeDiatribe
Member
Any suggestions for frequent "Possible memory corruption" kernel panics when Memtest86 has no errors after many passes?
Late-2012 13" MBP; 2.9 GHz i7; 16GB of Crucial memory; 250GB Kingston SSD; OS X 10.10.5.
Currently running Apple Hardware Test on one 8GB stick; going to try all four stick/slot combos to see if it makes a difference.
Late-2012 13" MBP; 2.9 GHz i7; 16GB of Crucial memory; 250GB Kingston SSD; OS X 10.10.5.
Currently running Apple Hardware Test on one 8GB stick; going to try all four stick/slot combos to see if it makes a difference.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
My Photos Library Masters folder still has so many (Over 200) photos that I deleted ages ago in it. Why? How is this so hard to do, Apple? I could probably close Photos and delete the Library and have it just redownload it all from iCloud again, but I shouldn't have to. Makes no sense why it can't delete these files completely when I delete them.
Edit: Yep. Confirmed. Those photos do not exist on iCloud. Just on this machine for some reason. My iMac has a library that it downloaded fresh and the number of photos reported by Photos (1,882) is the same as the number of image files Spotlight finds in the Masters folder on my iMac. Guess I'll just delete and redownload the whole thing. I wonder if there's a safe way. Edit: Nope, can't just delete it. It doesn't give an option to just download from the cloud if the library is missing. Bah.
Edit: Yep. Confirmed. Those photos do not exist on iCloud. Just on this machine for some reason. My iMac has a library that it downloaded fresh and the number of photos reported by Photos (1,882) is the same as the number of image files Spotlight finds in the Masters folder on my iMac. Guess I'll just delete and redownload the whole thing. I wonder if there's a safe way. Edit: Nope, can't just delete it. It doesn't give an option to just download from the cloud if the library is missing. Bah.
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
Fuck me. My Retina MacBook just took a drop from less than a foot on carpet, open, and the thing is FUBAR. The whole screen is messed up, white with artifacts. The warranty ended in August with an extended warranty, due to repair, that ended 1-3 days ago (90 day warranty from a repair). I have no idea how it sustained that much of an injury.
Fuck
Is it worth it to get the processor upgrade to 2.8ghz in the new mbp's?
Fuck
Is it worth it to get the processor upgrade to 2.8ghz in the new mbp's?
Canadian prices are a joke. I don't currently have an ios device (ipad 1, lol) and can't afford to switch back to iPhone yet. And an ipad mini 64gig would be like 800$ after taxes and apple care. Thinking of picking up the 6th gen iPod but wondering if I should get the 16 for $229, or spring for the 32 at $279. Both of those prices the on sale price for this week. I'm thinking the 32, it goes on sale pretty rarely, but the 16 can often be found for 229.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
Damn that sucks. What year is it and what size? We could tell you how much better it would be. Otherwise it would make more sense to just replace the screen. There haven't been as many really big jumps so unless you really need a new top of the line processor it might be better to replace the screen. Unless that costs an arm and a leg.
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
It was a mid 2012 15" Retina. I think I paid for the processor upgrade but kept the 8gb of memory.
The Lucky Moose
Neo Member
Since I have updated to El Capitan (but not immediately as far as I remember), my iTunes has become extremely slow. Anytime I click on anything (a song in a playlist, or simply the pause button) it takes a few seconds of watching the rainbow wheel before it happens. Any suggestions?
Try rebuilding your iTunes library?
The Lucky Moose
Neo Member
I have tried that a while ago and it didn't work. Not as in it didn't fix the problem but as in the whole process somehow didn't work.
FlyStarJay
Member
for some reason i cannot see my iTunes cloud music on my iPad. When i go to my music, the bar is just there, not loading. Cant listen to my iTunes match music on my iPad
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
Take that money. Sell the computer as-is with the disclaimer. But yourself a new machine. You deserve it.
I really hate spelling auto correct on Mac and iPhone sometimes. I write a lot of technical words and non-english names and auto correct is constantly changing them.
I type it in being careful to be correct and then it changes it and then I go back and change it back and then it changes it again... WTF!
Is there any way that I can keep using auto correct but stop this from happening so much?
I type it in being careful to be correct and then it changes it and then I go back and change it back and then it changes it again... WTF!
Is there any way that I can keep using auto correct but stop this from happening so much?
CrudeDiatribe
Member
It will learn. Other helpful hint: back up the cursor to the end of the changed word and it will offer to change it back to what it was.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
And add the word to your dictionary too. I think it does it automatically after the third time you type it and fix it.
