BT500 Bluetooth Mouse
Company: BlueTake Technology
Price: $89.00 (US)
http://www.bluetake.com

BlueTake Technology’s new BT500 Bluetooth Mouse is a zippy little portable 2-button optical mouse with scroll wheel. A perfect companion for those of us who use a laptop and need more precise cursor control than a trackpad allows – with cordless convenience!

The Bluetooth USB Receiver included with the mouse is about the size of a typical USB Flash Drive and is a multi-purpose receiver – it should work with most Bluetooth products including cell phones and Bluetooth enabled PDAs. Since some companies (starts with an M and has a dollar $ign in the middle) include proprietary receivers that only work with their mice, it’s nice to have just one receiver that will work with all your Bluetooth devices (the BT500 is also available (MSRP $59.00 US) without Bluetooth USB receiver).

The mouse itself is tiny; less than 3 inches long and about one and a half inch wide, but masterfully designed. The battery compartment is sturdy and the ergonomics are about as perfect as you can get at this sportingly small size. The weight is 64 grams without the batteries; with the batteries, it has enough heft and stability to take moderate abuse, but feels like a fine precision instrument.

Included in the package is a 7-page manual for the mouse itself, plus a 78-page manual covering software installation, configuring, etc., etc, etc.

Yep, I said "a 78 page manual". But don’t let this intimidate you! For I, dear reader… I eat manuals like this for breakfast. Stand back and leave it to me to digest these 85 pages into a simple 3-step instruction.

Let’s see… Hmmm, this all pertains to the Windows operating system. Nothing here at all about configuring this thing on a Mac. Also included are 2 mini-CDs full of (ugh) Windows software. Okay. This is to be expected. Translating this to the language of Macintosh shouldn’t be too hard – here goes…

Step 1. Firmly place the 78-page manual along with the two Mini-CDs in the trash.

Step 2. Open System Preferences panel and click Bluetooth. Click the "pare device" buttons.

Step 3. There is no step 3.

I left out a few details, like inserting the batteries and hitting the ON switch, but you get the idea – OS X handles Bluetooth like a champ.

Which brings me to another nice feature of this mouse – the ON/OFF switch.

You will find that many Bluetooth mice don’t have an ON/OFF switch, since they automatically go to sleep after a few minutes. But if your mouse is jostled around inside your knapsack or laptop bag, it’s going to be turning on and off constantly wasting precious battery-life. The ON/OFF switch is neatly located beneath the BT500 mouse, where it is out of the way and recessed enough to avoid accidental switching.

Battery life is decent, but not remarkable. With the included AAA batteries, I got about seven days’ use. But I put this baby through some VERY HEAVY usage. No mercy. We’re talking 16-hour days here folks. No coffee breaks! Bathroom only in emergencies! Keep a spare pair of rechargeable batteries with you. When the batteries go low, the mouse just stops working, necessitating a battery change on the fly. Thankfully, the battery compartment snaps open in a flash and if you have a couple of replacements on hand, a battery change takes only a few seconds.

Of course, the first thing I did with this mouse was to test it out in the various versions of Unreal Tournament. It worked perfectly without having to configure anything except the Mouse Sensitivity. Its 800 dpi optical sensor is a lot zippier than any of my other mice. Slowing down Mouse Sensitivity a bit increased my precision markedly. After several hours of DeathMatch with my friend Bill, and winning more than half the maps played (he’s pretty good), I decided that this was going to be my favorite mouse for fragging.

The BT500 also performed very admirably in several highly detailed PhotoShop projects. I was impressed with its accuracy and dependability. The small mouse glides effortlessly across any surface with precise cursor tracking and, despite its diminutive size, produced no finger fatigue with prolonged use.

My contract with MyMac.com clearly states that I can only use my superhuman eyesight for the "betterment of mankind", so I took the mouse clear across the room, and controlled the Macintosh from way back by the birdcage. Yeah, I know! I was impressed too! That’s like 20 feet away! I eat a lot of carrots.

The B500 is an excellent product for everyday use. If it had a recharging dock, I would have very little reason not to give it my highest recommendation. It’s not the perfect mouse for everybody; it’s really very small and you have to live with the fact that the batteries will expire while you’re working. But if you have a need for a miniscule mouse without the tether of a cord, the B500 is a real performance machine.

