Showing posts with label portable. Show all posts
Showing posts with label portable. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Bridgestone QR-LPD
Damn, so when would we see it introduced to ebooks market? It seems pretty slow though. But clearly their screens are bigger than Kindle's 6" or even DX 9". Anyway eink's fragility is bad. Pretty bad. http://consumerist.com/5360174/epic-kindle-2-fails-mans-drop-test-forces-amazon-to-pay-him-400
Friday, May 23, 2008
Portable drive iomega 120G and MacBook Pro
This is my review of Iomega Portable Hard Drive, FireWire 400/USB 2.0, 120GB Silver - 33634 on Apple MacBook Pro laptop. I'm not a hardware geek, so don't suppose this review to be very accurate from the technology stand-point. I'm a regular end-user and I just want to be happy with my gadgets. ;)
Starting from the unboxing.
Pretty nice device, pleasant for touch, pretty slim and narrow.
Has a reset button, can be switched into three power modes (USB/Firewire, Off ;) or 5V DC).
I found Firewire cable to be pretty short and nice. I remember people complaining about the length of the cable and found it to be too long. Well, not in my case. ;)
After connecting the device to the port it was found immediately. I've started the transfer of 10G folder with numerous files and Finder estimated it to about 11 or 12 minutes. However, it gave me more then 2 hours on 60G folder with about 50K of files in it. Although this is very rough and (I guess) very inaccurate, it's still much better comparing to my experiment with WD. I also tried to transfer 744M in one file and I got 9.3MB/s average. And on 4G file it gave me 15MB/s, so it speeds up a little bit. Again, I do not know if this cool or not, but it works for me well.
When I clicked on cancel, the transfer immediately stopped. I don't know if there is an issue or not, but I remember having hard time with different external drives that made Finder's copy stall for hours after canceling the action.
Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the device, but it'll take me some time to drive it crazy and to discover its fool-tolerance. ;)
P.S. Just found out that the device came in FAT32 and it can't accept single files more then 4G in size. I have got a few Parallels images about 8G long and I can't put them on the device.
Starting from the unboxing.
Pretty nice device, pleasant for touch, pretty slim and narrow.
Has a reset button, can be switched into three power modes (USB/Firewire, Off ;) or 5V DC).
I found Firewire cable to be pretty short and nice. I remember people complaining about the length of the cable and found it to be too long. Well, not in my case. ;)After connecting the device to the port it was found immediately. I've started the transfer of 10G folder with numerous files and Finder estimated it to about 11 or 12 minutes. However, it gave me more then 2 hours on 60G folder with about 50K of files in it. Although this is very rough and (I guess) very inaccurate, it's still much better comparing to my experiment with WD. I also tried to transfer 744M in one file and I got 9.3MB/s average. And on 4G file it gave me 15MB/s, so it speeds up a little bit. Again, I do not know if this cool or not, but it works for me well.
When I clicked on cancel, the transfer immediately stopped. I don't know if there is an issue or not, but I remember having hard time with different external drives that made Finder's copy stall for hours after canceling the action.
Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the device, but it'll take me some time to drive it crazy and to discover its fool-tolerance. ;)
P.S. Just found out that the device came in FAT32 and it can't accept single files more then 4G in size. I have got a few Parallels images about 8G long and I can't put them on the device. Saturday, May 17, 2008
Portable drives for Mac
I've been looking for a nice portable external drive for my MacBook Pro. It's one of the first editions with the 2.0Ghz, two USB 2.0 and one Firewire 400 on-board. It's got about 90G HDD and I don't feel comfortable anymore with more then 30G of photos and music now. What's even worse is that I need to visit AppleCare as soon as possible for some issues that I experience with it, and my gut feeling is that I'm going to leave my laptop for repair. As you know, the data gets lost in such cases. ;)
My first try with portable drives was Maxtor (that I received as a present). I don't remember the exact model, but it had only USB Y-cable (one plug to drive, two plugs to laptop: one for data and power, another one for power only). It didn't work very well. It requires both USBs to be taken to get enough bus power. And this doesn't sound okay for me. I still have my Canon camera, numerour memory sticks and (!!) iPhone to be plugged somewhere and I hate the idea turning my workspace into wired nightmare with USB hubs all around.
My next try was Western Digital My Passport 160G portable USB drive (WDME1600TN). This little toy was looking pretty nice, I got it for $94.99 in Circuit City (some clearance item), and, guess what?.. it worked fine. I mean, it was okay with having just single USB. Unfortunately, it worked out to be pretty slow, and my Finder estimated 25G folder transfer to take more then 5 hours (wow!). I don't know if this is okay for a USB 2.0 complaint devices, but this is not okay with me.
I was almost sold to Verbatim Smartdisk 120G portable USB drive (item #96534), available on sale for $49.99 at Memory Depot (and shipping free with code FREESHIP). However, I have found some reviews saying that the whole Verbatim Smartdisk line doesn't work well with Mac laptops, as far as they produce low power on USB. I decided not to try it.
So, my next shot is Iomega Portable Hard Drive with both Firewire 400 and USB 2.0 ports, 120GB. I ordered it a few minutes ago on Amazon for $79.99 with free shipping and no tax (yet ;). I found some positive reviews for it saying that it might be a good choice for Mac laptops. Hopefully, it is. We'll see. While it might be as slow as the WD one, it's cheaper. ;)
My first try with portable drives was Maxtor (that I received as a present). I don't remember the exact model, but it had only USB Y-cable (one plug to drive, two plugs to laptop: one for data and power, another one for power only). It didn't work very well. It requires both USBs to be taken to get enough bus power. And this doesn't sound okay for me. I still have my Canon camera, numerour memory sticks and (!!) iPhone to be plugged somewhere and I hate the idea turning my workspace into wired nightmare with USB hubs all around.
My next try was Western Digital My Passport 160G portable USB drive (WDME1600TN). This little toy was looking pretty nice, I got it for $94.99 in Circuit City (some clearance item), and, guess what?.. it worked fine. I mean, it was okay with having just single USB. Unfortunately, it worked out to be pretty slow, and my Finder estimated 25G folder transfer to take more then 5 hours (wow!). I don't know if this is okay for a USB 2.0 complaint devices, but this is not okay with me.
I was almost sold to Verbatim Smartdisk 120G portable USB drive (item #96534), available on sale for $49.99 at Memory Depot (and shipping free with code FREESHIP). However, I have found some reviews saying that the whole Verbatim Smartdisk line doesn't work well with Mac laptops, as far as they produce low power on USB. I decided not to try it.
So, my next shot is Iomega Portable Hard Drive with both Firewire 400 and USB 2.0 ports, 120GB. I ordered it a few minutes ago on Amazon for $79.99 with free shipping and no tax (yet ;). I found some positive reviews for it saying that it might be a good choice for Mac laptops. Hopefully, it is. We'll see. While it might be as slow as the WD one, it's cheaper. ;)
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