Squeezebox
Company: Slim Devices
Price: $299.00 (US) wireless, $249.00 (US) wired

http://www.slimdevices.com

I have too many MP-3’s. Yes, I admit it; I am a junky for music on my computer while I work in my downstairs office. I have ripped almost all of my CDs into iTunes, and when I work, its great to have all that music available. I boxed up all my CDs thinking I was not going to need them anymore, and placed them under the garage for safe keeping, just in case the RIAA knocks on my door one day and accuses me of downloading all that music. (Which I do not, except for buying songs on Apple’s iTunes site that is!) Well, with that done, I realized that when I sit upstairs in my living room, I no longer have my music collection available. And while I have nice Sony desk speakers on my Mac, they don’t come close to the sound my stereo system can produce. So how do I get my music from my Mac to my living room without moving my Mac?

I first considered an iPod. But I am not ready for an iPod, still do not get the idea of carrying a spinning hard disk with 3000 songs in my pocket, and I am not sure I want to manage two copies (one on the Mac and one on the iPod) of all my music. Maybe some day, but for now, I am quite happy with my Rio and a handful of memory cards. Besides, both controlling the music while keeping it connected to the stereo with a high-fidelity connection seemed like a serious hassle at best. Ok, maybe a second Mac for the living room? No, same issues really, and a computer sitting in my living room is unnecessary, its why I have a PowerBook. Run speaker wires from the Mac? No, 200 plus feet is not going to work, and no easy way to run the wires. I considered a Series II TiVo, because it allows one to stream video, music and photos stored on their computer directly to their TV and stereo. Unfortunately, there is a $12.95 a month fee and an additional charge for the “Home Media Option” to stream music, and I would have to run some kind of wireless or wired network to the unit in addition. Nope, that is too much trouble. I just want an easy solution to listen to my MP-3s from my Mac in my living room.

Enter Squeezbox, a small (8.5” W x 1.9” H x 4.5”D) black box that easily connects to your stereo though either an RCA stereo cable (included), or a coax or fiber SPDIF digital connection (not included) for even better sound. The player also must connect to your home networking, and the wireless version of this player makes that simple with its built-in 802.11b radio. Of course, you can always attach an Ethernet cable as well if one is handy. On the front of the small player is a blue/green vacuum florescent display which can show two lines of forty characters, and is used to help you navigate for the song or play list you wish to hear, as well as displaying info about the song you are listening to and info about the system itself, and setting options.

In the box: Packed in the box is the unit itself, a VERY small power supply “brick” (thank you for a small supply that can sit in a power strip and not block neighboring connections!), a custom infrared remote, the user’s manual, an antenna (if you bought the wireless model), 2 AAA batteries, and a 6-foot gold-plated RCA stereo patch cord. Also included was a sticker that said “MP3 Is Not a Crime.” Missing, however, was any software CD, which at first I thought was an oversight, but actually was by design.

Streaming Server Software Set-Up: This unit will work not only with Mac OS X, but also with Windows, Linux, Solaris, and BSD, all you need is a server running on that machine. A quick read through the small user’s guide told me that I needed to download the proper piece of server software, called SlimServer from the Slim Devices website. Note: it you wish to see the server software and examine some of the features, simply go to http://www.slimdevices.com/download and download it to your machine. While you will need a player to use the player features mentioned here, this is a FREE, fully functioning server for streaming audio that will stream your music over the net to iTunes on another machine. Its cool, listen to all your home MP-3’s at work with this server. Slim Devices encourages this download and has over 100,000 users already using the server. In addition, a support community exists on their website for the player and the server as well, with some interesting plug-in modules and skins.

The Mac OS version of the server was a small 1.7 MB disk image installer. I could install the server for the current user or all users on the machine, and took only a few seconds to complete. About 15 seconds later, the System Preference panel was opened and set to the SlimServer preferences.

At first glance, there is not much here: a “start server” button, and the ability to select auto start the server at boot, user login, or manually. But a small button labeled “web access” which enabled after I started the server caught my attention. Pressing this launched the web browser into a web interface for the server with complete control of not only the server, but the player as well. And there are a lot of things you can control here. This means that not only can you control your music with the IR remote at the player, but you can select songs and play lists from the web interface as well, and “push” them to player, or you iTunes player too. The interface is amazingly complete. Down the left side are a number of browse and search music options, a settings option for the server and the player, and a help section. On the right are player controls and info, a box for the list of music to be streamed, and a pop-up allowing you to select the player you wish to control, and controls for the player itself, which at the moment said, “PLAYER NOT FOUND.” Oh yea, I guess I should set up the player.

Setting Up The Player: Back to the player still sitting on my couch, setting this up was amazingly easy. I attached the antenna to the back, the patch cord from the player to my stereo, and plugged in the unit. For higher quality, if your stereo unit supports it, is the ability to connect via a SPDIF digital coax or fiber link. While the cable is not included, this is still a very cool additional set of outputs that could probably just as easily been left off the unit and no one would have complained. But it does allow a much higher quality of signal from this player to the stereo, and adds a touch of additional class.

Upon plugging in the player, the front display immediately lit up with the words “Welcome to Squeezbox. Free your Music” with instructions on how to use the Up/Down buttons to select options for “setup networking”, “update firmware”, “view current settings”, and “done with set-up”. If you are running a DHCP server at home, Slim Devices claims that the player is ready right out of the box; it simply needs to be plugged in and should work without any configuration. That did not quite work for me (and I do not know why), so I ran through the set-up menu.

I selected set-up networking, which took me to another display with options for Ethernet and wireless connections. Having a wireless unit in the house, I selected wireless setup, and was prompted for the network (SSID) name. Entering text was much like a cell phone, the 10 keys toggling between the upper and lower case letters above their button, as in 2=abcABC, 3=defDEF, etc. After the network name, you enter a password if needed and the unit discovers your network, which took only a second or two. You then select DHCP or static networking; I selected DHCP as I have a DHCP server, and for some reason, the unit could not obtain an address and assigned itself a 169.xxx.xxx.xxx address, basically useless usually. BUT, despite the bad address, the player actually found the server running on my G4, and connected. Set-up was done, or so I thought.

Almost no setup: Also amazingly enough, the server and player were already completely aware of ALL the music on my G4, and I set up NOTHING on the server. Very cool! This SlimServer software actually defaults to looking at your iTunes library and playlists as its default, but you can change this setting with options on the server. What is cool about this is any changes to you iTunes library are immediately reflected on the server and on the device as well. If you have more than one directory where your music is kept, you will need to put links or shortcuts from these other folders inside your main music folder. I tried putting a link from a folder on another computer but this did not seem to work.

Opps: I could now browse my music by name, album, artists, or genres, or I could select to search the music by name. I could also play any of the playlists I created in iTunes on the player. With the remote, I selected a playlist and hit play, and BAM; there it was in full stereo in my living groom. Unfortunately, shortly after starting the song, the music stopped and the unit displayed a message that it could not longer find the server. I thought this might be because of heavy load on my wireless network. I decided to connect an Ethernet cable to the back, power cycled the unit to get back to set-up (I could not find another way back to set-up menu except right after a power cycle, but holding the power key for 5 seconds seems to do this I now learned! RTFM) and switched the network to Ethernet. Again the DHCP had trouble getting an address from my server, so I went through the manual set-up of IP. It immediately found my server again, and music was playing perfectly, no problems at all this time. Thinking the earlier problem with wireless may have been a DHCP issue; I ran set-up again (this time holding the power button), and easily switched back to wireless, but this time with a static IP. I started the music with no problems, stopping or stuttering this time. I also tried playing music WHILE I used and stressed the wireless network (4 Timbuktu connections), and the player worked without fault this time, so the DHCP issue must have been the problem. What I do not understand is why my network, which supports many other computers just fine on DHCP could not assign an address to this unit. Since selecting a static IP in the DHCP address space worked fine, I just went with it. However, when I later tried DHCP again, it obtained an address without problem and worked fine that way too. A strange mystery at best. Seems it would have worked right out of the box had my network been behaving.

There are basically two parts to this system, the player (and it’s remote) and the server. With few exceptions, the features controllable from one are also controllable from the other.