MyMac Rating: 4 out of 5

This weekend, we look way back to May 1997 and one of our illustrious alumni, Shay Fulton. “How do you win an award?” looks at some of the events and products from 1996 – 1997, and is a great way to take a peek at the Mac landscape seven years ago! Read it here!

Rock Star
Company: Freshly Squeezed Software
Price: $9.00 (US)
http://freshlysqueezedsoftware.com

I have a love for music that goes beyond the average person. At least, I believe that is true. And I enjoy all kinds of different types of music, leaving off Opera and most Country Music. My eclectic tastes are reflected with a quick trip to my iTunes music library, where you will find, as of last count, 5,236 songs. And that is after weeding out a ton of songs I know I will probably never listen to.

While browsing the net the other day, I came across the Freshly Squeezed Software site, and found the program Rock Star. The caption reads “It’s you against the music” on the main page, and that was enough to intrigue me.

Rock Star is a single or multi-person music game that uses your very own iTunes library in a very new and innovative way. Do you remember the old game show “Name That Tune”? Neither do I, way before my time. But the concept is similar here. Rock Star will play clips of your own iTunes music library, and give you five multiple-choice answers.

The game gives you the choice of game play. You can either guess song title, artist, album, or a mixed bag of all three. During game play, you are presented with five choices, and the goal is to correctly answer in the shortest amount of time as possible. During game play, there is a counter the quickly counts down, so that when you make a correct selection, you are awarded the time left of the counter.

Multi-player games, or “Party Games” as they are called, are a great deal of fun as well. Here, you can have up to five teams, and you rotate teams every five songs. The highest scoring team wins. As the title suggests, this is a fun party game.

It sounded simple enough. Really, if it is using your very own music library, music you listen to all the time, it should be simple as can be. Trust me when I say, though, that it is anything but. I know my music, and I am stumped often.

Rock Star is a very addictive and fun game, and the cost is not only affordable, but well worth the investment in a small software publishing company that is making some great strides in creativity and functionality. Hats off to Freshly Squeezed Software!

MyMac.com Rating: 5 out of 5

LaCie Porsche Design External Hard Drives — Review

John Nemerovski & David Weeks

F. A. Porsche Design External FireWire and USB Hard Drives
Company: LaCie Limited
Prices: From $129 (see reviews for details)
http://www.lacie.com

LaCie continues to support our favorite computers with a strong presence in Apple Stores, at Macworld Expos, and in the Macintosh print media. Recent advertising campaigns feature attractive young people in “lifestyle poses” (LaCie’s wording, not ours) promoting their stylish Porsche Design family of external drives.

Competitors were not impressed during informal conversations at January’s Macworld Conference and Expo. One well-known retailer’s CEO said: “I’ll gladly go head to head against LaCie’s Porsche products any day of the week.” He wasn’t convinced that these affordable, lightweight drives are worthy of the highly-regarded LaCie name. Neither was David Weeks, our lead reviewer.

David’s comments come first, with insights and tech specs on both Porsche / LaCie drives.

Before running the hardware benchmarks on the two La Cie drives, I took a few minutes to examine the drives themselves. La Cie styles each model in this line quite similarly. Let’s look at each drive in turn.

LaCie USB Mobile 80 GB Hard Drive
Company: LaCie Limited
Price: $319 US
http://www.lacie.com

First comes an 80 gigabyte Pocket Drive. The 2.5" mechanism is encased in an attractive gun-metal grey housing, with connectors at the back end of the case. This pocket drive has USB 2 or 1.1 only, so it’s of limited appeal to the great majority of Macintosh users whose high speed connectors are exclusively FireWire. OS X now supports USB 2, but you’ll still need a PCI card to provide the hardware capability if your Macintosh doesn’t work with the faster version. An installer disk loads LaCie’s OS 9 software, which is not necessary for OS X computers.

A quick glance at Froogle (a splendid Google offshoot for pricing information) shows that PowerBook users can find USB 2 PC cards for $55 and up. Desktop Mac owners can obtain internal USB 2 cards for $20. I found mine at CompUSA, and it played perfectly out of the box.

While not as fast as FireWire, USB 2 performs adequately, as the benchmarks show.