Hey everyone, quick question about my MBP randomly shutting off ..
I have a 2010 MBP 15" and had replaced the hard drive with a Samsung 840 500 GB about 3 years ago. After I did that (and doubled the RAM to 8 GB), the computer flew and was faster than when I first bought it.
Then as of maybe 4 months ago, it started randomly shutting off and restarting automatically. It re-opens all the apps and says it was restarted due a problem (Press a Key to continue, etc etc). It happened every several weeks, so I didn't really think anything of it.
Now however, it seems to be happening a few times a week. Basically, it's getting worse. Is this a problem with my SSD? Or something else maybe?
Ideally I want this thing to last at least until the next 15" rMBP update with Skylake.
I have a 2010 MBP 15" and had replaced the hard drive with a Samsung 840 500 GB about 3 years ago. After I did that (and doubled the RAM to 8 GB), the computer flew and was faster than when I first bought it.
Then as of maybe 4 months ago, it started randomly shutting off and restarting automatically. It re-opens all the apps and says it was restarted due a problem (Press a Key to continue, etc etc). It happened every several weeks, so I didn't really think anything of it.
Now however, it seems to be happening a few times a week. Basically, it's getting worse. Is this a problem with my SSD? Or something else maybe?
Ideally I want this thing to last at least until the next 15" rMBP update with Skylake.
So, I am in Sweden (where anything Mac is very expensive), and I have worked with Windows since 3.x. Now, for some God forsaken reason I have just been bit...I have an iPhone, and I really, really want a Macbook. Thing is, I mostly want to write, but once I go for a machine it might as well be used for ..stuff.
So, should I wait for Skylake? People that spend a lot of time writing, is the Macbook Pro model something that causes problems (carpal tunnel syndrome etc) due to the added height?
So, should I wait for Skylake? People that spend a lot of time writing, is the Macbook Pro model something that causes problems (carpal tunnel syndrome etc) due to the added height?
This blog post may help, I found it useful when looking at the differences between the MBA and MBP: http://www.mikefook.com/writer-tech...ters-macbook-pro-13-retina-or-macbook-air-11/
I love typing on my MBA 11".
If you can wait for Skylake you should, USB-C/TB3 is going to be a big deal, but if you just want to get started now Mac laptops hold their value extremely well; you can always sell it once USB-C adoption takes off and buy a new one.
Anyone know why my ipad mini 2 is detected as my ipod in itunes? I'm looking at it in Windows 7 and it's in the windows explorer. I've done basically everything I can rebooting, updating drivers, deleting drivers, updating software, changing usb cords, switching usb slots.
I honestly have no idea. I think I just might call customer services.
I honestly have no idea. I think I just might call customer services.
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/06/blizzard-overwatch-mac/
Apple's blend of incompetence (5 year old version of OpenGL) and their pointless culling of dGPUs from all but the most expensive Macs has finally caught up with them. Say what you like about Mac gaming, at least we always had Blizzard games. The loss of the dGPU in the Mac Mini a few years ago and more recently the updated 21" iMac was tragic.
I am beyond livid.
Apple's blend of incompetence (5 year old version of OpenGL) and their pointless culling of dGPUs from all but the most expensive Macs has finally caught up with them. Say what you like about Mac gaming, at least we always had Blizzard games. The loss of the dGPU in the Mac Mini a few years ago and more recently the updated 21" iMac was tragic.
I am beyond livid.
Height? Laptops in general aren't good for your posture.
I bought this JustMobile CB-200 Cooling Bar to make typing a bit more comfortable:
Works well enough for me.
Well, there is quit a difference between the Macbook Pro and Air profile. Of course, non of that helps with your neck.
Wrote a book on mine without tweaks or issues. But I guess that that issue isn't really generalizable.
Well, few things really are, but opinions can at least help somewhat on the way to a decision.
serversurfer
Member
What book?
Hey guys, sorry I just made a thread about a problem I'm having with my Mac only to realize that there was an actual community thread for this kind of stuff. As such, a quick copy and paste of the OP:
So to cut a long story short, a couple of days ago I accidentally split some water on my Macbook Air (2013 Version) and as a result, my laptop inevitably procured a lot of water damage. I recently sent the laptop in to a local specialist to get it looked over before being told that essentially the logic board is fried as well as the main battery. The guy says he can fix it, but he'd charge upwards of 600 pounds (mostly on account of having to order in a spare logic board from apple), an amount I can't really afford in my current situation.