The Player: When powered OFF, the front display shows the current date and time, something it obviously got form the net because I never set it. This cool feature lets you use this as a clock radio because it also has an alarm function, wake to any music you select, and a sleep function, basically turning off after some set number of minutes. When playing music, the title playing displays in small or VERY large letters, or you can use the Up/Down/Left/Right remote buttons to navigate the display to other info. Pressing left takes you back to the “home” menu, where you can browse and search music, look at saved play lists, or adjust and view various settings. In the setting menu, you can set the alarm clock, adjust the volume, base, and treble, set repeat on a song or play list, set shuffle mode, again by song or album, adjust the title format to display a combination of track number, title, artists, album, and file name, adjust the text size, adjust the power off text size for time and date, and get general information and statistics about the player and the server. And I am sure I missed as few features here as well!

The information screen (and the web page of the server) contained a good deal of information, including my music library statistic; yes, I had 158 hours, 11 minutes and 23 seconds of songs available, 445 albums, 2,388 tracks, 346 artists, and 74 genres. Obviously this is from my MP-3 tags in iTunes, of which not all are correct given the songs vs. albums count here. Also available was the Player Info that told me my player name and IP address, the model name, the firmware version, the UDP port in use, the MAC address, and the wireless signal strength. I could also obtain information about the server, which included its version, its UDP port number, its HTTO port, and the total number of players that the server had found. The server will support multiple players and other streaming players which all show up here too. Lastly, on the player I could look at “plug-in” versions currently being used for firmware in the box, something that meant nothing to me at first. However, I later discovered that a bunch of third party plug-ins are available on the Slim Devices web site, including alarm clocks, phone dialers, news and weather display, plus many more. Go to here to learn more about this. I also know that the front display can show some graphics while the music plays, as I saw this done in the MacWorld booth, and I suspect this was a third party plug-in I have not found yet.

Connecting to a stereo is not the only option to listen to music. , There is a headphone jack on the side of the player, so a pair of powered computer speakers (or headphones!) would work just fine as a way to listen in a smaller room such as a bedroom or small office.

The Remote: The remote is small and very useful for controlling music, especially if you do not have access to a web screen. Buttons include Power, volume Up/Down, Left, Right, Up, Down cursor control, REW, Pause, FWD, Play, 0 through 9 buttons, and small buttons for search, shuffle, repeat, sleep, Now Playing, size, and brightness. Volume controls here were very welcome because this unit does not auto adjust the volume of music, and the volume of MP-3s can vary all over the place, from very soft to extremely loud. The REW and FWD buttons, if pressed quickly take you to the next song back or forward in the playlist. Holding either of these buttons causes the music to be scanned at faster rate, by “jumping” through the music at 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, and 32x speeds. The brightness of the display can be set to one of 4 levels, or off completely. The size button changes the text from 2 lines of 40 characters to one line of big, tall, single characters the scroll across both physical lines of the display. The now playing button rotates the display to the current song playing with either the time into the song, time reaming, a progress bar, or a combination of a time display and the progress bar. Shuffle selects between shuffle modes, as does the repeat button for repeat modes. The sleep button lets you set the unit to auto power off in 15 to 90 minutes. Pressing Play restarts the current song, pressing and holding play allows you to name and save the current play list.

Somehow, after all this, I cannot help think I still missed a few dozen more features of this system, and I am sure I did. An open software community supports many of the capabilities of this device, so look for new features by community members as time goes on in the form of plug-ins. In addition, the firmware for this device can and is updated automatically over the net, so new features and bug fixes will arrive at times, and most likely, you will never even notice it happen. I a understand that some ports may also be available inside, but I did not crack open the case on this borrowed device.

The Server: Meanwhile, back on my Mac G4, in my web browser window, the server display is constantly updating with information about my library and the player (or players) currently talking to it, displaying the current song playing and a list of songs in the current playlist as well. But this web browser display is not limited to running just on the machine on which the server is running. If you know the IP address of the server (which you should) any web browser on the network (or internet if not firewalled) that can connect to the server machine can display the same info web page. Simply type “http;//address:9000/ where address is the IP address of the machine running the server, and you can control the music playing on your stereo from any web browser on the network. For me, this was particularly cool as I have a small 3-Com Audrey unit (basically a small Linux computer with a 640×480 touch screen and a built-in web browser – see http://www.audreyhacking.com ) that I set to display the server info. Now, rather than use the remote to browse the music, I can use the web interface by touch screen and manage my music much more easily than with the remote. I could have easily done this same thing with my laptop, and, in fact, did! This was particularly important to me as I found, after initial set-up, that the front display of the device in my living room is unimportant, and quite frankly, not even visible from the best listening positions anyway as the device sat tucked away on top of my stereo receiver. I would love to see a version of this device without the display to make it cheaper, and an RF remote might be useful in situations like this where the player is not in the line of sight to the listener.

There are lots of settings on the server as well, and this server interfaces configures both the server and player. You can name your player here so if you have more than one, a name like bedroom and living room is much easier than remembering 10.55.19.52. Any of the settings I mentioned above that could be adjusted on the player can also be remotely set through this web interface as well. Also, the server display gives you much more information about your music, and browsing and searching for songs is so much easier than on the player itself. For example, pressing the “Playlists” link displayed all my iTunes playlists on the screen. I choose one, then pressed the small play symbol next to it, and the player immediately started playing the music from that list, while the right side of the web page displayed a list of all the songs it had queued to play. Clicking on any of the song names in that list immediately started playing that song, or I could move the song up or down in the cue, or delete it from the cue as well.

But you are not limited to playing just the MP-3 files your Mac. If you save streaming radio station into a playlist on iTunes, these radio stations then become available to the player as well. I have a favorite jazz station on iTunes (smoothjazz.com) that I listen to all the time on my Mac, and now I am listening to that same streaming, commercial free station on my stereo in my living room, while the title of the song is showing on the display as well. Very cool again.

However, this is not a perfect technology yet, as there were several, although occasional, stuttering of the music while the same stream played flawlessly on the PowerBook. Stopping and starting the stream on the player seemed to solve the problem when it did occur, and has not occurred now for quite some time, so this may have been a network issue as well. I would suggest that if you want to use wireless for this and lots of other things, you may want to either have a separate wireless device for this, or a 802.11g for the extra bandwidth. The player does have a large play buffer and did handle 99% of all potential network problems.

A few bugs in the system: Playing with this unit both with the remote and via the web interface was amazingly fun. The network connection was fairly stable, but there were times when the wireless network had a lot of traffic that the box would simply stop playing, occasionally displaying the “lost server” message, while at other times simply going silent for 10 seconds and then continuing. This stability issue was less of a problem when the unit was connected via the Ethernet cable, and in that mode I never heard the unit stop or stutter. I also noted when powering backup, the display may say it is playing a song but no music is actually heard. Pressing play, REW, or FWD seems to solve this problem, stepping to the next song or starting over the currently displayed but not playing song, The only other problem I encountered was with iTunes store purchased music. Because the music plays on the player and not your Mac, and because this player does not support the encryption method that Apple uses on its music downloads, this unit cannot currently play back MP-3’s purchased and downloaded from the Apple store. Slim Devices says that they are talking with Apple about licensing the technology, but no real plans or release dates are yet set. But since this device can accept firmware updates over the Internet, perhaps this problem will simply go away one day with a new firmware download. Or perhaps a “plug-in” from a third party will simply solve this problem? Who knows, but as open as this device is, I suspect this will not be a problem long. Another gripe is that I must leave my computer on to listen to the music. Macs do have a way to wake up for network activity, and I would love to see this server be able to wake my Mac up when I want to hear music. Lastly, I would LOVE to see a version of this unit with without the front display but rather a video out option, allowing me to display all the same info on a TV screen.

If, like me, you want access to MP-3s on your stereo, and moving your computer to the stereo is just not an option, this is the device for you. With so many options and methods of control over your music, plus a large open source community making it more cool every day, there is really no other alternative as cool as this. And you will probably never play another CD again, opting to quickly import it into iTunes instead and making it available on your Mac and at your Squeezebox, and at your office, all at the same time.

MyMac rating: 5 out of 5

Despite all I could do, I could not turn this into a Monty Python moment. Lord knows I tried. Fact is, this is just another sad turn in the strange and legendary story of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the two computer giants of Silicon Valley.