Results 28.34

System Info
Xbench Version 1.1.3
System Version 10.3.2 (7D24)
Physical RAM 1024 MB
Model PowerMac3,6
Processor PowerPC G4x2 @ 1.42 GHz
Version 7455 (Apollo) v3.3

Disk Test 28.34
Sequential 19.61
Uncached Write 34.37 14.33 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 33.57 13.75 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 8.22 1.30 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 42.67 17.24 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 51.08
Uncached Write 46.77 0.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 58.01 13.08 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 48.75 0.32 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 52.16 10.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]

While XBench was testing the drive, I took a few minutes to examine the unit more closely. La Cie provides a small power/activity light on the front of the case, but it’s recessed so far in that you can’t see it unless you are looking directly at it; the light’s invisible if you look at it from off to the side.

The high-impact plastic case is rather insubstantial and lacking in solidity. I could easily flex the case with light finger pressure. I didn’t get any confidence that this case could stand up to rigors of daily transportation in a laptop bag.

All told, I see no reason why at Mac user would buy a flimsy USB 2 drive, especially a PowerBook user looking for portable storage.

David’s MyMac.com rating 2 out of 5

John Nemo says:

While I agree with David’s observations, I praise LaCie for making this USB porta-drive exclusively bus-powered. All previous USB disks we’ve seen have required an electrical current to function. Given its ease of use, high-capacity, low price, and portability, I’m comfortable with:

John’s MyMac.com rating 3 out of 5

Whoa! During our second round testing the portable Porsche, we learned that David’s heavy duty G4 + USB 2 card powers the drive, but his brand new USB 2-native 15" PowerBook doesn’t. How strange. We’ll contact LaCie to learn if the problem is with their drive or his laptop, and provide an addendum as soon as possible. ANSWER: It’s an Apple bug, which David confirmed after extensive research: specific to PowerBooks and bus-powered USB devices. Be aware!

LaCie FireWire 80 GB Hard Drive
Company: LaCie
Price: $129 US

http://www.lacie.com

David says:

Next comes LaCie’s 80 gigabyte FireWire desktop drive. While this unit uses two Mac-friendly FireWire 400 connections, it also suffers from lightweight construction, and the poorly-placed activity light. This drive performs better than the its little sibling, but don’t waste a stamp writing home about great performance, because the drive has merely average specs.

Results 78.24

System Info
Xbench Version 1.1.3
System Version 10.3.2 (7D24)
Physical RAM 1024 MB
Model PowerMac3,6
Processor PowerPC G4x2 @ 1.42 GHz
Version 7455 (Apollo) v3.3
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 256K @ 1.42 GHz
L3 Cache 2048K @ 237 MHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV250
Drive Type WDC WD80 0BB-00CAA1

Disk Test 78.24

Sequential 72.25
Uncached Write 83.07 34.63 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 80.93 33.14 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 57.54 9.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 73.59 29.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 85.31
Uncached Write 80.83 1.21 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 90.30 20.37 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 81.69 0.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 89.28 18.37 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Most users would be advised to spend a few more dollars for a drive with sturdier construction, and the newer, faster FireWire 800 ports.

La Cie stamps "Designed by F.A. Porsche" on this line of drives. F.A.Porsche is the creative house that designs the bodies on Porsche sports cars. If I were F.A. Porsche, I’d be reluctant to have my name on a series of drives with middle of the road performance.

David’s MyMac.com rating 2.5 out of 5

John adds:

We may be splitting hairs here, David, but millions of current Mac owners will be glad to be able to purchase an inexpensive external FireWire 400 drive such as this one. Its limitations and assets balance one another, leading to:

John’s MyMac.com rating of 3 out of 5

_________

John Nemerovski

David Weeks

Is it true that Everyone Loves A Mac? Chris Seibold said so two years ago in this article!

"Hey, Windows Guy, You want a Mac, You Just don’t Know it (and the real reason most people use Windows)" Read the article here!

NoteRiser
Company: Conotour Design
Price: $129
http://www.contourdesign.com

When I first received this device, I had to ask myself “Why do I need this?” The idea seemed a bit strange to me. You buy a laptop computer, and then you use this device to basically turn it into a fancy desktop computer, which means I have to add an additional external keyboard and mouse? I did not get it, if I wanted a desktop computer, I would have bought one. And then I bought and started using my 17” PowerBook, and the benefits of such a device started to become more obvious.

