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HARDWARE REVIEWS:
Apple's Wireless Mouse - 8/13/2005
Kingston Technology 1GB Memory Upgrade Kit - 3/17/2005
Griffin radioSHARK - 2/25/2005
Canon PIXMA iP3000 Printer - 2/18/2005
iPod Shuffle (512MB version) - 1/17/2005
Hitachi SATA 160GB Hard Drive - 1/17/2005
Lite-On 52X32X52 CD-RW Drive, Model LTR-52327S - 5/17/2004
Dual 5.25-inch Firewire Drive Bay Case w/ 80w Power Supply - 5/17/2004
Canopus ADVC-100 digital/analog FireWire converter - 1/26/2004
Canon PowerShot S400 Digital Camera - 1/15/2004
Hewlett-Packard 1012 Laser Printer - 1/15/2004
64MB USB Flash Hard Drive with CompactFlash Extension Slot - 3/19/2003
Dual 3.5-inch Firewire Drive Bay Case w/ 80w Power Supply - 3/18/2003
OWC Mercury Express 2.5" Portable FireWire Oxford 911 Enclosure - 3/18/2003
ADS FireWire Drive Case - 3/17/2003
EZ Quest FireWire CD Burner - 3/17/2003
HP PSC 750 all-in-one - 2/28/2003

SOFTWARE REVIEWS:
First Edge 1.0 Release 5.7.2 - 2/17/2005
Mac OS X “Panther” (10.3) - 1/26/2004
iClip – multiple clipboard/scrapbook software application - 1/26/2004
Page Sender 3.0 - 4/1/2003

Scale:

- A Must Have!

- You should consider buying it; some minor issues

- Not too bad of a product

- Below average product; some major bugs

- A waste of your time

Apple's Wireless Mouse

Overall rating:

A Quick review by Jim Parhamovich

Submitted: 8/13/2005

OSs Supported - OS X 10.2.6 and a Bluetooth Equipped Mac

Additional information and technical specs here

Available for purchase at Apple.com, Apple Store, and CompUSA

Retail approx. $59.00

A one-button wireless mouse. It requires 2 "AA" batteries for power. Battery life last a reasonable time and there is an on-off switch that will help in prolonging battery life.

I have used this mouse daily for months and use it instead of the trackpad on my PowerBook G4. I like it, although it is more expensive than similar devices on the market. It comes with an installation CD and installing it was quite easy.

It does fit my hand well. Since this is a one-button mouse, it can easily used by left-handed people. It is nice and smooth - there are no rough edges on this mouse. I do like the feel of this mouse better than the "traditional" two-button mice found on most PCs. Single-clicking is done easily by pressing down on the front of the mouse.

Apple claims a range of 30 feet for connectivity. Although I have not tested it to that limit, it will stay connected at least 10 feet away from my PowerBook. Battery life may be an issue if used daily for long periods. I will turn the mouse off when I leave my computer to prolong battery life. With Bluetooth preferences set to "discoverable," re-connecting is as easy as switching on the mouse and clicking. There is also a low battery warning that alerts the user to replace the batteries. Since there is no cable, it takes up less room in my computer travel bag. It travels easy and makes using the PowerBook much easier, either on the road or at home.

Overall, I would highly recommend this product, especially if your primary Mac is a laptop, even though it is more expensive than other comparable devices on the market.

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Kingston Technology1GB Memory Upgrade Kit

Overall rating:

A Quick review by Steven Weymark

Submitted: 3/17/2005

OSs Supported - OS X, Win XP

Additional information and technical specs at Kingston Technology

Purchased at www.mwave.com; Available for purchase at most computer stores or online
Retail approx. $111.00 + 3 day Fedex $11.30 - online coupon ($10) = $112.30

I had been using my G5 1.6Ghz for just over a year with the stock 256MB of RAM supplied by Apple. While I can say that everything did work, I found that I spent a lot of time waiting for the Rainbow Cursor to disappear. Usually accompanied by the hard drive thrashing about as it loaded then off loaded the various programs in virtual memory.

My lower end G5 has only four slots for a maximum RAM of 4 GB (as compared to the the 8 slot/8GB RAM max in the other models). I currently had a 128MB RAM DIMM installed in each of 2 of the 4 slots, as supplied by Apple.

I saw a deal (Thanks Eddy) for a 128MB DIMM for $10 from I Sell Suprlus, so I figured for under $30 shipped, I could double my existing RAM. I jumped at it. First, they didnt ship it for almost a week after it was ordered, then they sent it regular mail instead of Priority Mail which I had originally requested. Eddy and I opened the case and popped them in. Then the Chaos began, Kernal Panics, Apps quitting. I could only run Safari for about 3 seconds at time!
Tried several times to re-seat the RAM, Hit the CUDA switch. Nothing. We finally figured that we had a bad batch of RAM. Pulling it out, and leaving the original Apple RAM, stopped all the chaos. RMA'd it back to I Sell Surplus.

Me being the impatient sort and Eddy having sent me a link to another deal (Thanks again!), I ordered the 1 GB RAM Kit (2 x 512MB) from Mwave. A much different customer experience. First an email comfirming the order was recieved, then a phone call (from Mwave) to confirm that I had actually placed the order, then an email to say that the order was being processed, and finally an email to say it had been shipped, with tracking information. All this within about 12 hours. I had paid for 3 day shipping. Fed Ex got it here in 2.