Mr. Gates, now to be called Sir Gates, built his monopoly largely upon the genius and hard work of Mr. Jobs, stealing both the look and feel of the Mac OS for his Windows OS, and most of the computer market share over the past few decades. I am not blowing smoke here. These things are well known have been hashed over in the media and in commentary for the many years that they have been going on.

If that were not bad enough, now Mr. Gates has been knighted for his efforts in gifting a small portion of his undeserved wealth to charity.

I wonder if history will be so kind to him as the Queen has been?

Perhaps decades from now people will come to see the great benefit Mr. Jobs has bestowed on the human race with his empowering and liberating computers and operating systems. Thousands if not millions of creative and artistic people will attest to this fact. I think no invention in all of human history has enabled and empowered people as these Apple computers have done, and all of us benefit from the art and the work produced on these personal computers.

For no matter how rich Mr. Gates is, or how much market share his products have, no one will ever think of Windows as empowering or liberating to anyone.

I think history instead will recall Microsoft products as the most anti-productive, frustrating, vulnerable, and time consuming obstacle ever known to the advancement of the American economy. Other countries are already waking up to this fact, and are abandoning the MS OS and Office Suites for more productive and secure software.

Enjoy your knighthood, Mr. Gates. Just remember, we know there are black knights too.

USB Optical 800 dpi Mini Mouse, Model GME222
Company: IOGEAR, Inc.
Price: $29.95 US
http://www.iogear.com

Full functionality in OS X, basic operation in OS 9

IOGEAR’s David Greene gave me their adorable, tiny USB Optical Mini Mouse (“OMM”) after our PR meeting at this month’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco. I used it with our loaner Tekserve iBook as my personal mouse until I returned home to Arizona, when Barbara expressed interest in OMM.

It certainly is small and light, weighing almost nothing and having roughly one-third the footprint of a standard Apple Pro optical mouse. Two-button left/right clicking plus wheel scrolling work in OS X without any additional software, and single-click + no scroll works in OS 9. A sliding switch on the side provides users with 400, 600, or 800 dpi resolution options of precise accuracy for mobile professionals (or ordinary folks).

This link has comprehensive info, pictures, and specs for OMM from IOGEAR.

I didn’t fall in love with OMM when under pressure to use it in the Moscone Center Media Room. My fingers had trouble figuring out where to hold and press, and my mouse tracking was consistently inaccurate. Turns out I’m not an ideal user of OMM, because even though my hand is smallish, I’m either too clumsy or too set in my ways to adapt quickly to it.

Barbara, on the other hand (ouch!) adores OMM, and uses it exclusively. Here are her quotes (with my stage whispers), given over several days:

“Hey, John, this mouse is pretty good.” (Barbara is not known for hyperbole, so the compliment is substantial.)

“I love this little thing. It’s like an extension of my hand.” (Very different than my awkward experience.)

“Were you thinking of me when you got it?” (Of course, dear spouse.)

“John, the new Mini Mouse has a very natural feeling, and I absolutely love it.” (Now she’s breaking into unprecedented praise.)

“It’s so cute.” (It certainly is.)

“How you going to rate the new mouse, John? I’d definitely give it at least a four, or maybe a five, if five is the top, because I can’t think of anything wrong with it.” (I did; see below.)

Stylish and well-constructed, IOGEAR’s Optical USB Mini Mouse comes with a long, thin cable. It’s too thin and delicate for serious long-term road warrior usage, which registers a demerit. OMM is packaged with a very small vinyl case, which is too diminutive for sensible, speedy storage. My suggestion to improve OMM is to make the cable more rugged, even if it has to be a bit shorter, and to make the case more ample and flexible for repeated insertion and removal.

OMM travels and senses well on many typical and unconventional surfaces, but didn’t perform to my satisfaction of the smooth tables in the Macworld Media Room. You’ll be more efficient if you bring along a pocket-size mouse pad or equivalent. Trust me on this one.

Will I use OMM? No, for personal non-technical reasons. Will Barbara? Ubetcha, and she’s already concerned I’m borrowing it for an hour to prepare this review, thinking I might not return it. Do I recommend it? Yes, for adults with small hands or precise digital dexterity, and for all children who are not too rough on their peripherals.

David Greene gave me a thorough tour of IOGEAR’s products, then made a promise to deliver many of them to MyMac.com labs for our testing and evaluation. IOGEAR offers an extensive range of peripherals and accessories, many of which will appeal to our broad spectrum of MyMac.com readers. Watch this space for more on this company, and spend a few minutes looking through their web site.

IOGEAR’s David Greene tells MyMac.com:

“Touch pads are a big pain, so the Optical Mini Mouse was developed as the ultimate portable accessory. The tracking problems that John experienced in the Macworld Media Room were due to the smooth, glossy surface of the tables. Optical sensors, from any manufacturer, may not work properly on reflective surfaces because too much reflection of light can confuse the sensor. With any optical mouse, no matter how cool it is, a small mouse pad may be needed sometimes just in case your mobile work area is a glass coffee table, a shiny classroom desk, or the glossy tables in the Macworld Media Room!”

“IOGEAR’s Mini Mice are small and lightweight to take minimal room in your laptop bag while ergonomically contoured for comfort. While not all hands are the same size and shape, and everyone has a personal comfort preference, IOGEAR’s Mini Mice are a great convenience while traveling, working in constricted areas such as airplane tray tables – or my cluttered desk – and for all-day use if you find it comfortable like Barbara did.”

JOHN’S MyMac.com rating: 3 out of 5

BARBARA’S MyMac.com rating: 4 out of 5

Another quarter, and another round of layoffs in Apple’s Education Division. Everybody who is left must be looking around wondering how much time they have left. I got news for them; start looking for another job NOW! It is plainly obvious that Apple is going to pare the division down to the bare minimum and then roll the few survivors into the rest of the sales force. In the words and music of Jim Morrison and the Doors, “This is the end, my only friend, the end”.

Anybody who doubts this needs to look back no farther than the last few Macworld Expo keynotes. When was the last time Steve Jobs said a word about the education market? Years ago, period. Oh, sure Apple will still sell iBooks, eMacs, and iMacs to schools without question. But the truth is, it’s not on his radar screen anymore.

The Idea
The fact is Windows has won the Education market. Only the video-editing subsection remains an Apple territory, holding the high ground. But Apple could have a decent share of it. All it would take is a willingness to let an outside group take up the banner. In many areas of the country this means letting the independent dealers and their sales staff take over. Back to a local, grass roots operation. The education discounts would remain, however, enough of a profit still exists to make these sales worthwhile to dealers. I have talked to a few dealers in the past few years and they all see at the minimum a profitable situation, and at best a gold mine. Local Apple retailers have been repairing Macs for schools for years, both in and out of warranty. They already have a relationship with many of the schools and districts. By unleashing them to sell Apple lets go of a shrinking division, yet at the same time lays the groundwork for stabilizing and increasing education sales.

The locals would be able to provide additional services much quicker than Apple, and at a lower cost. Over the past five years I have met some of the Apple Education Technical support staff. Good people who when they came out for technical seminars always found time to visit Mac schools that were having networking problems of one type or another. They always spent an extra few days and knew that the need was there for constant technical assistance throughout Oregon. This is just the sort of thing schools are crying for, yet cannot receive in a timely and local fashion. No matter how much easier Macs are to use, once they are hooked into a larger network bugs and issues occur. Having local support that won’t disappear is a tremendous issue when purchasing computers. Administrators need that support in these sad days of poor education budgets in order to justify purchases.

The Reality
What is likely to happen is that Apple will use its stores as a base of operation for a new style of education sales. Apple stores will be asked to develop relationships with local schools. Teachers and IT people will be groomed to come in to the store look at options and place their order at that time. The building of this relationship has already begun. Apple stores are making connection with teachers whose students create educational iMovies. The teachers are encouraged to signup for an Apple Store night for the school. Students come in and have their movie playing to show customers how easy Apple technology is and how having Macs in schools can add to the learning process (I am in the middle of this process with my students). It is also a chance for the parents to see Macs first-hand and with the eMac and iBook, the price/value comparison to Dell, etc. The end result for Apple is a higher profile, multiple use of retail store, and a visual connection to education.