For one thing, today’s laptop computers run very hot. My PowerBook’s internal temperature can reach easily over 125 degreed Fahrenheit during normal operation. And when this happens, the keyboard and palm rests also become very hot, almost too hot to continue working. Sitting flat on the desk, the machine tends to get very little air circulation around the unit, so I thought getting it off a flat surface might help. In addition, while I bought this PowerBook to use while I travel, I do find myself using it at a desk a lot more often than while traveling. And if you are like me and this IS your main machine, then this device makes even more sense for you. I spend a good deal of time sitting at a desk and working on my laptop, placing me in one of the worst ergonomic positions one can sit to work. So I decided to try the NoteRiser out.

The unit comes packed very flat, and can be flattened again for carrying in a suitcase or briefcase to use in multiple locations. At 11.8” wide, 10.63”deep, and only .16” thick, and at less than 1 pound, it will not be a burden to carry either. To use, you simply lift and lock two front tabs which act as forward, PADDED computer rests (the front edge of the computer sits against them), and then raise the angle of the base by moving the “adjustment tongue” to set the tilt angle between 20 and 55 degrees.

That’s it! Simply place your laptop on top against the pads, plug in your keyboard and mouse, adjust and your screen now sits at a more comfortable and correct viewing angle, distance, and height. The NoteRiser not only places your screen at the correct location, but also allows you to place the external keyboard at a more correct ergonomic position as well, so overall you reduce neck, back, shoulder, arm, wrist and eye strain while using your computer at a desk. That alone is a good thing.

And for me, the computer dropped about 5 degrees sitting raised up like this so that air could circulate about it. The NoteRiser is made of an ultra thin and lightweight metal that should also bleed off some of the excess heat too. And once I got use to using an external keyboard, I found the higher screen position to be much more easy on the eyes.

This device can also be “integrated ”to the laptop. While these additional parts were not included with my trial unit, these additional strips allow you to attach the NoteRiser in a quasi-permanent way to the bottom of the laptop. I was not able to test this method, but would probably not do this on my machine anyway as the battery access door is on the bottom and this type of install would make access to the battery impossible.

While this unit does work with my 17” PowerBook, it was not ideal. First off, one of the little front rest pad sits inconveniently in front of the slot loading DVD drive, making the drive useless without lifting up the computer each time. Secondly, the 17” has a very cool back-lit keyboard which is no longer used in this configuration…what a waste. And while I did not feel as if it would fall, the extra weight and width of this large PowerBook computer did make the unit seem a bit unstable sitting on the stand. A 12” and 15” PowerBook should have no stability problem, but drive access to front loading drives will be a problem.

While the NoteRiser has 5 soft pads on the bottom as to not damage the desk surface (especially when installed permanently, when raised, the back “foot”, which raises the computer has no such soft padding on it. This means a rounded, but still sharp, metallic edge is now holding up the entire weight of your computer on your desk surface. In my case, this DID scratch the wood surface of my table. Given the padding everywhere else on this device, this was a stupid oversight that just damaged my desk. Lastly, using the laptop while sitting on this device is not easy or recommended, and an external keyboard and mouse is a must.

My only other issue is with the price, which I felt was a bit steep for such a simple, small device. While this is a great concept, and putting a price on a proper ergonomic set-up is difficult, I felt the $130 price, given that I must also buy an external mouse and keyboard, was about twice what it should cost, but you will have to be the judge of that.

More information can be found at http://www.contourdesign.com

MyMac rating: 2.5 out of 5

Learning Unix for Macintosh OS X Panther
Author(s): Dave Taylor and Brian Jepson
Publisher: O’Reillly and Associates
ISBN: 0596006179 Pages: 155

Reviewer: Tony Williams

Since the advent of OS X Mac users have had to get used to the idea that under their favourite GUI lurks a real operating system. While for some (such as myself) this has been a source of joy for others it has been like Central Africa for Victorian England — the great dark heart.

Dave Taylor and Brian Jepson have provided a good map for those just starting to explore, "Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther".

They start at the obvious place, starting Apple’s ‘Terminal’, before talking a about customizing the shell. The second chapter delves deeper into the Terminal and explains the syntax and types of CLI commands. Chapters 3 and 4 clarify the Macintosh and Unix file systems. The book then goes on to explain printing, redirection, pipes and multitasking before a chapter on ‘net stuff, one on X11 and Fink before a quick look at further avenues of exploration.