As a last resort, I'm currently considering taking my laptop over to the closest Apple store in Bristol to potentially get it repaired at the Genius Bar, if only to see if Apple could cut me a better deal for the repair.
Essentially, I just wanted to ask...has anyone here had any good experiences when it comes to getting their stuff fixed at a Genius Bar? Do Apple Stores have a reputation for fixing things relatively cheaply or being even more expensive? Would I have to wait around for them to order the parts in? I'm fully aware I'm probably wasting my time, I just felt a second opinion couldn't hurt.
So to cut a long story short, a couple of days ago I accidentally split some water on my Macbook Air (2013 Version) and as a result, my laptop inevitably procured a lot of water damage. I recently sent the laptop in to a local specialist to get it looked over before being told that essentially the logic board is fried as well as the main battery. The guy says he can fix it, but he'd charge upwards of 600 pounds (mostly on account of having to order in a spare logic board from apple), an amount I can't really afford in my current situation.
As a last resort, I'm currently considering taking my laptop over to the closest Apple store in Bristol to potentially get it repaired at the Genius Bar, if only to see if Apple could cut me a better deal for the repair.
Essentially, I just wanted to ask...has anyone here had any good experiences when it comes to getting their stuff fixed at a Genius Bar? Do Apple Stores have a reputation for fixing things relatively cheaply or being even more expensive? Would I have to wait around for them to order the parts in? I'm fully aware I'm probably wasting my time, I just felt a second opinion couldn't hurt.
For something like that in the US they often take the laptop from you and mail it to their service center, then you get and email cost estimate and if you agree they fix it and if you disagree they send it back to you for free or have you pick it back up at the store. Not sure if they still do it that way.
Did you try calling the Bristol store to ask them first? Or call Apple directly? You might be able to directly mail it to them from your local post office but you'd probably have to pay the shipping.
My PhD dissertation.
serversurfer
Member
Ah, right on. Grats. \(^.^)/
Long time mac user here (since 2008) and I love Mac and its super clean look and smooth operation, but I'm still puzzled about the way Apple and OSX does things sometimes. Maybe someone can tell me if i'm just doing it wrong or if these are valid reasons for concern?
1. Mail - I have no idea what's going on but anytime i try to delete all the emails in my Mail on OSX (and iPhone for that matter) they come straight back. Is it because they are on iCloud permanently and i'm continually downloading from there? Its pretty annoying. I have no need for my older emails.
2. Is iTunes still the most bloated software and slow interface ever? There's iTunes on Macbook and you have apps, music, videos, podcasts. Then you have App store, Music, Podcasts on the iPhone. Wouldn't it make more sense to actually have an App store app on OSX working in sync with App store app on iPhone, Podcast app on OSX working with the podcast app on iPhone. That makes more sense to me.
3. Then we get to the craziness of photos. To import photos, I use photos on OSX, to transfer photos from OSX i use iTunes and they need to be synced? The easiest way is to just let me transfer files on finder.
4. Syncing is a bit of a problem. I bought my latest mac in 2012, with 256gb SSD. If you buy an iPad and iPhone both with say the middle tier 64gb, its a lot of space you have to give up if you're syncing. Of course Apple will suggest to sync with iCloud storage, but I really don't like giving up a monthly fee when I could manually transfer photos myself.
5. The way OSX loves to hide your files. Its kind of annoying. Like photos, movies and music are always buried three or four directories deep.
6. Finder is kinda annoying if you don't have a large screen. If you have a lot of directories you have to get into, the preview becomes really small and you have to manually resize everything unless you use cover flow. It would be nice if the preview was a bit larger. As such finder isn't very good at letting the user preview photos and to preview photos in preview, you have to select all the photos in finder and click preview and load them all up. To get them into Photos app on the Mac is an extra step.
7. Dashboard is significantly under developed/utilised. I wish there were more cool widgets I could put on there.
Anyways aside from that... somehow i still love using Mac, despite so many things I think it could be better at, all of which haven't really changed since the beginning.
1. Mail - I have no idea what's going on but anytime i try to delete all the emails in my Mail on OSX (and iPhone for that matter) they come straight back. Is it because they are on iCloud permanently and i'm continually downloading from there? Its pretty annoying. I have no need for my older emails.
2. Is iTunes still the most bloated software and slow interface ever? There's iTunes on Macbook and you have apps, music, videos, podcasts. Then you have App store, Music, Podcasts on the iPhone. Wouldn't it make more sense to actually have an App store app on OSX working in sync with App store app on iPhone, Podcast app on OSX working with the podcast app on iPhone. That makes more sense to me.
