here's a pc versus mac comparison video you definitely won't see linus austin or marques do
and that is a test to see which formats a floppy disk faster this toshiba satellite 105
cs introduced in february 1996 at a price of $1999. or this apple macintosh powerbook 5300c
introduced in august 1995 at a price of $3900 although to be fair
this one is the deluxe model with an active matrix lcd which itself cost
a thousand dollars extra compared to the passive matrix lcd which this laptop has
the toshiba has an intel pentium processor running at 75 megahertz with 40 megabytes of ram
it's running windows for workgroups 3.11 which was still a factory option when this model was
made in 1996 for those who were reluctant to adopt the brand new windows 95 and the mac has a power
pc 603e processor running at 100 megahertz with 32 megabytes of ram and it's running mac os 8.1
for my first test i'll be using these primaris high density diskettes it says ibm formatted
but I bulk erased these disks so they're now totally blank and then i'll try formatting
these polaroid double density diskettes which are brand new in the box never have been formatted
and did not come pre-formatted and this will be an interesting comparison because while the pc
formats these double density diskettes to 720k the macintosh formats them to 800k
whereas with high density diskettes both the pc and mac format are 1.44 megabyte
so here is the first high density diskette putting
it into the toshiba laptop and then putting one into the mac
okay we're ready to begin formatting the disks
and i'll try to push the buttons simultaneously on both machines
three two one go
you may be able to hear that the mac is seeking the disk drive heads a lot faster than the pc
but that does not necessarily mean it will finish formatting the disk faster than the pc
and now the mac is verifying the format so it does a second round
whereas the pc both formats and verifies in one pass
oh i think it's going to be close we're now up to 93 percent on the pc
while the mac is leaving us in suspense as to when it's going to finish
and the pc is done and
the mac is done it took a couple more seconds i'll try to
look at the video and figure out exactly how much longer it took but maybe
three or four seconds longer than the pc to format a 1.44 megabyte high density diskette
and now for round two formatting these polaroid double density diskettes
remember when diskettes used to come in individual sleeves
every single one of these comes in its own little plastic sleeve they don't do that anymore
now we're ready to begin round two of the formatting test with the double density diskettes
and for this test i set up an external microphone closer to the macintosh so you
can hear the interesting way it varies the speed of the floppy drive as it formats the diskette
so here we go three two one go
wow that wasn't even close while the pc formatted the high density disk a couple seconds faster than
the mac the mac absolutely trounced it when it comes to formatting a double density diskette
even though it's formatting it to 800k while the pc is only formatting it to 720k and that's due to
the variable speed system that these older macs use on their 800k and 400k diskettes
plus the mac has something you won't see on any pc floppy drive and that is auto eject
so that's the pc versus mac speed comparison test which nobody asked for and which is
totally irrelevant but i think it's interesting so thank you for watching
three two one go
what!?