I ran just a few Before/After tests just for fun:

Before = 256MB RAM After = 1.256GB RAM installed.

All tests done wih Mail, Safari, iChat, MSN Messenger and iTune running in the background.

– iPhoto –
I converted a large aiff file to AAC. Before, the conversion peaked at about 26x. After only about 28.7x. Not much improvement as this was more a processor intensive task. The CPU usage stayed up at about 98%.

– Photoshop CS –
Starting the program: Before 44s, After 44s...this would be mainly a factor of the hard drive speed.

Opening a 144M PSD file: Before 1:25, After :12 seconds

Eye Candy's Water Drop filter on the same file: Before 252.6 seconds, After 201.4 seconds

Unsharp Mask filter: Before 53s, After 3s

– iMovie –
Unedited movie clips, 12 of them, just dragged into the timeline, then exported out to a 1.2 GB DV file Default settings: Before 12:10, After 2:50

– iPhoto –
8,400 photos in my library
Opening the program: Before 38s, After 15s
Scrolling from the bottom of all the thumbnails to the top: Before 1:06, After 10s
Scrolling back down: Before 24s, After 7s
Quitting the program: Before 35s, After 3s

The RAM slot required a LOT of force to push the cards in. This caused us to think that the RAM was not properly seated the first time. But we tried them several times, tried without the Apple RAM and it different slots.

The Kingston RAM was also VERY hard to push in, but it worked the first time out. OS X felt starved for RAM with only 256MB. Apple seems to thnk so as well given that the newest Powerbooks ship with 512MB installed now and rumours are that all future Macs will ship with 512MB standard.

All in all, the sytem feels very zippy now. No waiting for anything it seems. I have only had it installed for about 2 hours, as of this writing, but it seems OK so far. I should have doen this a year ago!

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Griffin radioSHARK

Overall rating:

A Quick review by Bill Hilton

Submitted: 2/25/2005

OSs Supported - OS X, Win XP
Additional information and technical specs at Griffin Technology

Retail approx. $69 but street price is approximately $49

A few weeks back I posted a note asking if anyone had experience with the Griffin radioSHARK, which is an AM/FM tuner that allows one to listen to and record real-time radio through your Mac's USB port. (Apparently there's also a Windoze version, but I know nothing about such things.)

Having gotten a radioSHARK as a Valentine's Day/Anniversary present (my wife understands and helps supports my Mac addiction), I can report after tens days of use that the hardware and software that come with it are top-notch.

In addition to providing a digital tuner that allows you to select the station of your choice, the proprietary software--just updated yesterday to Version 1.0.5--allows you to record directly off the air. Furthermore, it allows you to set radioSHARK to record future programs at a certain time and date AND on a repeated basis. (I use it to make sure I record Prairie Home Companion every Saturday at 6 pm whether I'm at home or not--even if the computer is in sleep mode!). Interestingly, due to a "Time Shift" mode, you can buffer what you're listening to in real time and then "go back in time" and record what you just heard. This is helpful, for example, if you're listening to a song or NPR program and you wish you'd caught it from the beginning. Just move the Time Shift slider and the software will record what you heard minutes--even hours--ago, depending on how big a buffer you pre-set. In other words, radioSHARK is sort of like TIVO for your radio.

The tuner itself works reasonably well, especially when I plugged some earbuds into the external headphone jack and spread them out like a T-antenna. (I'm in York SC, and WFAE-FM comes in fine at all hours; I even picked up KDKA 1020 AM in Pittsburgh the other day, so on good nights I should be able to tape my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates games when baseball season starts.) That said, it would be nice if Griffin made a complementary external antenna to allow better pickup of weaker, more distant stations.

Radio is recorded as AAC or AIFF and plays back nicely via QuickTime Player. The two-hour Prairie Home Companion last week took up 1.2 GB, so I should be able to get three and maybe even four programs on a standard DVD-ROM. Henceforth, that will give me much better access to my PHC archives, which I previously recorded on two-hour audio tapes. :-)

Bottom line: For $69 list ($49 street) you won't find a better solution to inputting and recording radio on your Mac.

The radioSHARK is available at the Charlotte Apple Store, so you can run out and get one today so you can record Car Talk on Saturday while you're outside enjoying the lovely weekend weather.

Happy Listening!

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Canon PIXMA iP3000 Printer

Overall rating:

A Quick review by Barry Brown

Submitted: 2/18/2005

OSs Supported - OS X, Win XP
Additional information and technical specs at NewEgg.com

Retail approx. $99, but NewEgg.com has it for $66 & there is a $20 rebate to net $46

The PIXMA iP3000 can do anything - small photo printing to legal sized documents in color and fast!

I have printed lots of 8.5" x 11" prints from them with great results and have printed small 4 x 6 photos. I was very pleased with the quality of all that I have printed so far. I have ordered 5 of these printers for our workplace, replacing the old Hewlett Packard 960c inkjets, and am incredibly pleased with the quality of the printer and the results. These printers are very fast, have great color reproduction and are very easy to install.

