Nemo’s 2012 Holiday MyMac Gift Guide for Techies
Backup and archive. Daily. No exceptions.
If you are reading this and you are not fully backed up using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, stop immediately and order a new external multi-interface bus-powered backup drive or two. Keep one drive handy for daily updates, and the other offsite for safety and security. Email the G-Men on the MyMac Podcast if you need advice on how to use Time Machine and the other two backup applications.
I have been using and testing OWC’s Mercury On-The-Go Pro Triple Interface acrylic-encased FireWire 800/400 + USB 3 SSD and HDD solutions for several months, and I recommend them highly. They are versatile, sturdy, affordable, efficient, fast, and have the best guarantee in the business. Obtain an OWC unit with more storage than you think you need, because soon you will be glad you have the extra capacity. Get an SSD if max speed is your top priority, or choose an HDD if cost and max GB are paramount.
OWC On-The-Go Pro 240GB SSD Triple Interface External Drive
Price: $295
OWC On-The-Go Pro 500GB Triple Interface External Drive
Price: $138
Seagate Backup Plus Portable External 1TB Drive for Mac
Price: $130
Adapters are available, sold separately, to convert this drive to FireWire 800 and/or Thunderbolt
LaCie Rugged Key 16GB
Price: $40 for 16GB, or $70 for 32GB
Express USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Enclosure
Company: Other World Computing
Price: $19.79 MSRP
The years 2010 and 2011 saw the prices of hard drives drop continuously to where users everywhere could make a purchase without really breaking the bank. Then in October of 2011 disaster struck in the form of extreme flooding in Thailand where numerous people lost their lives and the flooding devastated the locations where hard drives were being manufactured. These losses resulted in soaring prices and a very limited supply of available products.
NuCube Vertical Stand
Company: Other World Computing
Price: $35.99 MSRP
When I purchased a new 2011 Mac mini several months back, it replaced an older Mac that had to sit on the floor under the desk in my office at home. The new Mac mini was definitely smaller size-wise and was now proudly sitting on top of my desk. The one thing I soon discovered was that with everything else that I had on my desk, even the Mac mini was eating up space.
NuScribe 2-in-1 Touch Screen Stylus and Pen
Company: Newer Technology
Price: MSRP $19.99, available at Other World Computing for $10.00
I hear you out there. You’re thinking, “Another stylus review. Whoopee.” But not every stylus is the same; some work better than others. Where does the NuScribe 2-in-1 Touch Screen Stylus and Pen fit in? Let’s take a look.
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64 GB Solid State Drive and On-The-Go case
Other World Computing
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
$329.99
Other World Computing now offers an SSD (solid state drive) option for their On-The-Go line of external cases. While SSDs have not broken though to become the standard in storage technology, they’re rapidly becoming viable alternatives to users who want high performance drives. Solid State Drives are fast because they employ special memory chips instead of multiple motor-driven, rotating platters. SSDs read and (sometimes) write data much, much faster, than a conventional hard drive.
While a detailed explanation of SSD technology is beyond the scope of this review, Wikipedia can start you on the road to understanding how SSDs work, and why they’re great for certain types of hard drive requirements. If Wikipedia is a bit geeky for you, AnandTech has a great review of current SSD technology.
If you want a life-changing, consciousness-raising, mind-blowing personal computer experience, install a SSD as the boot drive in your Macintosh or PC. You’ll think you just bought a fast computer. A very fast computer.
Other World Computing packages a 64 GB solid state drive in their clear On-The-Go case. The case is small, and its minimalist appearance is cool and sleek.
The back side reveals two FireWire 800 ports, and one USB 2 port, and an On-Off switch. OWC garners extra points for not requiring an external AC wall-wart adapter. The drive comes with a high-quality FireWire 800 and USB 2 cable, as well as a nice carrying case. You’re ready to go as soon as you unpack the drive.