The problem with this model is that Apple expects education buyers to come to them. That doesn’t work when your behind and losing more ground by the week. Steve needs to let go beyond his visual radar screen and let the faithful Apple dealers take a shot at improving Apple’s education market share. After all, it truly cannot get any worse, and it won’t cost Apple a penny. In fact, it will do much to improve the climate between Cupertino and the independent dealers, and in the end, the bottom line.

Starting February 1st, and ending February 21st, you are invited to participate in our first ever Garage Band Loops contest, in which the winner will receive an OWC Neptune 120GB External FireWire drive!

To participate, simply create the best song, using only the GarageBand application from Apple Computer, Inc., part of the brand-new iLife ’04 suite.

Participants are asked to create a song no longer than 3:00 minutes, and then email your song to garageband-contest@mymac.com. The winner will be chosen before February 28th, 2004, and will receive courtesy of Other World Computing an OWC Neptune 120GB external Firewire 400 hard drive.

The winner will be chosen by the staff of MyMac.com, and the top three songs, including the winner, will be showcased in QuickTime format at MyMac.com.

All music must be created using only the standard music loops in the Garage Band Application. No third-part sound loops are allowed.

No MIDI music is allowed; you must only use the pre-recorded music loops that come standard in the shipping version of the GarageBand application.

No song may exceed 3:00 minutes.

All submissions must be emailed as a GarageBand file format. No MP3, QuickTime, AIFF, or other music formats are allowed. Just the file created by GarageBand.

All playback of Garage Band program files will be done using a stock copy of the Garage Band application with no modifications.

For more information of prize, please visit here for technical details.

Anyone submitting an entry agrees to allow MyMac.com to post and display their entry on our website for promotional purposes only. All music submitted is considered the property of the participant, who retains all rights to their creation. MyMac.com is only allowed to display and broadcast the top three finishers, including the winner, for a period of ten years.

Anyone submitting an original Garage Band Loops song automatically agrees with the rule provided here.

You may enter as many times as you like.

Please include your name, address, and email address in every entry.

Contest ends 2/21/04

Don’t wait! Enter your Garage Band Loops masterworks starting February 1! Send your entries to garageband-contest@mymac.com! Questions, comments, or suggestions should also be emailed to the above email address. Note: Other World Computing is only sponsoring this contest, and providing the prize to the winner, but takes no responsibility for the contest itself, which is being run exclusively by MyMac.com

Well, first of all…

When I write, I am not processing words. I’m writing. I write sentences, paragraphs, chapters, etc., and pretty much take words for granted. How about you? Do you want to process words? Or do you want to write?

The name "word processing" is a wretched hangover from the days of dedicated, special-purpose machines called "word processors," which were used by specially trained typists, also called "word processors." Actually they were more often called "the girls." The model was that the people who had something to say (generally guys) wrote it down on pads of yellow paper, or perhaps dictated it to "girls" who wrote it in shorthand. Then the sheets of paper went to "the girls" in Word Processing, who keyed it into their machines, added formatting, and turned it into a draft that was printed out.

From there it went to an editor, who was "an English major type who could dot the i’s and cross the t’s." I had that job, right out of college. The editor would mark up the draft, turning it into actual English (and often resolving gross logical fallacies and misstatements of fact) and send it back to Word Processing. Then the "girls" would add the heavy-duty formatting information to turn the text into printed pages, and they’d be printed on a high-quality printer. Depending on which year, this might use typewriter technology, or golf-ball, or daisy-wheel, and right at the end of the era it might have been a laser printer.

Then came WYSIWYG. In another column I’ll talk about why Ted Nelson called it "an abomination, and the creed of slaves." But it was the addition of WYSIWYG to the word processor that allowed the basic idea of "word processing" to be ported from dedicated hardware to software applications running on personal computers.

And here’s why I hate it:

The idea of word processing was always that the input was already written, originally on paper, and that the product was printed pages. It’s the perfect formula for creating applications that completely hobble the writer by giving her no help with writing, while constantly directing her attention to how the text will look on the printed page.

I know, the applications have been trying to break away from this. There are all sorts of different views, but it’s lame. Really, there’s the full WYSIWYG view, and then there’s a view that’s the same but without page breaks, and so forth. There’s even an outline view in most of these products, but it’s an afterthought, usually doesn’t work well, and in most cases it’s just an "outline" way of viewing the formatting information that will appear on the page.

These days, my preference is to write with TextEdit in OS X. What I write isn’t usually paginated, and TextEdit gives me everything I really want for stripped-down, non-paginated WYSIWYG document creation. It gives me fonts and sizes and styles, and lets me paste in practically anything, adjust spacing, and justify left, right, centered, and so forth. No style sheets or any of that stuff, but I’m not writing a PhD dissertation or a snazzy newsletter or anything else that’s going to be printed. I mean, that is soooo twentieth-century!

And I’m not designing web pages either. And yeah, I’ve tried using word processors to design web pages. Bleaagh! Something else they are no good for.

Enough ranting. What would I like?

I want an application that helps me write. That means one that helps me organize my thoughts in an outline format, and expand that into written prose, without any gymnastics and without being tied to specific kinds of formatting. The outline has to be the fundamental structure of the text, not a way of viewing it.

I want it seamlessly integrated with the web, so I can go look things up and bring them into my text either as copied text or as links. Maybe I want it seamlessly integrated with my email client, too. (Some word processors have these features — I’m just mentioning them here so that they don’t get left out when someone reads this rant and decides to whip something up for me.)

I want it to have lots of tools built into it. Not just spell-checking and grammar-checking, but automatic summarization and indexing that allows intelligent searching. I want it to have powerful, efficient ways for me to browse what I’ve written (and what others have written).

I want it all and I want it now, but the word processing applications are not going to give it to me, because they are focused on something else — something I don’t need.

How can I get it?

I began my computing career (oooooh so long ago) by working for Doug Engelbart, who pretty much invented personal computing about a decade before there were personal computers. His Augment system has many of the elements of what I want, and more. It’s alive today, but doesn’t run on a Macintosh and is unlikely to become a commercial product in its present form.

There’s hope, though. Augment’s big problem is that it doesn’t fit into the "learn it in half an hour" paradigm. It takes more like a week — and although it is easily worth a week of a knowledge-worker’s time, that just isn’t how things happen. But work is being done on software that might provide a "step-ladder" for getting going on Augment. Naturally, there’s no funding so far. But that’s another rant, and another column.

Timbuk2 Commute XL Bag
Company: Timbuk2 Designs
Price: $130.00 (US)
http://www.timbuk2.com

As I mentioned in an earlier column, I am the proud new owner of a new 1.3 GHz 17” PowerBook. While that in and of itself is not big news except maybe for me, and the fact that this is probably my 30th (or more) new Macintosh computer, and while I have owned way too many Mac portables (Original Portable, PB 100, PB 140, PB 170, PB 180c, PB Duo 230, PB 540c, PB 270c, 5300, and a Pismo) before this, what is news is that so far, they have all fit into the same few carrying cases I have always owned. OK, I tried to put this 17” beast into my favorite case (which I obtained at Apple) and while it “fits”, it is not well protected and bulges out a bit at the sides. As you already know, this 17” beast is big (read: wide) and not exactly light weight, and with such a big screen, needs all the protection it can get, so it was time to find a new case. My biggest concern was that with a screen this big, the slightest twist or impact to the VERY THIN case that surrounds the display and I end up with a G4 PowerBook boat anchor!

So I spent a good deal of my time at Macworld Expo 2004 talking to case manufacturers, where I hoped to find the best solution to lugging this beast about! The first of my trials into a new case came from Timbuk2. Timbuk2 has been in San Francisco since 1989 making bags for bike messengers, so they have a good deal of experience in durable, tough bags. Most of their bags are made in the US, which I liked, although a few are now made in China, and they seem very apologetic about that on their web site. The bag I tried, while designed in S.F. was indeed made in China, and they explain that because of its complexity, it would be economically feasible to make it in the US.