The features allow you to print borderless photos at 4" x 6" with great results, and the fact that I can buy ink anywhere like 123Inkjets.com, ink4art.com or any similar site for about $3 a cartridge (this one has separate ink tanks for black, cyan, magenta and yellow) is why I am sold on this printer. The ink cartridges are smaller than an HP, but there are still great savings to be had by going to the PIXMA iP3000!

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iPod Shuffle (512MB version)

Overall rating:

A Quick Review by Brad Abernathy

Submitted: 1/17/2005

OSs Supported - OS X
Additional information and technical specs at here

Retail approx. $99.00 (512MB) & $149.00 (1GB)

I picked up a 512MB iPod shuffle at the Apple Store (Charlotte) Friday. I was told they didn't have the 1GB–sold out I guess. They only had 15 iPod Shuffles when I was there at 2:00. Five people bought one while I was buying mine! The packaging is great, it comes with an instruction manual, a lanyard, a set of good quality ear buds with two sets of foam pads, Apple stickers, an iTunes CD, and a quick reference card the size of a credit card that has lots of good information on it. The controls feel really good, very tactile and responsive. The front has the controls you've seen on photos, the back has a switch for off, play in order, and shuffle. It also has a button for checking the status of the battery. Very cool stuff!

I was not sure if I would like it not having a screen, but it is fine. Since iTunes controls what goes on it, I find that is enough control. I like the random playback as well as the ordered playback.
One thing to keep in mind...I have an older 500-mhz G3 iMac 500 and you cannot connect it to the USB ports on the side, or the keyboard. It won't fit on the side and the keyboard doesn't provide enough power. I do have a powered USB hub, so it works fine there. I imagine the docking station would work fine from the onboard usb or the hub.

I was able to put about 118 songs on it (About 9 hours of music!), using the Auto-fill Feature. I also turned on the feature to convert songs to 128kb AAC. With that feature on it takes a bit to load being that it has to convert the song first, and that my iMac only supports USB 1.1, but it is
not a big deal since iTunes does it automatically. In iTunes, the 'auto-fill' feature works great, I created a playlist called iPod and put a bunch of songs in it, rated them, and let it 'fill up' the iPod from that list,You pick any playlist to fill from. You can set it to randomize the song selection, select higher rated songs more often, etc.

Bottom line... It's a very slick device, easy to use, and the sound quality is very good with the supplied ear buds. The thing is super light, very smooth and feels and works great! This is a great product at a very good price. For anyone that could not afford $249.00 for an iPod Mini, this is a great alternative. The storage size is not a big deal for me. I don't think I have 120 songs that I really, really like anyway! It's so slick and well thought out, it makes me feel like one of the apes in 2001 at the monolith! A very small, white monolith. Ha ha ha!

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Photos courtesy of Apple Computer

Hitachi SATA 160GB Hard Drive

Overall rating:

A Quick Review by Steven Weymark

Submitted: 5/17/2004

OSs Supported - OS X
Additional information and technical specs here

Available for purchase at Most computer retailers—I got it at the Computer show at The Metrolina Expo

Retail approx. $99

A general desktop hard drive, good for storing large amounts of data. The G5 requires hard drives to be in the new connection format of Serial ATA instead of the old ATA standard. This is supposed to provide better speeds in accessing the data on the drive, by increasing the speed with which data can be moved through the connection.

Installation in my G5 was exceedingly simple. Apple has done a great job at making this easy.

— Power down.
— Open the side panel and remove the air deflector.
— There are 2 drive slots in the back near the top. The existing drive has had the normal mounting screws replaced with special screws that have a mushroom like head. These screws then form knobs that stick out of the sides of the drive to allow it to slide into the special slots. Apple very convexity provide four extra screws inside the case, for a second drive. Once these are installed in the new drive, the drive slides into the lower slot.
— A toggle rotates easily to prevent the drive from sliding out.
— Below the lower drive slot, attached to the frame of the computer are the connection cables. These are easily unclipped and snapped onto the drive.

The drive comes with the new SATA style slim data connection and the new style power connection, as well as the older style power connection. The instructions say you can use either power connection, but Apple only provided the newer type. After rebooting, the OS immediately said that I had inserted a volume with no data on it and do I want to initialize. Always being the careful sort, I canceled that window the went into Disk Utility. Here I could see the new drive, and use the erase command to format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). This took just a few seconds.

I wanted to use the new 160GB drive as my boot drive and the original 80GB for data, so I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy all my data. The transfer went quickly with about 60GB of data copying in 1 hour and 20 minutes.


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Lite-On 52X32X52 CD-RW Drive, Model LTR-52327S

Overall rating:

A Quick Review by Eddy Nivens

Submitted: 5/17/2004

OSs Supported - OS X, OS 9.x
Additional information and technical specs at here

Retail approx. $32.00 (with FREE shipping!)

