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The twin drivers of mass market economics and corporate consolidation have lead us to a cornucopia of cheap, high performance electronics that would have been unimaginable only ten years ago. Back when you were dropping up to half the price of a small car on a laptop, it was always felt to be worth paying extra for a name brand. Build quality and service meant that Apple hardware commanded a premium price.

MacAlly has added a new member to its lineup of protective cases for Apple laptops with the AirShell for MacBook Air. The Weeks Division of MyMac Labs used it for a couple of weeks to see just how well it performed its protective duties. The AirShell consists of two hard shells that clip onto the top and bottom case of the Air itself. Once attached, the Air itself is well shielded, with only the USB/headphone port door, air vents, charging socket, and sleep light uncovered. Read the review here.

I was rather intrigued by Kensington’s Ci95 m Wireless Mouse with Nano receiver. Right out of the box, there is a lot to like, and I have not even turned it on yet. The mouse comes in one color combination: silver and dark gray, and looks good. The mouse itself is fairly small, sitting at less than 1” tall, and fits comfortably into your hand at just 6” long by 2.5” wide, and weighing about 4 ounces with batteries installed (and just 1.5 oz without!) It also comes with a VERY TINY “nano” radio receiver, so this is not a Bluetooth mouse, but rather a 2.6 GHz wireless mouse that emulates a wired three-button mouse.

Adobe Acrobat 9.0 is the latest version (I was looking at the Professional variant – Standard is also available), and once you fire it up it is clear that Adobe has embraced the challenge of adding value with relish. A clean interface provides a series of drop-down buttons for the Acrobat workflow – starting with creation of new documents, and ending with commenting of existing PDFs.

The iPod/iPhone earbud market is one of the hottest consumer spaces there is, and Shure has several products for it. The Weeks Division of MyMac Labs had the opportunity to evaluate the Shure SE102MPA Sound Isolating Mobile Headset.

In pictures the new Nano looks much larger than the one it replaces. In real life it simply is much longer and skinnier. Imagine the 3rd Gen. put on a stretch rack and turned sideways. In more ways it resembles the 1st and 2nd generation Nanos than it does its predecessor. Let’s talk about what Apple did to make this Nano better.

Now, MacAlly offers an alternative to Apple’s dongle, the MacAlly Air2Net USB Ethernet adapter. As expected, the Air2Net’s a dongle that let you connect an RJ-45 Ethernet jack into a USB port, and runs at Ethernet 10/100 speeds
I flogged the Air2Net hooked up to our MacBook AIr for an entire weekend at the Weeks Division of MyMac Labs. How did it do?