The book is fairly well written, assuming almost nothing at the beginning and easily read, though a little less haste in the writing and editing would have been good – there are some tiny patches of clumsy or inaccurate writing. This is certainly a beginner’s book. If you have had any Unix experience and are not afraid of a little exploration on your own then this book is almost entirely superfluous. That said, if you want hand holding and a push in the right direction then this is a good book for Macintosh users.

It does have its flaws. The simplistic approach is a little too simplistic at times. For example, in the discussion of redirection they explain standard in and standard out but totally neglect standard error which may leave users wondering why a redirected program still has some terminal output and not knowing how to capture all output to a log file, for example. It also moves a little too slowly, I often find beginner books are pitched at people who want a lot of hand holding, I think you can safely assume any Macintosh user who wants to learn about the Unix underpinnings will be prepared to do a little work and thinking along the way. Due to these problems I find myself still looking for the modern, Macintosh equivalent of Kernighan and Pike’s "Unix Programming Environment", a book I recommended as the best intro to Unix for many years.

To have a look at the usual O’Reilly page here’s a link. This one has the table of contents, index and an example chapter. The chapter is the one on printing, not a perfect example but it will show you the writing style. It also contains an example of the slight sloppiness, there is a table that lists possible options for enscript including -W to specify an output language and correctly mentions the possibilities as PostScript, overstrike, HTML and RTF but fails to mention that enscript is quite fussy about the case you use to specify the language so you have to use ‘-W html’ or ‘-W rtf’, oh, and it has to be ‘-W PostScript’ not ‘postscript’

This is not the sort of book that you will need forever; a quick read and a slow read in front of the computer will have most people understanding everything that Taylor and Jepson explain in this book. The small size and price may justify the shortcomings if you think of this as a book that you buy and pass along. I find myself still able to recommend it for people who want a book right at the beginning of the learning curve.

Rating: 7/10 – Good book with some flaws

Tony contributes book reviews to MyMac.com. You can read more at Tonys Book Spot – Reviews and News

Google in bed with Porn sites?

I was watching a TV magazine program, and one of the features was on the growing popularity of homemade pornography. I was not really interested in the segment, but I did leave it on as there was a segment coming up later that I did want to see. Usually when I am watching a program in the kitchen, as I was on this night, I will read a book during the commercial breaks, or in this case, during a segment of a program I don’t much care about.

Then I heard the reported on the program mention home video editing, and I glanced up. There was a home video editing computer, and guess what it was? If you said a G4 Macintosh, you’re right. (This was before the G5 came out.) And it struck me as off that this home porn producer was using an Apple Macintosh, and from what you could see on screen, iMovie as well.

I made a note to do some further research on this sometime in the future, thinking perhaps it would make an interesting article. I never really got around to writing it, though. So that note sat in my FileMaker database of potential story ideas for over a year.

I came across my note the other day, and decided to do some preliminary work on the article. I was curious to find out if any other site had done a like story. The only one I knew about was an old Rodney Lain article at, I think, MacObserver. Could have been AppleLinks. (I am simply too lazy right now to go check.)

So I did a search on Google for “Macintosh Porn” hoping to come up with some hits. Of course, most results were porn sites, as I expected, but those are easily avoided simply by looking at the URL and the brief description. (On a side note, I did find this article from CNN.com that I found interesting.)

Google returned 131,00 results. Way too many for me to look through. But what else I found was rather surprising.

Google makes a ton of money with their “AdWords” feature, which is the small text advertising displayed on the right hand side of the page at Google after you perform a search. These are targeted ads, based on your search criteria. They are easily ignored, which I usually do. But this is what I found after doing the above search.

After nine years of publishing, it would be hard for this publisher to pick his favorite article. There has been so many, and so many great ones, that to pick just one would be impossible. I could pick the top five, though, and The Gorilla Benchmark Test would defiantly make that list, easy.

Written in March 1997 (SEVEN years ago!) by Pete Miner, it starts “All this sniveling about who manufactures the better computer has finally driven me to prove, once and for all, who builds the most reliable, innovative and user friendliest computer on the market today. To accomplish this, I conducted my own scientifically controlled Benchmark tests on several of the leading personal computers being sold today”

And the insanity and hilarity ensue… Read it here!