Lite-On brand, IDE-based high-speed CD burner available in black and beige. I bought one of these drives to replace my aging Sony 12x CD burner and couldn't be happier. This drive is very fast - it burns CDRs at a rate of 52x, rewrites CD-RWs at 32x, and reads CDs at 52x! As an added "bonus," this drive is natively supported by OS 10.2.8 and later which means that you can burn CDs from not only the Finder, but also from iTunes and iPhoto. One thing to be aware of, though, is that while the drive is burning a CD, the drive is loud. It's quite tolerable but the noise was considerably louder than the 12x it replaced. Other than the noise, which isn't that bad after all, this drive is a bargain! I've looked and I've not been able to find another brand drive that offers the compatibility, the speed, and the price anywhere - retail or online. In short, if you need a high-speed CD burner, look no further than the Lite-on LTR-52327S.

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Canopus ADVC-100 digital/analog FireWire converter

Overall rating:

A quick review by Eddy Nivens

OSs Supported - OS X, OS 9, Any Windows OS

Additional information and technical specs here

Available for purchase online - Search for "Canopus" on DealMac for best price

Retail approx. $250

The Canopus ADVC-100 digital/analog FireWire converter box is a small but very handy gizmo that allows you to convert your VHS, S-VHS, Beta, Hi8 and 8mm analog videotapes to digital video. Not only that, but anything that has RCA outputs (audio and/or video), such as CD players, cassette decks, turntables, and even 8-track players can be connected to the Canopus and those signals can be digitized and brought into your Mac for editing in such programs such as Final Cut Pro/Express, iMovie, iDVD, and QuickTime Pro. When using any of those programs, the Canopus is instantly recognized and begins transferring digitized content to your Mac. The Canopus is truly plug-n-play with no drivers to install and nothing to set up beforehand in your software! Also, as this is a hardware converter, all of the digitalization is done by the Canopus, freeing your Mac to do more important things. Not only that, since it's a hardware converter with FireWire inputs/outputs, you can capture NTSC video at 29.97fps at a resolution of 720x480 and PAL video at 25fps at a resolution of 720x576!

Recently, we were asked to transfer the content of a Beta tape recorded in 1982 onto a DVD. After researching several options, such as having a video service do the transfer (at $50/hour!), USB-to-RCA adapters, a PCI-based hardware/software solution, and the Canopus, the Canopus seemed the most straightforward and inexpensive long-term choice. While doing research on these types of converters, I learned that if your source is longer than 2 hours, sometimes the audio track could get out of sync with the video track. Fortunately, I was please to read the following on the Canopus web site: "Other converters can lose audio/video sync when converting longer segments of video. The ADVC100 is the first inexpensive DV converter that supports locked audio when converting from analog to digital, assuring perfect audio and video synchronization." My source was over 2 hours and the Canopus kept the audio and video tracks in sync the entire time.

The first thing that struck me about the Canopus is its size but don't let that fool you! It'll handle anything that you throw at it. After attaching the Sony Beta machine to the Canopus using RCA video/audio cables, we hooked up the Canopus to the Mac using a standard 6-pin to 6-pin FireWire cable. We loaded iMovie and clicked on the camera icon and we began to see the contents of the nearly 22 year old Beta tape on our Mac's display! We rewound the Beta and got iMovie set up to record the stream and started over, this time for real. We took in nearly 2 hours of digital video from the Beta that day. Unfortunately, this conversion/transfer process happens in real-time. In other words, a 4-hour VHS tape will take 4 hours to digitize and the process cannot be sped up. This really isn't a consideration, however, as our use will be infrequent and we can let this process happen overnight or while eating dinner, etc. Once the Beta's contents were transferred to the Mac, we were able to edit the video (getting rid of those cheesy early '80s commercials!) and then burn everything onto a DVD with iDVD. Now, we can relive those "thrilling moments of yesteryear" by watching them on DVDs. Not only that, but with the Canopus, we were able to import from a medium that will only steadily degrade in quality over the years and place it on a digitalized medium that will last for decades to come and this digitized content can be readily shared in a variety of ways (e.g. e-mails, QuickTime Movies, etc.).

In summary, if you have the need to bring in any video and/or audio stream, from any type of equipment with RCA or S-Video outputs, then the Canopus is the right tool for the job!

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Canon PowerShot S400 Digital Camera

Overall rating:

A quick review by Oriana Mellott

Item reviewed: Canon S400 Digital Elph Camera

OSs Supported - OS X, Any Windows OS
Additional information and technical specs here
Available for purchase at CompUSA, Target, Apple Store, Circuit City, Best Buy

Retail approx. $400

The Digital Elph is a 4MP digital camera that features a 3x zoom and an 11x digital zoom. This camera made the trip with me to MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. It was hard to take advantage of the image quality because I have not read through the manual yet, but I was impressed by the overall ease of use, the outstanding image quality (despite the poor quality of the photography!), and the extra features that make the camera closer to professional or film quality. Especially impressive is the zoom and the fill flash, which comes in handy at night.

If you're thinking of a new digital camera, consider the Elph. It is a little more expensive, but you truly get what you pay for with this camera. The size is extremely compact, which makes it ideal or travel or for sneaking into areas where you're not supposed to have a camera! Taking that size into account, you would not expect such marvelous quality digital shots, but if you know what you're handling, your iPhoto album will look like a pro's.