3. Then we get to the craziness of photos. To import photos, I use photos on OSX, to transfer photos from OSX i use iTunes and they need to be synced? The easiest way is to just let me transfer files on finder.
4. Syncing is a bit of a problem. I bought my latest mac in 2012, with 256gb SSD. If you buy an iPad and iPhone both with say the middle tier 64gb, its a lot of space you have to give up if you're syncing. Of course Apple will suggest to sync with iCloud storage, but I really don't like giving up a monthly fee when I could manually transfer photos myself.
5. The way OSX loves to hide your files. Its kind of annoying. Like photos, movies and music are always buried three or four directories deep.
6. Finder is kinda annoying if you don't have a large screen. If you have a lot of directories you have to get into, the preview becomes really small and you have to manually resize everything unless you use cover flow. It would be nice if the preview was a bit larger. As such finder isn't very good at letting the user preview photos and to preview photos in preview, you have to select all the photos in finder and click preview and load them all up. To get them into Photos app on the Mac is an extra step.
7. Dashboard is significantly under developed/utilised. I wish there were more cool widgets I could put on there.
Anyways aside from that... somehow i still love using Mac, despite so many things I think it could be better at, all of which haven't really changed since the beginning.
There are plenty of third-party dashboard items you can add, you just have to search for them. But Dashboard is pretty dead, though, so I wouldn't get too comfy with it. Every OS update I'm amazed it's still there (happily.)
So I now have a FIOS 50/50 Mbps internet connection going into my living room. My FIOS router connects to my Airport Extreme 6th Gen which I use for WiFi which is set up in the middle of my house and I have another Airport Extreme 5th Gen that I use as an ethernet hub and to extend the range of my WiFi network. This 5th gen is located next to my PS4 and is in a remote corner of my house... with both Extreme's I get full coverage in my house and I often get full speed internet with my laptop or iPad/iPhone in the parts of my house where I spend the most time.
I was thinking of hard wiring my PS4 to the internet to get a better connection than over WiFi though... but I don't want to move around my Extreme's because the 6th gen gets better coverage to the rest of my house...
Would plugging the FIOS router into the Extreme 5th gen and using the 6th gen to extend the range of my 5th Gen WiFi network slow down my WiFi with n instead of AC? Would it be a bad idea to do that?
Thanks!
I was thinking of hard wiring my PS4 to the internet to get a better connection than over WiFi though... but I don't want to move around my Extreme's because the 6th gen gets better coverage to the rest of my house...
Would plugging the FIOS router into the Extreme 5th gen and using the 6th gen to extend the range of my 5th Gen WiFi network slow down my WiFi with n instead of AC? Would it be a bad idea to do that?
Thanks!
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
Use iCloud Photo Library. Syncing via iTunes is so 2005. Even 50GB is only a buck a month if your library is big.
Not if you treat your Home folder like the top level. This is how OSes work these days and how they should. No one should be keeping their personal files at the top of the main disk. As for photos, if you use Photos.app of course they're obfuscated in a bundle structure. You could always opt to not use Photos and just have them all in folders and sync the folder via iTunes but it's just so much better to let Photos and iCloud do it. As for Music, let iTunes organize it and forget about it.
Dashboard is all but dead. No one has used it in 10 years. It's on death row and will definitely be removed at some point in the future. It's only being kept alive for the people who still use it. Migrate over to Notification Center widgets.
So icloud aside from not wanting to pay (I didn't know it was $1/month for 50gb though - that's pretty sweet) is that I like to keep my photos local on a hard drive. No particular reason other than just not having to rely on internet to get to my photos. I have shocking internet here in rural Malaysia, the home connection is 8Mbps but its spotty as heck. 3G is the equivalent of GPRS, I don't even know how they call it 3G. I use to have stuff on icloud photo sync, but then it would just be slow or not working at all. If I wanted to view a photo it would take ages to redownload, videos forget about it.
Photos is tricky. I take tons of baby photos maybe 500 a month, so I want to sort through them manually and put the ones I like in a photo album. These albums resides in the Photos app. The rest get backed up. It would just be a bit easier doing it manually via Finder than through Photos. Photos is a great app for viewing and editing, but not so much for transferring and backing up photos. It actually feels easier for me to switch to windows and just use windows explorer.
Now I totally get that if I were to just let apple and osx handle everything (which is what ive been doing anyway), then everything just works. But sometimes I do want to 'tidy' up and macbooks aren't very good at giving me back control. Thanks for your comments though, its interesting to hear how other mac users use their macs.