For my G4 PowerBook, I tried their Commute XL (retails for $130), a messenger-style computer “briefcase” (their word, not mine) as their best solution to carry this machine. Similar bags are also available in sizes better suited for the 15” and 12” PowerBooks and iBooks as well, but my trail pushed me to the XL size, an 18” wide, 11” high, and 6 “ deep case! And what was my initial reaction? “Damn, this is one big case, but I really like the way it looks.” The bag outside is a heavyweight textured black nylon with a yellow logo and name, while the inside is black and yellow smooth nylon and vinyl for the most part. Overall, I find this a very stylish bag in the bike messenger bag style.

The Good: This bag, like most all of Timbuk2’s bags are made from very strong, light weight ballistic nylon combined with waterproof vinyl along the inside. All stitching is extra strong, and the well padded handled is reinforced to prevent it from tearing off, which has happened to me on other bags I have used, and can be extremely hazardous to your computer when it does!

To hold the 17” PowerBook in place, a well-padded pocket, custom sized for a perfect fit is attached along the backside of the bag, and there is a Velcro strap along the top of the pocket to securely hold the computer in place. To further protect the computer, the bottom is made of a rugged rubberized, fairly thick padded material that protects the machine when you set the case down on the ground. To protect the computer and the carrier of the bag, the back of the bag is well padded in a soft cloth-like material, which made the bag very comfortable to carry as well.

A long, removable shoulder strap sports Timbuk2’s unique quick adjusting strap design, which I found quite handy when the bag started to become heavy. Simply flip up the adjustment clip and slide the bag to its new height, and lock it back. I have not seen this feature on any other bag, and the ability to reposition the height of the bag quickly helped make carrying it for a long period of time much more comfortable. This strap attaches to the bag via metal D-rings with strong self-locking j-clips, and again, reinforced stitching to keep the rings attached to the bag, an important feature here too!

The top flap as well as much of the inside is lined with waterproof vinyl, designed to keep the inside quite dry, even in the rain. I was able to test this theory as it was raining fairly hard when I walked the 5 blocks from Macworld Expo to BART on Tuesday! While I was quite wet, most of the outside of the bag repelled water just fine, but the back padded material did not do quite so well and did become damp. However, the entire inside was completely dry, and that’s what really counts! Made me wish my jacket were made like this bag! To help protect contents of the bag, the top/front flap closes completely over the entire front of the bag and locks into place with two snap clips on the end of adjustable straps. Additionally, Velcro holds the front flap of the bag closed, so even if you forget to lock the straps, the bag stays closed, a nice touch.

The interior is quite roomy with a good number of organizer pockets, one of which “swings out” of the bag for easy access. (Just do not forget to zipper closed its pockets before doing that, or their contents end up in your lap.) Spaces for pens, highlighters, cards, and one small and large zipper pocket make storing small and large items alike fairly easy. A very cool long strap for attaching keys is also included in this organizer flap, and is long enough to allow you to use the keys without detaching them (but see the bad below.) Several open and zipper pockets are also available along the front, inside of the bag that easily hold a cell phone, glasses, business cards, CDs, and other small, flatter items. (Again see the bad below.)

Two “water bottle” pockets line each outer edge and, in my case held easily an accessible mid-size water bottle and small umbrella. (No, I did not use the umbrella on Tuesday just to test the bag in the rain!) Lastly, a large, full length and height zipper pocket sits along the backside of the bag, which can hold large papers, notebooks, or other fairly flat, large objects. It too has several open pockets inside as well for holding a few smaller items.

I loved the additional small accessory bags Timbuk2 sells that are designed to attach to the shoulder strap. You can add an iPod bag, a cell phone bag, a radio holster, a strap pouch, or something they call a “dirty bag” for things like power cords and such. I must admit though, with three or more of these on the shoulder strap, you might begin to look like an old time outlaw with an ammunition belt!

The Bad: I realize that no bag is going to be perfect, but there are a few oversights, lets call them nitpicks in this design that I hope to see addressed in future Timbuk2 designs. First, the interior PowerBook pocket is not removable, or even adjustable should you want to carry a smaller computer later. In previous bags I have owned, what computer I carried often varied over time, and putting a smaller computer in this pocket will not work well as it will slide about. Other bags have offered a Velcro adjustable size barrier, and unfortunately, this has none. Also, there are times when I would like to carry just the PowerBook, and leave the big bag at my desk. It would be great if this protective pocket could be removed to allow one to carry just the PowerBook itself, via a small handle. I would also like to be able to remove this computer pocket all together to use the bag when not carrying a computer, allowing a bit more internal room for other things.

While there is the cool key chain attachment, this is located fully inside the case, making access to your keys quite difficult while carrying the bag over your shoulder, as you need to open the front flap, then open the internal, backwards facing internal zipper pocket, and then pull out your keys. Access to pockets on the outside is also very limited. While there is the large, back pocket (which is where the keychain attachment should be moved to) which can be accessed without opening the flap on the bag, there is no easily accessible outside smaller zipper pockets for things like a wallet, Palm, phone or reading glasses for example, requiring one to completely open the bag to access anything on the small side. Actually, this is not entirely true; although the front flap covers the inside front pockets, you can reach past the side of the flap to get at these pockets. And that is both the good news and the bad. Unfortunately, you can only reach, at an awkward angle, the two, front, large, open pockets, and they are not entirely useful for larger items as they are cut at a strange angle, making their holding power a bit weak. I tried to put a number of things in here and get at them in this manner and it was simply not convenient. In addition, smaller things tend to slide out of these pockets and drop out of the bag if the bag gets laid down on any side, and that is another problem. With the bag full of things, it tends to fall right over on the front side. The bottom is just not strong or wide enough to hold it upright all the time. While the front pockets are large and soft enough to hold, for example, CDs or DVDs out of the case, when I laid the bag down on a table and picked it up again, the DVDs simply slid right out of the pockets, and then fell out of the case as I carried it. As for a place to put them inside…well, none of the pockets really worked well for that either, and I ended up putting them into a baggie and then into the large open area in the middle. It worked, but a pocket designed to hold CDs or DVDs would be great as would some smaller, outside zippered pockets.

And as I mentioned, there are pouches inside the large zippered pocket on the back, but anything too bulky in there (like my eyeglasses case) makes carrying the bag a bit uncomfortable, and they can be felt against your side. I think adding one or two zippered pockets to the front flap would easily solve this problem.

Another issue I had is with the shoulder strap itself. This is a strong, well-made strap but quite narrow given the size of this bag. At only 2 inches wide, it was not very comfortable at all for the first day I carried the bag. Given that this bag could hold so much more, this strap should be much wider, especially at the shoulder. So I went back to the Timbuk2 booth at MacWorld on day two to ask about shoulder strap options and discovered that for an extra $10, one can buy a padded shoulder strap accessory, one of the many extras for this and other bags. The shoulder strap accessory is a 2.5” wide, and 12” long, well padded piece that wraps around the strap at any point you like, and attaches with Velcro. This is a great accessory. The black one is made of something called “Toughtek® No-Slip fabric” (and no slip it was) while the other 15 colors (yes, I said 15 and include colors such as coffee, pink, plum, steel, and royal to name just a few) are made of something called “Cordura®”, what ever these names mean! To me, they look like the same material of which the bag is made. While this did make the bag easier to carry, I was surprised that it was not simply included with this bag, especially given the weight a bag this size will handle.

My last issue is with weight. The bag itself is not bad, weighing in at about 3 pounds with the strap and strap accessory, but it is big and can (read: will) hold quite a bit. Add the 17” PowerBook (about 7 lbs), its power supply and cord, a small note book, a small bottle of water, the lightweight umbrella, and a few CDs, odds and ends and you are tipping the scales well past 15 lbs. Ok, while not the bag’s fault itself, as I am not sure they could take any additional weight out of the bag if they tried, but the size of this thing will encourage you to carry a lot of stuff, and it will get heavy. My shoulder is still hurting from carrying this thing around for a week, so be aware that carrying such a big bag has its downside over time.

The not so ugly: Actually, this is an amazingly good-looking bag, quite functional, and despite the few issues I mentioned above, does a great job of holding all I would really ever need to carry in such a bag. You can read more about this and other Timbuk2 products at http://www.timbuk2.com.