When buying the Elph, be sure to get some accessories: a good lens cleaning cloth (fingerprints and the lens don't mix), a camera case for your Elph (I would recommend Canon's leather case with Velcro closure - it's literally made for the Elph - it's available at the Apple Store), an extra battery (there are many preview and review options and sounds on this camera that eat battery life), and a couple 512MB CompactFlash cards (get good 12x cards for faster shutter-bugging).

Once you have it home, spend a few hours to read the manual and learn more about your new tool. If you understand the camera, the image quality and ease of use won't disappoint you! I won't be going back to film anytime soon now that there's an Elph in my pocket!

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Hewlett-Packard 1012 Laser Printer

Overall rating:

A quick review by Eddy Nivens

OSs Supported - OS X, OS 9.x, Any Windows OS

Additional information and technical specs here

Available for purchase at CompUSA, Staples, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Best Buy

Retail approx. ~$150

The HP 1012 is an outstanding value and a rock-solid monochrome laser printer! It's also rather compact (about the size of a small breadbox) - 14.6" wide x 9.1" deep x 8.2" high and weighs only 13 pounds. Don't let its diminutive size fool you! This little USB printer comes with 8MB of RAM, starts printing in less than 10 seconds and is capable of nearly 15 pages per minute at a 600x600 dpi resolution! Extra toner cartridges - (HP Q2612A) capable of printing 2,000+ pages at a 5% coverage - are inexpensive, costing about $70 retail. The advantage to buying a HP printer, whether an ink jet or a laser, is that you can find ink/toner for it anywhere. You can't always say that for the inexpensive Brother and Samsung laser printers out there. Go to any non-computer store (i.e. Staples, Office Depot, OfficeMax, etc.) and see how many ink jet/toner cartridges are available for sale for HP printers versus the other brands.

The only downside, albeit a small one, lies in the software driver for the printer. Using the latest driver version, there's a small flaw in the "standard" preset in the Print dialog box. The "standard" preset defaults to printing in reverse order even though the printer's paper path causes all of the pages to print face down anyway. In other words, the default setting causes the last page of a document to print first and you end up having to manually resort your pages by hand! There's a workaround, however, and it's fairly straightforward: copy your "standard" preset, rename it the to name of your printer to help locate it quickly, select that new preset, select the "Paper Handling" drop-down box in the Print menu, and uncheck the "reverse page order" option and print. Once you print using this new preset, it will remain as the active preset and your pages should come out correctly.

All in all, this printer is a great, compact, fast and inexpensive laser printer! You can't go wrong with one of these printers.

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Dual 3.5-inch Firewire Drive Bay Case w/ 80w Power Supply

Overall rating:

A Quick Review by Oriana Mellott

Submitted: 3/18/2003

OSs Supported - OS X, OS 9.x
Additional information and technical specs at here

Retail approx. $56.97

External Firewire (IEEE1394) case with two ports and two 3.5" drive bays... Just add your 3.5-inch IDE hard drives. I installed two of my old hard drives that have been waiting for a new use into this case. Now I'll be able to use those drives for backups, overflow, and storage of all the things I don't want to burn onto disk.
The case that's on my desk now is the second try. I shouldn't complain considering that this dual-drive enclosure cost less than $60, but the first enclosure just didn't work for some reason. In fact, in addition to it not working, the insulation on the wire powering the LED popped, smoked, and melted away. Thanks to the Geeks, though, I was able to return it without any hassle and the replacement works like a charm!

The enclosure opens up quickly and easily with your basic Phillips screwdriver, and installation from there is pretty simple. Once you have the drives installed, plug it into your Firewire port and watch the drive(s) mount - without drivers! Outstanding! One word of advice - check the jumpers on your drives (e.g. master/slave/cable select) carefully when you're installing.

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OWC Mercury Express 2.5" Portable FireWire Oxford 911 Enclosure

Overall rating:

A Quick Review by Eddy Nivens

Submitted: 3/18/2003

OSs Supported - OS X, OS 9.x

Additional information and technical specs at here

Retail approx. $49.99

This is a hard drive enclosure for a 2.5" IDE hard drive (such as those used in PowerBooks and iBooks) that will allow the user to connect the hard drive to any Macintosh that has an available FireWire port. I bought this enclosure after buying a larger hard drive for my PowerBook in order to still be able to utilize my PowerBook's original hard drive.

The installation of a hard drive in this enclosure could not be simpler! You simply slide off the decorative panels (the enclosure kit comes with silver panels as shown in the top photo as well as blue panels as shown in bottom photo), open the top cover, lift the printed circuit board (PCB) out, plug your hard drive onto the connector on the PCB, tighten four small screws to hold the hard drive firmly against the PCB, insert the drive into the enclosure and close it by sliding the decorative panels back into place. The kit comes with a small storage bag and a 12"-18" FireWire cable. Although the drive enclosure receives its power from the FireWire bus, you can purchase an optional AC power supply. The optional power supply would come in handy in machines that may not be able to power the drive through the FireWire bus normally (e.g. third-party FireWire PCI cards).

In this enclosure, my additional hard drive mounts properly every time! Great product!