With Photos.app you can keep local copies as well. It's in the preferences.
I use ethernet home plugs (also called powerline adaptors) so I can have a wired connection for my iMac and my consoles. One plug is plugged in downstairs into my router and one upstairs is plugged into a 5 port ethernet hub into which I plug in all my devices. I highly recommend this as a wired solution.
Are you using IMAP or POP3?
In short, yes!
Just let Google Photos or Apple Photos do it all automatically for you. Syncing via iTunes is a bit 2008.
You can keep your iTunes library on an external HDD or use iCloud to backup your mobile devices.
I don't understand the problem.
If you click on a file and press space bar quick look will pop up. You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to look through your files.
It's on its last legs. At it's peak it was great, I had a widget that constantly updated showing train times of my nearest train station, a TV guide, one that pulled song lyrics off the net to for whatever was playing in iTunes and more but nobody makes widgets anymore and the ones that do exist have fallen into disrepair.
I would have liked the Mac App Store to be a distribution point for them, allowing developers to charge for them.
Oh thanks. Can I ask, how much did you spend on your power line adaptor? Is it a more reliable connection than WiFi? Does it use a lot of electricity? Do you get full speed on the other end of the adaptor?
I got given somebody's old ones but I think you can get a pair for about $30.
Yes. I get good wifi reception in the house but without the home plugs I couldn't play games that were highly sensitive to latency (such as fighters). It's very good for DLNA too.
That I don't know.
You won't get full gigabit ethernet speeds but you should easily get speeds that match your internet speed with next to no latency if that makes sense. The house I am living in was built over 100 years ago and the electrical wiring is probably not much younger but it all works great.
Ok I moved my FIOS router to my out of the way gaming area, and I connected it to my PS4 and my 5th gen Airport Extreme. My 5th gen Airport Extreme creates a WiFi network in "bridge mode" allowing the FIOS quantum router to do the router stuff. And then my 6th gen Airport Extreme "extends my WiFi network"... and my PS4 is hard wired into the FIOS router for maximum speed. My wife really likes this because it's another "thing" (the FIOS router) that is out of the "main area".
Is there some reason why I shouldn't set things up this way? (Apple's software tried to discourage me from setting things up with the 5th gen creating and the 6th gen extending but going into a custom menu made it easy to do what I wanted.) This setup doesn't seem to reduce my range or slow down my speeds...
BTW a question regarding FIOS speeds...
If I use http://speedof.me then I consistently get better than the advertised speeds over WiFi on my laptop but if I use the iOS app "speed test" then I consistently get worse than advertised speeds... I also get worse than advertised speeds if I use comcasts speed test web page... And when I used to have comcast then all of these speed test results were skewed in different directions depending upon which test I did... I would get much better speeds on the iOS app "speed test"... Is there any explanation of how to understand all of that?
Is there some reason why I shouldn't set things up this way? (Apple's software tried to discourage me from setting things up with the 5th gen creating and the 6th gen extending but going into a custom menu made it easy to do what I wanted.) This setup doesn't seem to reduce my range or slow down my speeds...
BTW a question regarding FIOS speeds...
If I use http://speedof.me then I consistently get better than the advertised speeds over WiFi on my laptop but if I use the iOS app "speed test" then I consistently get worse than advertised speeds... I also get worse than advertised speeds if I use comcasts speed test web page... And when I used to have comcast then all of these speed test results were skewed in different directions depending upon which test I did... I would get much better speeds on the iOS app "speed test"... Is there any explanation of how to understand all of that?
serversurfer
Member
That should be fine, but I'm not sure why you needed to shuffle things around. Did you need more Ethernet ports or something? You can get a Gigabit switch from Monoprice for like $25. It's just like a USB hub, except for Ethernet. Good stuff.
Also, are your two Base Stations wired together? They really should be. If not, then when your laptop talks to your 6th gen, it needs to use its radio to listen to your laptop, then it needs to use it again to relay that message to the 5th gen. Then it uses the radio again to receive the reply from the 5th gen, and then a fourth time to finally get the reply back to your laptop. Meanwhile, this also ties up the radio on the 5th gen, making it less available for the wife's iPhone in the other room.
So, not having your access points wired together creates a ton of extra traffic on your wireless network.
It's not unusual to get different results from different servers. A lot of testing sites will actually let you choose from a variety of servers to test against.
Regarding your laptop testing faster than the phone, if you have a really fast connection, the phone may simply not be able to keep up with the benchmark.(Writing data to flash can take a while, etc.)