MyMac rating: 4 out of 5

Bob McCormick’s old article on Hot Rods of the New Millennium (from June 1999) really took me back. In my last year of high school and the first few years of college, I was a licensed NASCAR and NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) driver, and my buddies and I built sever muscle cars, a few just for racing.

I will never forget the 1969 340 Dodge Charger we built. We bought the Charger body from the junkyard, in perfect shape except for a bent frame. We tossed EVERYTHING but the body and bought a new frame, and then designed our own blue printed and balanced 340 “six-pac” high performance engine. A total of 428 BHP to the wheels, this little baby ran only on gasoline we could buy in 50-gallon drums from Sunoco (a station we did not have on the west coast) because it had high enough octane to run this baby. It was designed to run the standing quarter mile, and it did so in amazing speed, sound and beauty at a best time of 10.1 seconds, topping out near 160 miles per hour! That’s 0 to 160 in 10.1 seconds! That is FAST! Running in a class called “modified A-production”, we were VERY limited on what changes we would make to the car to lighten it, so it was all about true horse power in as light a car as we could find.

But the other car that stands out in my mind and is probably responsible for my racecar driving interest, was the first car I ever bought at age 16. My parents and I were shopping the used car lots and there it was, a sleeper that the salesman had no clue to what he had. From the outside, it was an ugly, bright, turquoise blue 4-door Galaxy 500 sedan. It was fairly ugly in color on the inside too, with bench seats, also in blue, a column shifter automatic, and lots of vinyl for the time, but it was outfitted with all the accessories of the time as well. It was a Galaxy 500 XL LTD, which was an unusual combination for this 1965 Ford. The XL mean extra luxury, which actually was the sporty model of the Galaxy, while the LTD meant extra things like AC, wood trim, electric clock, automatic door locks, AM/FM stereo (no, no tape player at that time), and 4 doors. (Typical XL’s were 2 doors.) My grandmother owned a gold, 1965 Galaxy 500, and my parents were Ford freaks, so they REALLY wanted me to have a Ford, but they too had no idea what I found.

But the most amazing thing about this car was the small, blue emblem on the side, which was an indicator of the engine size. Normally the Galaxy 500 had a red emblem for the 390, or a black emblem for the classic 352 engine, which was what my grandmother’s car had. But I noticed when I approached this car, that the oil pan was rather large, and hung exceptionally low for a Galaxy. I also noted that the automatic transmission was a bit larger than usual as well, both of which caught my attention. If you open the owner’s manual to the back pages, the book states the standard engines available for order in 1965. The 352 were standard, the same big block used in most tow trucks, and standard with, believe it or not, the towing package! The 390 were Ford’s larger, more powerful engine, but was also considerably heavier, and its extra horsepower was lost in its weight. But there, under “special order” was the 429 Cobra engine available this year in this car! And this baby had one, in its full glory, with a special order “C6” high performance automatic transmission right behind it. There were very few of these ever built (I learned later) and the Ford used car salesman was clueless. I bought this car for $1600 in 1970, only a few days after my16th birthday, and I think the salesman was happy to dump this 5-year-old Galaxy off his lot!

To put it in perspective, we custom built our 69 Duster and it did 10.1 in the 1/4-mile best time. This car, in its stock, off the shelf form, could do the 1/4-mile in 11.2 seconds topping out about 140 MPH in about 11.5 seconds. WOOSH! Amazingly fast for such a big boat, but then again, look at that engine. I later discovered, doing a bit of research, that the car had been bought by a mother and her son together after their father died. The son wanted a fast car; the mother wanted a car to take to the store, so they compromised and bought both. From the outside, it looked like the typical sedan your mother would drive, and if you kept your foot light, drove just fine. But when you punched it, this baby could leave a skid mark for 100 feet and disappear with a roar heard for blocks!

It was a bad thing as a first car. I later pulled the engine (and replaced it with a 352 and sold the car for $1200) and then sold the engine with the transmission for considerably more than the car’s originally cost, but what I would not give to have that engine in my garage today. It also started me down the road to speed cars, owning several Datsun Z cars (240Z, 280Z, 280ZX, a Pantara, a finally a 1984 Corvette. Today I drive a Lexus SC300, still no slouch, but not a muscle car either.

While I agree with Bob’s comment about today’s hot-rods being computers, they are also still cars too, and they do indeed scratch the tires in third, many with automatic transmissions as well, of you know how to make them do that. Rather than simply look at a car’s pure horsepower or cubic displacement of the engine, which are as meaningless as comparing MHz in processors, what you really need to look at is the power to weight ratio of the car. The old Ford 390 as Bob points out could easily put out 400 BHP, but the damn thing was in cars so heavy, that for the most part, the horsepower was lost pulling a large, heavy car. Many of today’s cars with newer, lighter weight engine and body materials easily beat the power to weight ratio of the muscles cars of the 60’s and 70’s. Many of today’s cars, including, believe it or not, Lexus, Infinity, Nissan, BMW, Chrysler, Ford, and Chevy (any many more) make cars with significantly more power to weight ratio than most of the classic muscle cars. Look at a BMW M5 for great example (what a road rocket that is), or the new Corvettes as well are amazingly fast, powerful cars. But even the new Turbo VW Beetle today has a greater power to weight ratio than that Ford Fairlane Bob mentioned, and could probably beat it in a street race today. Of course, nothing compares to the roar of an old muscle car, and today’s “muscle cars” outperform their older siblings in a quiet, dignified manner, but the power is still there, and the thrill of the speed is just as fun, if only quieter. (Note that the fastest car I have EVER driven now, including the old muscle cars I owned is the new M5 BMW, with an acceleration curve of a small airplane! My buddy owns one, and he also owns a 280 HP Shelby Cobra. The BMW is faster by a great deal. Talk about Whoosh!) And if you defeat the electronics on these new cars, which prevent the tires from ever “breaking loose” in acceleration or breaking, the cars will indeed scratch the tires in ALL gears. Find a quiet side street and have some fun, or take your car to a local race track where you can ignore the speed limit and push the car a but faster.

So while you bench race the latest copy of Grand Theft Auto on your 2.5 GHz speed demon computer, remember that the muscle cars are actually back again! They may look like a VW or a Mustang coupe, but the power is they’re waiting if you need a physical thrill.

Lexmark PrinTrio Photo P3150
Company: Lexmark
Price: $99.99

Reviewing printers have become second nature to me these last five years or so. There are some things I always look for, such as ease of use in set-up, how well the printer works with my Mac, and all the new features the manufacturer uses to sell their product.

In the PrinTrio Photo, Lexmark has really taken their standard all-in-one printer and added a photo card reader. Is this a compelling enough reason for you to buy the unit? When I was first sent the PrinTrio, I was under the impression that you could print photos directly from the memory card readers, but this is not the case. Rather, all the memory card reader does is act as a memory card reader for your computer. If you inset your digital camera memory card containing pictures, all that will happen is either iPhoto will launch, or the card will show up on your desktop.

The PrinTrio Photo is a multi-function printer, copier, scanner, fax, and media card reader. That is a lot to bundle in one unit, but Lexmark pulls it off nicely. While the design of the PrinTrio Photo is just about the same as the X5150, it is a little sleeker, but the overall design is the same. Nothing wrong with that, though I was hoping that Lexmark would have overhauled the overall staleness of this design by now, which they have been using for at least three years for all their all-on-one models.

Scanning has not changes a bit from the X5150, using the same flatbed technology, as well as the same software. While the Lexmark software is intuitive and easy to use, like the design of the unit itself, it is starting to feel dated. You can either scan by pushing a button on the PrinTrio Photo itself, or control all the scanning via the Lexmark software.

You can copy without any interaction from the computer, however, via the one-touch button on the top of the unit.

Faxing, however, requires a computer. In fact, the PrinTrio Photo cannot fax anything on its own, and faxes using software. The PrinTrio Photo will actually scan and fax, meaning you would do just as well to scan in a document and fax it manually using your fax program of choice.

Printing is rather at 19 PPM, but I found this claim to be grossly exaggerated. The PrinTrio Photo in both color and black to be one of the slowest printers I have used in a few years. Next to recent HP models I have reviewed and used, as well as a few printers I have access to, the PrinTrio Photo was way too slow to rely on in a SOHO environments.