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ADS FireWire Drive Case

Overall rating:

A Quick Review by Steve Weymark

Submitted: 3/17/2003

OSs Supported - OS X

Additional information and technical specs here

Available for purchase at CompUSA

Retail approx. $99.00

This is an empty case to put a hard drive or a CD drive mechanism inside, allow it to be used with a FireWire connection. I had a couple of hard drives from an old PC lying around and needed some quick storage, so I put a 3GB drive into this case and plugged it into my iBook.

If you have ever done anything inside your computer, this will be an easy task. the case opens with 2 screws on the back. An attractive translucent plastic cover slides off revealing a metal case. Lifting the lid off, you find a multipin connector for the data and a small plug to provide data to the drive. There are also several places to put screws to mount the drive inside the case. After this, I just closed up the case and plugged in the power and FW connection and it worked without drivers in OS X.

The case has a plastic front panel that can be removed when using a CD drive and while this did seem a little flimsy, once I got it in place, it was fine. There is a lighted power button on the front and the unit came with a standard power cable and FireWire cable, as well as a short FireWire cable, which helps to reduce some clutter behind my desk.

The only major complaint I have is with the noise of the fan, when the unit is on. Though the manufacturer could not know the specs of the drive you would be putting into this case, so I guess it's better to go with a more powerful fan to be safe. After using it for about a month, the drive stopped working. I sent it back to the manufacturer, and they quickly replaced the unit. While this turned out to be a problem with my FireWire connection on my iBook, this does tell me something good about the company's support. I've been using it mainly to hold my mp3s but now I find that 3GB is way to small and I will have to go shop for a larger drive.

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EZ Quest FireWire CD-RW (aka: Boa CD-RW 48x12x48 Ext. FireWire Drive)

Overall rating:

A Quick Review by Steve Weymark

Submitted: 3/17/2003

OSs Supported - OS X

Additional information and technical specs at here

I haven't seen this FW drive in the local stores but was readily available online.

Retail Approx. $145.00

I've been using this drive for about 3 months now, and have not made any "coasters" yet. I have used only in OS X but it performed flawlessly, successfully burning data disks in the Finder and Toast Titanium, and audio disks in iTunes. As well as Library back ups in iPhoto. The only difference between CD and CDR has been the difference in burning speeds. I arrived late to the world of CD burning, this is my first burner, but I was wonderfully surprised at the speed and ease of making my own CDs.

The unit came with a startup disk, a copy of Nero, and a disk of software from CharisMac, though I didn't use any of them as no drivers were needed in OS X, and I had a copy of Toast already. Also included were a FireWire cable and a standard power cord. The power supply is built into the unit, so there is no "brick" power supply on the floor, and, while this does make the unit rather large (an 11.5" x 8" footprint), it still runs very quietly. The case is very attractive, clear plastic with a sliver under colour (similar to the way the white iBook's were originally made). The door on the front opens with the push of a button, (disguised as the stroke of the letter Q in the logo) to reveal the internal mechanism.

I had been wanting to purchase a burner for some time and was looking at some units from LaCie. The price, and having money in hand, were the reasons for me to purchase this drive. MacWorld magazine gave this unit a 4 Mouse rating in the December 2002 issue. It was second, only to the LaCie unit, but both drives share the same mechanism (Lite-On LTR-48125W) and the differences were only cosmetic. The EZQuest drive is quite large, but I did not intend to use it as a portable with my iBook, and it sits nicely on my desk.

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HP PSC 750 all-in-one printer/scanner/copier

Overall rating:

A quick review by Oriana Mellott

Submitted: 2/28/2003

OSs Supported - OS X, OS 9.x

Additional information and technical specs at here

Available for purchase at most major retailers, including CompUSA, Wal-Mart, Target, Office Depot, etc.

Retail approx. $100

HP's all-in-one PSC 750 can be used as a good color inkjet printer for home users and to scan and copy in both color and black/white. Photo scanning and OCR software is included, as are printer drivers.

I have tested a Canon all-in-one before and was disappointed, so I was wary of this all-in-one. As a test, I printed several color and black/white documents, scanned color and black/white documents, and even used the copy feature. Set-up was fast and simple - the printer was easy to assembly with clear instructions.

From box to desktop, I was pleasantly surprised by this all-in-one. My Canon is sitting in the box in the closet, but this little HP does the job. Scanning and copying are accomplished with the push of a single button (seriously, just one button) and the print quality is very good. Scanned files were easily imported into iPhoto and the overall scan quality was quite good. A nice product for somebody who wants simple, easy scanning and a good little printer.

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First Edge 1.0 Release 5.7.2

Overall rating:

A Quick review by Frank Rader

Submitted: 2/17/2005

OSs Supported - OS X

Additional information and technical specs at here

Available for purchase at Apple Store, Mac Mall

Retail approx. $100

Personal and very small business complete accounting package. Younger brother to more expensive, and extensive, Account Edge. Both products were originally MYOB (Managing your own business).

I use First Edge for personal, non-profit and business accounting. I've used it over a year. Previously I used MacMoney. I changed because MacMoney is Classic and First Edge offers better reporting.

I've never used Quicken. Like the motorcycle I've always wanted, just before going to buy it I see an accident and the motorcycle comes out 2nd. With Quicken, Quickbooks and Quickbooks Pro users in my family, I get a steady ear of lost data and no support from Intuit stories.