OWC is a Mac outfit, so I was pleased but not surprised to find the drive came formatted as an HFS Plus journaled volume, and it’s got a great Mac desktop icon, as well. Most drive suppliers cater to PC users, and sell drives formatted for PC users. It’s nice to find Mac enthusiasts being catered to.
As an extra freebie, OWC includes a goodly selection of Macintosh free and shareware, as well as ProSoft Engineering’s Data Backup for Mac OS X.
But enough about the great case and the freebies; how does it perform?
When you connect it to your Mac, the first thing you’ll notice is that an SSD is silent. No motor noise, no fan, no nothing. Other than the purple Power light, you won’t know its working.
You’ll know it’s working when you get some data copied over to the drive. Write speeds are nothing to write home about, but SSD read performance is what you spent your money for. This drive is fast, Fast, FAST. I regularly search a 250MB DevonThink Pro database from my late 2008 unibody MacBook Pro. I copied the DevonThink application and database from the laptop internal drive to the OWC drive in 11.5 seconds. Copying it back the other way took longer: 14.5 seconds.
Launching DevonThink Pro and loading the database from the MacBook Pro took 8 seconds. The same operation from the OWC solid state drive less than 3. This got a "wow" from me.
Searching the database from the OWC drive for the word "pairing" yields 12067 hits in .367 seconds. Searching the database from laptop for the word "pairing" produces 12076 hits in 2.2 seconds. That’s almost six times longer. That speedup was extremely noticeable; another "wow."
When copied over to the SSD, applications launched incredibly fast; Safari would be running before the first "dock bounce" was over. Word 2008 was no longer agonizingly slow to start; it was now just slow.
Benchmark testing using Drive Genius 2.2 shows that the On-The-Go SSD mechanism performs exceptionally well with random reads. Write performance is not as good, but writes are far less common than reads for the average user.
This is a splendid little portable drive that raises only one concern. Is it worth the extra money to purchase an SSD for an external disk designed for portable use? You won’t be using this as your boot drive, and you almost certainly won’t be copying over your applications to the On-The-Go SSD. You’ll lose the blazingly short application launch time that come from having apps on the SSD. Having big data files on the external SSD is good, but not optimal. Noise is not usually a make or break issue with small portable external drives. People usually buy externals for portability, and for backups on the road. I’m not sure many people would need the SSD performance in an small external case.
OWC charges $329.99 for the 64 GB version. By comparison, a 750 GB conventional hard drive in the excellent On-The-Go case costs $249.99. That’s 11.5 times the storage space for 25% less cost.
Conclusion. This well-built portable Solid State Drive is fast, but it’s very expensive for the capacity. If you need the best performance you can find in a small capacity (64 GB) portable drive in a well-built case, get the SSD version of the On-The-Go. Purchasers whose needs run to a better price/performance ratio should stick with conventional hard drives in the On-The-Go case for the time being.
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Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual-Drive USB 2.0 + USB 2.0 Powered Hub
Company: Other World Computing
Price: $299.99
Macsales.com
Hardware Requirements: Any Mac with a USB port
Who doesn’t love REALLY BIG hard drives? More space for all our stuff. I remember buying a hard drive for my first computer which happened to be a Mac Plus with a SCSi port. It was a 40Mb (yes, I said 40Mb) external drive that set me back $700 and at the time I thought there was no way I was EVER going to fill this monster! I’ll give you a minute to stop laughing and then we’ll continue with the review…are you done? Good.
Of course I’ve bought countless internal and external drives since then and the same thought used cross my mind all the time; “Can I justify buying a drive this big?” Circumstances of course have made such questions silly in this day and age of digital content. There IS no such thing any longer as too much storage space. We need it for audio, for video, for editing webpages, operas, yodeling dog tracks, and immeasurable other things that were mostly just dreams to use computers for back in the day of my old Mac Plus. Naturally whenever a gap is created in technology between what we have and what we need there is someone there to fill it. You can get external drives from almost anywhere these days, but buying from Harry’s Fish supplies and computer sales can be an iffy thing when it comes to support after the sale and that’s where some makers really shine.