Print quality, however, was very good. Using a six-color proto print system, printing to high-gloss photo printer paper, results were fantastic. I should note, however, that the print times for a full-page 8.5×11 print, borderless, took forever long to print, and drying times were twice that of the HP recently reviewed.

The on-board camera card reader support six different card types, including CompactFlash I and II, SD (Secure Media), Memory Stick, and MMC (MultiMediaCard). As stated above, the card reader (there are four slots located on the front of the PrinTrio Photo) only acts as a reader, with no interaction with any print capability. Card access is via the USB connection to your computer, at USB 1.1 speeds.

Technical specs:
Thermal Inkjet technology

Print Resolutions:
Up to 4800 x1200 DPI on photo paper
Up to 2400 x 1200 dpi on plain paper

Input capacity: 100 sheets
Output capacity: 25 sheets.

Paper sizes:
Letter, legal, A4, A5, A6, B5, executive, index, Banner, postcard & multiple envelope sizes (8.5” x 17” maximum area)

Copy speeds:
Black – up to 13.5 copies per minute (cpm) using black and color cartridges; Color – up to 7 cpm using black and color cartridges
Zoom range: 25 – 400% (reduce and enlarge)
Copy quantity: 1– 99 copies at a time
Multiple images: choice of the number of images per page in PC-attached mode
One-touch PC enabled photo reprinting: Create photo reprints at the touch of one button via the host PC

Optical scan resolution: up to 600 x 1200 ppi; up to 9,600 ppi enhanced
Scan depth: Black – 16 bit; Color – 48 bit
CIS flatbed technology
Effective scan area – 8.5” x 11.7”

Supported System; Mac OS 10.1.5 and up, Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP.

Do you need a printer with a built-in media reader? Using a media reader to transfer photos from a media card will save wear and tear on your camera, and prevent your batteries from going dead as quickly. This is a good thing. And if you have multiple media cards you need to read, this would be a good investment only if you are looking to spend as little money as possible to get a decent printer / copier / scanner. If you already have a scanner and printer, but want a media reader, you should look at a SanDisk unit. If you need a printer that can print directly from your digital camera, or at least the media card, take a look at the more costly, but much more feature rich, HP PhotoSmart PSC 2510 All-in-One. (SRP: $399.99)

At a price of $99.99, this is a decent printer. While nothing has jumped out at me with the PrinTrio Photo, I would recommend this unit only to those on a budget with multiple media card requirements. Otherwise, I would recommend spending the $199 for the HP OfficeJet 2510, which does everything the PrinTrio Photo does and more, but does not have a built-in media card reader. Yes, the HP cost twice as much, but it is twice the printer.

MyMac rating: 3 out of 5

Welcome To Geezer City!
(Where Geezers Are State of the Art.)

There comes a time in every columnist’s life when you realize that you are indeed getting older, a time when you feel you must “vent” just like your father or grandfather did before you. If you are a “baby boomer”, like myself and my compatriots, then maybe you remember your grandfather harping about how “bread used to be five cents a loaf", and how ‘we didn’t have any of that fancy …….” you fill in the rest. No doubt, you also had a father, or perhaps an uncle, who “walked sixteen miles to school in raging snowstorms”. Of course, you knew right away that dad, or uncle was full of horse manure, but you had to play along. Besides that, grandma told you the truth later, when dad or uncle were well out of audible range.

Well, I think my time has indeed come. The other day, someone circulated something by email, about how this year’s incoming freshmen were mostly born in 1985, and that none of them has ever had to deal with such things as school dress codes, or a parent saying something like “be quick, it’s long distance!” or the often used “do you think I’m made of money?” when you wanted some cool toy or something. (Today’s parents, as near as I can figure, don’t use that line. Instead, they max out their credit cards, and when they are maxed out, they simply apply for more. And they get them, no problem at all.) The email tidbit went on to mention how these freshmen had never been without cellular telephones, computers, or MTV. They cannot imagine a television program not being broadcast in color, or any household not having at least three televisions.

That bit about the phone got me to thinking some. I must ask myself, are you a geezer? I know that I am well on my way to geezer city, but what about you? Well, maybe you are, and maybe you are not. There’s only one-way to find out, isn’t there? With that in mind, I offer up Bruce Black’s totally uncertified Geezer Test! Below, you’ll find twelve hypothetical situations or questions from everyday life. One answer for each question indicates that you are a geezer, or at the very least, you are on the road to geezer city. The other two answers are answers, which would be chosen by “non-geezers”. Take the test, and good luck.

Question 1. What ominous words of warning were at one time, printed in bold typeface, on the bottom of every telephone, in everyone’s house, everywhere, without exception?

A. “A genuine Microsoft Product.”
B. “Radio Shack. Made in China”.
C. “Bell System Property. Not For Sale.”

Question 2. Who Sang “The Rain, The Park, and Other Things?”

A. Britney Spears.
B. 50 Cent.
C. The Cowsills.

Question 3. “For Good Nutrition, you should eat….” (From a black and white health film which was actually shown in grade schools across the country, circa 1963.)

A. Only low-fat, high Fiber foods from the base of the Food Pyramid.
B. Only organic vegetables from collective farms and food “Co-ops”.
C. “Three helpings of red meat every day”.

Question 4. You are on a family vacation in the family station wagon. Dad needs a road map. Where can he get one?

A. From a specialized “Map Boutique” at the nearest shopping mall, where his map will be “personalized” with a carrying case with his name on it, priced at $21.95 and up.
B. From amazon.com.
C. From a gas station, where maps are given away for free to customers, and anyone else who needs one. The smartly uniformed attendant is very courteous, and glad to help.

Question 5. You are in the grocery store with mom, and you start to misbehave. Mom’s response is to:

A. Kneel down, and tell you in a quiet voice that “when we go home, we’ll sit down and discuss you feelings, is that alright?”
B. Say “Now you know we don’t do those things. Remember what we discussed about your aggression. You need a time out”.
C. Grab you by the arm; right at the shoulder, and say in a loud, firm voice, “You are in trouble, mister”. Mom then proceeds to drag you out of the store, and lock you in the car. Mom does not get trouble with the police for doing this, and other shoppers admire mom for disciplining you. Your arm and shoulder hurt like hell.

Question 6. The words “Fallout Shelter” on a yellow and black sign on a building mean what?

A. That the building is a music store, and “Fallout Shelter” is the latest grunge band from Seattle.
B."Fallout"" Shelter" is the latest group of protesters, sort of like the “Anarchy” group. They toss trashcans through the windows of Starbucks, they burn flags, and they fight with cops, to make a political statement.
C. The building contains a fallout shelter, designed to protect large numbers of people from radioactive fallout particles. They are to be used in the event of a nuclear strike by an enemy power.

Question 7. You have heard a cool sounding piece of music on the radio. You quickly write down the title, and decide you need to have it. The correct course of action would be to:

A. Log in to, or one of the totally illegal share sites, and download it to your PC. Hey, they’ll never catch you, and that makes it OK, right?
B. Buy it at the iTunes Music store for the very reasonable price of 99 cents. You are a Mac user, and you know that Steve Jobs is absolutely right when he says, “Don’t steal music.”
C. Head to the local record shop on Main street, where they owner knows most of his customers by first name, and buy the “45”. While there, you want to pick up some more “spiders” for your other 45s.

Question 8. The most popular house in the neighborhood, the house where all the kids want to hang out at is:

A. The one where Mom is divorced, and she encourages everyone to just walk around naked.
B. The one where the parents are never home on weekends, and dad doesn’t keep careful tabs on the booze.
C. The one where they have a (Gasp!) Color TV, and they let the kids watch “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In”.

Question 9. “Duck and Cover” means to do what?

A. Slip out the back of the illegal rave club when the cops show up.
B. Slip out the nearest exit when you see the police and school principal searching your locker for drugs, guns, knives, and pornography. You don’t what their problem is, because all the kids have these things.
C. To squat down and shield your face from flying debris and the “nuclear flash”, if and when we are attacked by an enemy power.

Question 10. You are a ten-year-old boy. Mom has just caught you with a copy of Playboy Magazine. You are about to.