Regardless of how easy it is to enter data in Quicken, if it can't keep it, it is not a purchase. I have to have two things from an accounting program: No lost data and understandable (to others) reports at a glance. I get that from First Edge, but that's all I get.

There is a list of iritations and counter intuitives built into the program. Almost all relate to data entry. I've ten years with the super flexible, super easy MacMoney and expected First Edge to have some of that ease. Maybe I need 9 years more to find it.

• If I'm entering a one time payment I have to create a vendor card. I want to just type in a name and do it.
• Sub menus pop up rather than drop down.
• In the list of accounts sub accounts are not indented beneath their masters in the pick from accounts window. They are in the list accounts window, but you can't click on one from there.
• Memo space is limited and non-existant for one check split among several accounts.
• And more, but those are some of the bigger iritations

Summary: For many a spreadsheet will do. If you report to others or have more than one financial account try First Edge.


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Mac OS X “Panther” (10.3)

Overall rating:

A Quick Review by Steve Weymark

Submitted: 1/23/2004

Additional information and technical specs here:

Retail Approx. $129.00

Mac OS X has been going though a continuous evolution, and Mac OS X version 10.3 is the latest step in becoming a more evolved species of "Operationus Systemus". As Panther was released on October 24, 2003, there has been time for Apple to release a few updates to it. I am currently using version 10.3.2 (build 7D24).

I tried it on 2 iBooks, a “clamshell” 466-mhz and a white Dual USB 500-mhz, neither of which is considered current in these days of G5s, but the first thing I noticed was the speed difference. Now I'm not saying that I was blown away by the sudden increase in performance of my 4-year-old machine, but I will say that it was noticeably peppier.

The next thing I noticed were the changes to the Finder. Every Finder window now has a side bar on the left hand side. On the top of this side bar you see all your drives. Hard drives, networked drives, CD/DVD drives. From here you can access all your files more readily, including those on your iDisk. You can also eject drives and media by clicking on the eject triangle next to the drive in the side bar. While you can customize this area, with which drives to show, the real magic comes in the lower half of the side bar. This area is for you to put just about anything you want to see and use frequently. Drag a folder into the side bar and you have instant access to that folder, to see it's contents quickly, or to drag and drop stuff into it. You can also put frequently need files or applications in the side bar. But the best thing about it is, all these items will now appear in every Finder window you open, including the open and save dialog boxes in the applications. You can also place items in the top bar of each window, as you were able to do before, but that area seems more suited for tool like things including the new Action Button. This gives you access to the contextual menus with a single left click and what it shows, varies, depending on what item you have selected at the time. The side bar is also smart in it's appearance. As you resize the window, the items in the side bar will enlarge and shrink to allow you to see as many of them as possible. One problem with OS X's UNIX base is that when you open your hard drive, you have to drill down through the main level, into the Users folder, then actually open your own user folder, before you actually get to your files. The new Finder helps this by having the Finder window open at the user level where all your files are, simplifying things by not showing you what you don't need to see. The next big thing in the Finder is called Expose. Have you ever had a bunch of windows open and needed to find a specific one quickly? What if you could move your mouse or click a key, and have every open window shrink down to a size small enough that you could see every window. This is what Expose does. You can have it bring forward all your open windows, just the windows from the front most application, or move all windows out of the way, for quick access to the desktop. This is controlled either through the F-keys or by moving your mouse into a selectable corner of your screen.

iChatAV, having been in beta stage in Jaguar is now complete in Panther. Using your .mac account name or an AIM screen name, you can communicate through Instant messaging, now with voice and video chat. And if the person you are chatting with doesn't have a video or FireWire web cam, you can still do a one way chat, and allow them to see you.

File Vault is a tool that will be valuable to portable users. In OS X, all a particular users files are in their own users folder. If you lose your computer or it is stolen, all this information is now readily available to whoever has your machine. What File Vault does, is place your entire users folder into an encrypted disk image. then every disk action is automatically encrypted and decrypted behind the scenes, without the users interaction with no noticeable performance hit. This is opened automatically when you log in, and as long as you use a good log in password, if your computer should end up in the wrong hands, the bad guys will be kept out of your Home folder by 128-bit encryption. Home users, like myself, will not have much need for this, but if you carry sensitive work data, it will prove valuable.

Fast user switching allows you to switch from one user to another on your computer without either user logging out. You click on a menu of users, in the right hand end of the system bar, select the user you want, type in the password and with a wonderful rotating cube effect, the desktop transforms into the new users desktop, without logging out the previous user. Just reverse the process to go back to the original user. This allows you to quickly do some work on your own files, while leaving things running in the other user. My iBook, lacking in the video power to use Quartz Extreme, still can use the fast user switching, but without the nifty cube effect. The desktop just fades out then fades back in.

