Hot
off the Press Story
by
Tech-edge E-zine Staff 1/20/03
Macworld SF 2003: Toys for Big Kids, what's Hot and what's Not.
90,000 toy hungry Apple enthusiasts attended Macworld Conference and Expo 2003 in San Francisco in January, Not bad for a down computer market. Top objectives for those attendees were the Keynote address by co-founder and Apple CEO Steve Jobs of course, the application presentation and my favorite, drooling over new Mac compatible hardware and software.
For those of you that couldn’t attend MWSF 2003, we thought that a show summary of “Toys for Big Boys, what's Hot/Not” was appropriate now that we’ve had a couple weeks to calm down and analyze our exuberance.
This list in not in any particular order and we will try to include site links where possible. So strap on your money belt and be ready to shop online, you Mac HSN fanatics.
What’s hot:
ATI’s Radeon 9700 Pro™ Mac Edition. If you have to ask why we picked this “thank your god” video card, well you’re not into Video or Graphics Editing and Gaming! Personally, my legs when limp just touching this 128MB (DDR) 256-Bit memory AGP card for OS X “Jag-wire” (per Steve Jobs) ATI – Keith Benicek, Editor
Brother’s Network Ready and Mac OS X 10.2 compliant Laser Color Printers: HL-2600CN desktop printer , HL-3450CN “Wide-Format” and the HL-4000CN “Workgroup”. Also the HL-5050 “Personal Graphics Laser Printer”, which has sensational specifications compared to anyone and it PostScript 3 PPD. Brother has done a wonderful job of catering to the Mac market and they build a great resilient laser printer that’s up to any job application. – Angel Lee, Sr. Writer.
Apple Airport
Extreme™ 802.11G Base Station. It’s pretty gutsy
for Apple to jump in with both feet with 802.11G, when it hasn’t
been officially been approved by the IEEE 802.11 WiFi SIG Organization;
and it’s also pretty gutsy for Steve Jobs to portray Apple as
the first, which they’re not. Nevertheless, even with the pro’s
and con’s of 802.11G, which we prefer over 802.11A, the Airport
Extreme is unique with it’s onboard USB Printer Sharing. And,
Apple is finally
charging a reasonable retail price of $199.00, although you shouldn’t
expect to find any discounts anywhere.
– Zack Bryce, TEE Tech-Lab Mgr.
Maxtor 5000DV
and 5000XT external HDD’s. The 5000DV (model T01P200) is
7200 RPM – 200GB, 8MB cache and the 5000XT (model S01J250) is 5400
RPM – 250 GB, 2MB cache external Hard Disk Drives with 1394 FireWire
(400 Mb/s), i.Link and USB 1.1/2.0 compatibility. Both also sport the
Maxtor One Touch™
single button backup feature. I’ve used two daisy-chained FireWire
Maxtor 3000XT external drives (160 GB) for more than a year on my Video
Editing G4 Tower, and loved them. The 5000DV at 7200 RPM and 8MB cache
will be very welcomed by any video or music editor and it will be in our
upcoming “Building a PC/Mac Video Editor Workstation” how-to
article. – Keith Benicek, Editor.
Iomega
debuted their new Mac network compliant NAS™ P400
Series High-capacity high-performance RAID-redundant network storage rack.
Featuring four premium hot-swappable hard drives with a total capacity
up to 720GB’s, NIC redundant load balancing, failover protection
and a host of IT titillating features in a standard 1u (1.75-inch high)
rack. OK, my nerdy IT background is showing, but I gotta have one of these
for the office network.
– Keith Benicek, Editor
Apple/IEEE 1394B FireWire 800 and SmartDisk’s new FirePower HDD which employs FireWire 800. At 800 Mbits/s with FireWire 800, USB 2.0’s only potential 480 Mb/s is very outclassed. How do you spell BetaMax, Intel? The SmartDisk 7200-RPM, 200GB, 8 GB cached FirePower HDD’s with FireWire 800 is just what the Video and Sound Editor needs, these will be available in March. I just hope some aftermarket Mac compatible PCI cards with drivers are in the works for recent G4 Towers! – Chuck Brown, Sr. Writer.
Apple announced a lot of new home grown applications for OS X Jaguar, my to favorites that I know are going to be big hits are Keynote (which I’ve already used last week) for presentations and Final Cut Express for those that dream of the full version but have budgets that are 1/3 scale. I loaded my copy of Keynote onto my iBook the same night of the Keynote address at MWSF and spent all night playing with it. As a long time user of MS Power Point, you’ll find there will be no going back, if you switch! – Angel Lee
Giga
Designs diplayed their line of reasonably priced G4 Processor
Upgrades for Mac towers and servers. All are powered by Motorola G4 AltiVec
processors, in elegantly clean designed packages, with onboard cooling
fans and finned radiators. Nice to see the competition getting thicker
for Mac upgrades, check this one out. Sonnet was there also, but neither
PowerLogix or NewerTechnology had company booths, hmmmm, bad sign.
– Keith Benicek, Editor
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