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DIY Upgrade Bundle
Other World Computing
Price: $162.99 (320GB Samsung 5400 RPM+ OWC On-The-Go USB 2.0/eSATA enclosure)
www.macsales.com
When I bought my MacBook it came with a “spacious” 80GB hard drive (HD). That HD filled up pretty quick and I moved to a 160 GB HD which was the largest 2.5” drive (that is the thickness HD measurement that fits in a portable) available at the time. Now I’ve filled that up. After watching HD capacity grow over the past year (it’s up to 500 GB now) I decided to upgrade my MacBook drive.
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Other World Computing NASPerform Network Storage
500 GB Model reviewed
http://www.macsales.com
Price: $209.99
I was very excited to review this product. I’ve looked at network storage devices from afar, mostly because of price, and almost all of them were Windows based, but really thought they looked very useful. The OWC NASPerform (NP) utilizes NDAS technology allowing it to connect a storage device directly to a network with or without a server. The prices are pretty good at OWC, and our favorite computer platform is fully supported finally, so it was time for this Mac user to jump in. The acronym NDAS stands for Network Direct Attached Storage.
This drive can be used as either a stand-alone external drive, plugged directly into your Mac via USB, or as a network drive, plugged into your network via Ethernet. When using this drive as part of your network, you can connect either wireless, via a wireless router, or directly to a hard-wired Ethernet network. More on that later.
My iPod Mini Battery Adventure
Company: Other World Computing
Price: Variable-Depends on the iPod and shipping method
http://www.macsales.com
I’ve had an original first gen ipod mini for several years now. I have not replaced it with a newer iPod, simply because it provides everything I need an iPod for, and that is music. For me, watching a movie on a 2.5” screen just doesn’t cut it. If Apple ever comes out with a bigger screen iPod, I might rethink that. But I digress….
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OWC Mercury On-the-Go Pro FW800 Hard Drive
Company: Newer Technology
Price: With 160 GB HD (5400-RPM), 8MB Cache, $349.99 USD
http://www.macsales.com
I am constantly amazed at how small things are becoming in the world of computing. I remember BIG cpu’s, BIG floppy’s and BIG headaches when dealing with all of it. Now we have Mac mini’s and in keeping with “down sizing,” OWC is offering the Mercury On-the-Go Pro FW800 Hard Drive. Compact in size, the FW800 HD is only 3.5”(W) x 5.5”(D) x 1”(H) (it’s smaller than my hand!) and it only weighs 11 ounces. But being compact doesn’t stop it from doing big things. The unit utilizes Oxford 911+, Oxford 912, or Myson Century Bridge chipsets to accomplish its job. The unit I evaluated came with a Seagate Momentus 5400 160 GB hard drive.
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miniStack v2
Company: Newer Technology
Price: Continue reading »
80 GB HD-$129.00,
160 GB for $159.00,
250 GB for $189.00,
320 GB for $219.00,
400 GB for $309.00,
500 GB for $439.00
No Hard Drive – Enclosure only- $79.95
OWC Mercury Elite Pro FireWire 800/400 + USB 2.0/1.1
Company: Other World Computing
Price: $479.99
http://www.macsales.com
Imagine 250GB of storage space on an external drive. Now add in the ability to connect the drive via FireWire 400 or 800, as well as USB 1.1 or 2.0. Make the drive a respectable 7200RPM with a 8MB Data Buffer, as well as Oxford922 chip-set, and you have one mean drive.
Coming in at a price-point of $479.99 US for the unit reviewed, you get a lot of drive for that price. You can, however, spend as little as $249.99 for a similar drive, with most of the features as the reviewed unit, but with 80GB if hard drive space and only a 2MB Data Buffer. Other World Computing has seven different drives in the Mercury Elite Pro line, so chances are you can find a price to feature drive to suite your needs.
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