Still not as impressive as the attempt to get under 10 mins in a white van How embarassing would that be to be overtaken by that...

Whoops. Yeah, sedan, not car, as Trevor says.

Except that the BMW M3 CSL is faster at 7:50 and as far as I can see that fits into the description of a sedan...

Elsewhere it said that it was specifically the record for a production sedan with stock tires *shrug*

IMO, that seems to be the problem with every American-made car I've been in.

While not in the same price category, the Hondas I've been in all had a very simple design to their interior consoles, but in my experience they use very sturdy-feeling plastic. I know that the console in my 9 year old Odyssey looks like new (which is good because I'm selling it - anyone in the Virginia area want a minivan?).

Not stock, not a sedan.

I'll give you that what you guys call a sedan/saloon might not be what I might. Generally speaking, in the US, "sedan" means four-door, not a particular body shape.

Regardless of splitting hairs, though, "CSL" stands for "Coupe Sport Light".

Here, I believe sedan means "has four doors and a trunk", as opposed to hatchback, coupe (two doors), (station/estate) wagon, etc..

Or something like that.

I wasn't clear on exactly what qualified as a sedan, so I looked on wikipedia first. From my reading of it the M3 qualified, but I guess it must be one of those cases where wikipedia differs from reality*...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_(car)




* in that it is wrong

When I was a kid, coupes were 2 door, 2 seats. In the '70s (I think), Chevy started calling their 2 door Impalas a "coupe". Of course, Cadillac has been calling their 2 door land yachts "coupe" since the '50s.

I would think anything with a usable back seat would not be a coupe, except for the rumble seat Model A.

The WP article does mention this...



And while the M3 does have a frameless front door, it does have B pillars.

I always thought that coupé, which is after all the French word for "cut", is one of those things that can't be defined by itself but only in relation to other things. So a Vauxhall Calibra is a coupé version of the Cavalier, because they took the Cavalier and cut some off to make it more aerodynamic. Rover 800 coupés were cut-off Rover 800 saloons. That BMW, because it has just the same roofline as the 4-door, would still be a saloon by that reckoning. According to Wikipedia, at least one car (the Mark 1 Ford Granada) was available in both 2-door saloon and 2-door coupé versions, both appearing from the photos to have four seats -- which would argue against defining coupéité in terms of door or seat count.

Peter

Does that make the 15" MBP the Coupé version of the 17"? But on the other hand, the 15" PowerBook came out prior to the 17" so in fact they extended it rather than cut. The world is a giant conundrum.

AnandTech's recent MBP 15" battery tests - he gets from 6:30 to nearly 8:25 (h:m) in his tests.

I think there must be a flaw in his tests. If he didn't pay close attention (his tests are looped) then his scree may have been turning off instead of staying at the brightness he pre-set.

I can't see how the new 15" can beat the 17" while equipped with a smaller battery, especially since Apple itslef claims it should have a shorter life.

I think the real answer is that coupe and sedan are ill-defined terms. If you were to ask most people in the US, a coupe has two doors and a sedan has four doors. Of course, asking the hoi polloi is not generally a great way to get to the truth of something, but it may be all we have to go on here.

Still, the M3 CSL is defined by BMW as a coupe; otherwise it would be the M3 SSL. And, even if you want to second-guess them and call it a sedan, it's still an after-factory tuned version. Well, the E36 one was. Maybe not the E46.

How about this: the CTX-V holds the record for a production 4-door car.

New model, 4 door, b-pillerless coupes... Haven't seen one outside of a car show.

Yeah, we had to do some serious tidying for them to film that commercial

I believe, and this is just my view and not necessarily anything to do with why the batteries look like they do, that if the battery is non-user-replaceable, then a whole different set of regulations covering the battery housing apply.

eg: a user removable battery has to be able to pass drop tests as a bare pack. One that is built in does not need to conform to this requirement, which means it can be made with less casing/mechanical support and hence higher capacity.

Hugo

(edit: ok, so having read the thread through now, I see others have already put the above forward as an explanation. Battery regulations are necessarily frightening things, given how dangerous a badly made pack can be)

The 13 inch and 15 inch MBPs apparently are SATA I instead of SATA II like the others. Bit weird. Not that it'll make a difference to anybody using a real HD. All the SSD people are complaining however...

Being that the new systems are using the same Nvidia 9400m chipset as the older systems, it's probably some strange firmware bug causing the issue. NVidia spec sheets only show a 3gbit part.

Especially when you consider the fact that people ordering the systems with SSD are showing 3gbit spec in System Profiler and only people buying with default HDD are showing 1.5gbit.

Hmm. Weird. Whats with all the complaints then? A HD won't hit the 1.5Gbps limit anyway.

It does look like a strange configuration or firmware bug.

Folks are assuming that if they swap out their HDDs for an SSD in the future that they'll be stuck with 1.5gbps.

I suspect that the figure might be reported differently in System Profiler when they connect an SSD. So far I haven't read about anyone trying that nor have I read anyone hypothesize anything similar.

As noted already, SSDs definitely hit the 1.5gb/s limit.

My Dell 9400 main machine here has only SATA1 (1.5gb/sec), so the 120GB Vertex SSD I installed is limited to "only" around 135MB/sec throughput. In a SATA2 (3.0gb/sec) box it manages around 230MB/sec.

Vertex SSD: Best.. Upgrade.. Ever.. !

Cheers

How are the random 4k read/writes on it? I've been considering an SSD for a bit, but have been disappointed by the number of SSDs on the market that manage to run slower then my Velociraptor drive when hit with smaller file read/write cycles. The SSD makers like to tout the high sequential speeds on large files to pull people in.

Yeah. I was wondering why the HD users were complaining but if they're upgrading to a SSD like Hybrid8 said then it makes sense.


I looked at the prices for that Vertex and its pretty expensive. I want to replace the drive in my laptop and I'm pondering going for a SSD...

The numbers they quote are also for when the drive is "fresh". Once it starts needing to do erase cycles then it drops quite a bit.

I'll start a new thread about SSDs.

Fast! This is the first non-Intel drive on the market that works really, really well!

Moving to the other thread now.

Clearly my resistance to the RDF failed this WWDC. I have a Macbook Air on the way, and grabbed an iPhone 3GS today. I decided that with the Air, even at 2gb, it's still a nice upgrade for my aging MacBook Pro. I already have someone interested in buying it at work if I do want to grab whatever revision comes with more memory down the road.

As for the iPhone, the 32gb is what made me want it initially. After seeing the Gizmodo video with the 3G and 3GS side by side doing the same tasks, it tempted me more. What finally sealed the deal is the strong market value the 3G phones still hold, so I'll be selling my old one to make up for the cost of the upgrade. Peggle is ready to play in about 6 seconds from a cold start, compared to probably around 20-30 seconds on the old phone.

I know what you mean. Second hand 3G 16GB phones are still going for £250-300 on ebay in the UK. I am very tempted to get a 3GS as the sale of my existing phone wouldn't be far off paying for my 9 month contract buy out.

I always find that amazing, pretty much the only thing I wouldn't buy second-hand is a mobile phone. Why would I pay £300 for a second-hand iPhone with no warranty that's still going to be sim locked to O2 when I can get the same thing, brand new for £350 PAYG?