While there are some visible improvements to Apple's mail.app, most of the good things are inside. On the outside, we now have colour coded threading, which will allow you to more easily manage your mail, and the improved address book displays email addresses as little object bubbles. This allows you to easily drag them to the To: CC: or BCC: fields or to click on them to quickly select among multiple addresses for a single person. But inside, Mail now uses Safari's HTML rendering engine to give you fast and accurate display of HTML messages and web pages that arrive in your mail. Add to this, improved Junk mail filtering, and better handling of attachments and this email client is more than just good enough for me and many users.

iDisk has gone through a few changes in Panther. Besides being internet storage that you can connect to, anywhere you have a connection, it now keeps a copy of you files locally, allowing you to use them when you are not connected. Then, when you do connect, iDisk will automatically sync the information you have stored locally, with your iDisk account.

Yes, we all know it sometimes seems to be a Windows world, but what's a Mac person to do, living in that world. Well Apple has made it easier to live in a Windows world. From disc burning that supports cross platform standards, to being able to browse Windows servers. If you use your Mac at work, you can now Use Mail to access MS Exchange mail servers. Panther also supports VPN and Active directory to make things easier for you network administrator. My two iBook network has no problem trading files with my PC, as it runs Windows 98 and gathers dust in a spare bedroom, as a file server.

Preview has been improved to dramatically speed up viewing of Adobe Acrobate PDF files. Font Book is an application to organize and view all of the many fonts on your computer. Because of Mac OS X's underlying Unix base there are thousands of Unix programs that can be run using X11. And if you feel the urge to do some programming of you own , then Xcode provides a powerful tool set for the developer. These are but a few of the 150 new features that Apple has put into this new OS.

As with any piece of software of this size, there will always be new problems discovered, once it reaches a large enough number of users. Panther is no exception, with a few serious growing pains with FireWire 800 drives, and File Vault losing data as well as less severe things like Airport connection problems. However, now that some time has gone by, and a few point updates have arrived, the reports of problems are trickling down to very few, and I can, without hesitation, recommend this upgrade. Apple has spent a few versions getting OS X working the way it should, but now that it is solid, they have moved on to improving the way we do things on our Mac.

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iClip - multiple clipboard/scrapbook software application

Overall rating:

A quick review by Steve Weymark

Item reviewed: iClip – multiple clipboard/scrapbook software application

OSs Supported - OS X

Additional information and technical specs at here

Retail approx. $19.95 - Available for purchase at online

OS X has a clipboard that allows you to copy one item and then paste it into another location. What iClip does is allow you to copy, visually store, and then paste, multiple items. Think of it as the clipboard on steroids. iClip puts a window with 8 bins on your screen. You can place any type of text clipping, pictures, files, into any of the bins for later retrieval. I wandered around the internet and selected things, then with a click of the arrow pointing into the bin, the item was pasted into the bin. You can select an item and then click the arrow, or just drag the item right into the bin. To get the item out of the bin, just place your cursor at the desired place in the destination document, and click the out arrow and the clipping is pasted. Or just drag directly from the bin into your document. If you click on an empty bin, a window pops open allowing you to type in you own information. This is handy for quick notes that you sometimes have to jot down. The bin window in adjustable in 3 sizes, can be placed vertically or horizontally on the screen and can be reduced to a small floating button when you want it out of the way You can even make it disappear/reappear with a specific key command. You can also have an icon in the system bar for quick access to commands and preferences.

This program is wonderful for collecting and storing bits of information you come across during your day, but I can see it being a good resource for any kind of writing or editing. Storage and filing of html codes, for later placement in your website would be a great use for this program, especially as the clippings can be grouped in different sets as you like. The program also saves all your clippings, so that when it is closed and restarted, all of you information is retained.

iClip also has the ability to store sound and video clippings when working in an audio or video editing program. I tried this in QuickTime Pro, and was able to copy and past sections of video, with ease, for my own little iMovie. According to the author, future versions of iClip, will have the ability to open and extract the contents of many more types of files as clippings (possibly sounds, movies, rich text, PDFs) As well as the ability to store file aliases in the clipping bins (instead of extracting the file contents). This should provide a lot of flexibility in the way it will be able to be used.

In the time that I have used iClip, I found it wonderfully convenient at first, but as the novelty wore off I realized that I didn't save enough clippings and things to make it too valuable for me, but your needs may differ.

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Page Sender 3.0

Overall rating:

A quick review by Daniel Hawkins

Submitted: 4/1/2003

OSs Supported - OS X Native

Additional information and technical specs at here

Retail approx. $29.99

Send faxes and E-mails directly from the “Print” dialog in OS X!
* Receive faxes using your fax modem
* Print, E-mail, and even AppleScript received faxes
* Use with any popular address book or E-mail client
* Live addressing w/Address Book, Entourage, Now Contact, & Outlook Express
* Attach additional PDF documents when faxing
* Use any font on your system (including CJK fonts)
* Use eFax, jConnect, EasyLink, or MaxEmail services
* Automate sending of faxes and E-mails via AppleScript

I compared the full featured trial version of Page Sender to the FAXstf application that came bundled with a PowerBook G4. I was immediately impressed with intuitive design of Page Sender over FAXstf and although I didn't gather empirical data to prove the point, I'm certain that to send a fax I jumped through fewer hoops with Page Sender. Not having to restart the computer between faxes (as I did with FAXstf), is a BIG plus too! Page Sender 3.0 is a true mac app, it just works!

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