A. Receive a long, stern lecture on women’s rights, and how you, as a male, cannot objectify women based on their gender.
B. Be sent to a mandatory class in “sensitivity training” for ten-year-old boys.
C. Get whacked repeatedly on the behind, screamed at, yelled at, and made to stand in a corner until your father gets home, at which time “you’ll really get it then mister!” (Dad’s reaction is not nearly as violent as mom’s though.)

Question 11. You need to buy some batteries. Batteries may be purchased:

A. Only in “blister packs” containing an odd-numbered quantity.
B. Only from the Home Depot, since all the other hardware shops in town are now closed for good.
C. At almost any store, from plastic chutes right near the register. You may buy any quantity you need. When you take a battery, the rest slide down the chute.

Question 12. You could be sent home from school for wearing what?

(Male answers.)
A. A baseball hat, worn backwards.
B. Gang clothes, or a t-shirt with the “F Word”, in huge letters, on it.
C. “Dungarees”. (Except for a “field trip”)

(Female Answers)
A. "Dungarees". (Except for a “field trip”)
B. Slacks. (Except for a medical excuse.)
C. A skirt more than two inches above the knee.

Okay, so how’d you do? If you answered with more than six of the “C” answers, you are well on the road to geezer city. We’ll be expecting you. When you arrive, (any second now) pull up a chair. Have a nice bowl of fiber. Your reading glasses are ready. If you picked mostly “A” or “B” answers, congrats, you have a way to go yet. The only exception is question 12, where each answer is correct. That’s right kids, there was a time when wearing blue jeans to school was a big no-no. Not to worry, your time is coming. Assuming they’re still publishing “Trivial Pursuit” in twenty years, you can look forward to reading the names of Britney Spears and 50 cent on the backs of the cards.

Aside from all that, there’s no real way to score this test. Doesn’t matter though, we’re old geezers, so we don’t have to care.

Bruce Black.

HP Photosmart 935
Company: Hewlett-Packard
Price: $349.99

Back at the start of November 2003, I wrote a review of another HP digital camera, the HP Photosmart 435, a 3MP model. That review was hard to write, as I have had good experiences with HP products for a number of years, and the 435 was simply the worse HP product I had ever used. To give a fair review, I had to score that camera very low, and a part of me just could not reconcile the fact that HP had made a bad product.

With the HP Photosmart 935, I feel that HP has vindicated the trust I have always felt for their products. While not perfect, and in fact flawed in a very few places, the HP Photosmart 935 is a great camera, one I would happy replace my aging Kodak with.

The HP Photosmart 935 is a 36-bit 5.3 –megapixel digital camera sporting 3x optical zoom lens, using a 7.6MM – 22.8MM Pentax Zoom lens. It also has 7x Digital zoom, which for any serious picture taker or photographer knows to avoid like the plague. (Digital zoom is worthless if you want quality pictures.)

The 1.5 inch backlit LED (521×218 pixel) digital viewfinder is remarkable in its clarity, but suffers from the same ailment most viewfinders on digital cameras does, which is blurry and hard to view from any angle except right behind the unit. Not a criticism of the 935, but simply pointing out the need for better LCD’s in all digital cameras.

The controls are easy to use, in both settings and operation. Too many cameras try to pack as much controls as they can on the top and back on their digital cameras, and while there are quite a few on the 935, all buttons and controls are easy to use and in appropriate spots, rather than a hodgepodge of tiny buttons clustered together. Kudos to HP for understanding that a degree in engineering should not be needed to simply change shutter speed, or even turn on/off the viewfinder to save battery life.

Speaking of battery life, I found that the HP Photosmart 935 goes through them like there is no tomorrow. A brand-new set of Duracell batteries (the 935 uses two AA for power) only lasted for fifty pictures before running too low to allow the viewfinder to work. While battery life can be prolonged simply by not using the viewfinder, getting close to 250 pictures before needing a battery change, I found that the 935 still used up batteries faster than any of the previous digital cameras I have used. I do applaud HP for using standard AA batteries rather than the more expensive, and harder to find, CR-V3 variety, power consumption may be an issue. Look for rechargeable batteries for this unit.

Like most consumer digital cameras, you are unable to purchase or use better lens with the HP Photosmart 935. If you are looking for a professional digital camera, look elsewhere. If you are looking for a good quality digital camera for family holiday photos, or to take snap-shots with, and would prefer not to have to run every photo you take through Adobe Photoshop to color correct every photo, you will like the HP Photosmart 935.

Storage on the 935 is the tiny SD (Secure Digital) card. The 935 ships with one 32MB card, which you will want to upgrade to a larger size quickly. At 5.3 MP, you will only get 23 pictures on the included 32MB SD card.

Exposure settings include action, landscape, and portrait. You can also set white balance, aperture priority, metering, and the above-mentioned ISO speeds.

Picture quality was fantastic, taking good pictures in very bright and very dim settings. The built-in flash worked well on a cold December day during our town’s annual Christmas parade. Objects as far away as twenty feet, using the 3X optical zoom, showed surprising clarity. The flash lit-up the area in focus very well.

One complaint, however, would have to be the design. I like it just fine, if not a little too boxy in shape, but this camera is defiantly not marketed for left-hand users. While I am right handed, I did have a lefty try out the camera. His first (and only) complaint was that is simply was not made well for left hand operation. Not comfortable for him.

The Photosmart 935 also can be used as a small video-audio capture device, in 120 seconds MPEG file. You will need to use the included (but clumsy and un-Mac like) HP Director software to extract the MPEG’s. While no substitute for a real digital camcorder, the MPEG quality was surprisingly decent for such a small device. The audio was adequate as well.

For an extra $80 US, you can purchase the HP Photosmart 8886 camera dock, which allows connectivity to a television, as well as the ability to recharge batteries. A wise investment if you plan on purchasing the Photosmart 935. I would have liked to be able to connect the Photosmart 935 directly to a television without any dock, as many other digital cameras allow you to do.

A few novelties I enjoy about the Photosmart 935:
The ability to have the camera sounds on/off, with two volume levels.
The NTSC and PAL compatibility.
Blight and clear menu for settings.

All in all, this is a better than decent digital camera. Battery life is a serious issue. During my review process, I went through quite a few batteries, and it became noticeable how quickly I had to change them when I went through a twelve-pack of Duracell’s in a few days, and had less than 300 pictures to show for it.

The specs:
Resolution
5 MP: 2608 x 1952 pixels; 1 MP: 1296 x 976 pixels

Bit depth
36-bit

Lens system
f2.6-f5 wide, f4.8-f9 tele Pentax lens; glass with 2 glass molded double aspheres; 3x zoom autofocus (7.6 to 22.8 mm) (35 mm equivalent 37 to 111 mm)

Focal range
Normal (default) Auto focus range of 0.5 m (19.7 in) to infinity, Macro Auto focus range of 0.14 to 0.7 m (5.5 to 27.6 in) at wide, 0.4 to 0.7 m (15.7 to 27.6 in) at zoom ranges greater than wide, Infinity Focus is fixed at infinity

Picture mode
Action, Portrait, Landscape

Viewfinder
Point-and-shoot-type separate 3x real image zooming optical range finder with 78% coverage

Imaging technology
AE, EV Comp, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, Picture Modes (auto/manual), White Balance (auto/manual), Metering (spot, CW, average), Saturation control, Contrast control, Sharpness control, Resolution and compression settings

Image control functions
Color (color, black and white, sepia)

Memory, std.
32 MB SD (Secure Digital) card

Shutter speed
15 to 1/2000 sec

Shooting mode
Single shot still, self-timer, self-timer two-shot, movie mode

Connectivity
USB 1.1

Connectivity, optional
HP Photosmart 8886 Digital camera dock, AC adapter

Power supply
2 AA batteries [Photo Lithium (lithium-iron disulfide), Alkaline, or Ni-MH], AC adapter, or optional camera dock

Compatible operating systems
Microsoft® Windows® 98, Me, 2000 Professional, XP Professional, XP Home Edition; Mac OS 9.1 and higher, OS X 10.1.5 and higher

Pros:
Ease of use
Great quality pictures
Somewhat compact size
Great accessories, multiple USB cables
Easy battery and SD memory card access
Great quality LCD
Decent recycle time between pictures
Competitive price

Cons:
Left-hand unfriendly
Power Consumption

MyMac Rating: 4 out of 5