Seems like lately I’m playing a fun game of “he said” with OWC Chris S. In this installment, I once again have to commend Chris for his well phrased examination on all the features and benefits offered by the Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Triple Interface” single bay storage solution.

However, that was back in late July and the “now” news is about lower prices on the “Dual Interface” version of this professional grade storage solution. Featuring FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces and capacity from 80GB to 2.0TB starting at just $74.99, you just can’t find a better combination of value, performance, and award winning “buy with confidence” reputation in Mac or PC desktop storage.

Here’s a quick “tale of the tape”:

• Oxford 934SSA based performance bridge solution

• Two 1394A pin 6 pin FireWire 400 ports, One USB 2.0 port

• FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 connecting cables included

• Up to 32MB drive cache

• Fully bootable and ideal for applications, A/V, photos, music, etc.

• Certified for Audio/Video and Time Machine

• Compact, shock resistant Aluminum design

• $200 retail value utility bundle: Prosoft DataBackup III (OS X), NovaStor NovaBackup (Windows), Carbon Copy Cloner (OS X), and Intech Speedtools (8.6-10.5.x)

• Fully Mac & PC compatible

• Industry leading 3 year Solution Warranty

So, now that I’ve got your attention, let’s get to the main course…bring on the models!

80GB 7200RPM with 8MB Data Buffer $74.99
160GB 7200RPM with 8MB Data Buffer $ 89.99
250GB 7200RPM with 16MB Data Buffer $ 95.99
320GB 7200RPM with 16MB Data Buffer $ 97.99
500GB 7200RPM with 16MB Data Buffer $107.99
750GB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer $134.99
1.0TB 7200RPM with 16MB Data Buffer $137.99
1.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer $149.99
1.0TB Enterprise 7200RPM 32MB Buffer  $189.99
1.5TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer $194.99
2.0TB GreenPower w/32MB Data Buffer $299.99 (A $30 drop!)

All of the above models can be found at: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/400+USB2/

And if you’re a DIY’er, we even offer 0GB “Add Your Own Drive” Kits from $49.99 so you can build a solution with your own supplied hard drive! And of course, we offer the resources you need to make that install easy like free installation videos in our Tech Support area.

For a long time, there’s been an interesting discrepancy between the capacity listed on a hard drive’s label and the capacity reported by the computer. For example, attaching a 250GB hard drive would show up in the system as having 232.74GB available. Many would chalk it up to “formatting.” While the formatting information takes up some information, 17GB is a little excessive for formatting information. So where did this other space go?

The real culprit here is the discrepancy between base-10 mathematics (how most of us count) and binary (aka “base-2″) counting. To drive manufacturers, a kilobyte was 1000 bytes, a megabyte was 1000 kilobytes and a gigabyte was 1000 megabytes.

However, computers don’t natively use base-10; they use a base-2 system. To them, a kilobyte is defined as 1024 (which is 2¹⁰) bytes, a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes, and a gigabyte is 1024 megabytes.

This methodology worked fine for many years; after all, 1024 isn’t TOO far off from 1000. As drive capacities increased, however, this became more and more pronounced. Drive manufacturers were defining “gigabyte” as 1,000,000,000 bytes (1000 x 1000 x 1000), while computers recognized a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes (1024 x 1024 x 1024). Every gigabyte added to a drive exacerbated the problem, adding 73,741,824 bytes to the discrepancy.

Snow Leopard, though, changes this. Instead of simply reporting the base-2 number for a unit of drive space, it converts it to an easier-to-understand base-10 number – the same way it is measured by drive manufacturers. In easier terms: a 500GB drive shows up as 500GB in the Finder, rather than 463.13GB.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you magically get more drive space. You still have the same number of bytes (the base unit) to deal with. The number of bytes that make up larger increments has just changed. Of course, this change in measurement is applied across the board in the finder. All your files will seem “larger,” even though they all have the same number of bytes in them. For example, here’s a pair of screen shots of a folder in my music library.

These shots are of the same files, in the same folder, on the same drive. In 10.6, though, they’re reported as being “larger.” But are they? The main folder shows up as having 308,937,619 bytes in both systems. The only difference is the 10.5 uses base-2 for its measurement, and 10.6 uses base-10. In 10.5, a megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes. In 10.6, it’s an even 1,000,000. Divide 308,937,619 by both of those, and you can see how the Finder in each OS arrived at its figure.

This may be a bit confusing for a while – after all, we’ve kind of gotten used to things the way they were. There is a bright point, though: now you don’t have to ask where all that space went when you install or attach your new hard drive.

For more information, you can check out this Apple KnowledgeBase article.

Apple’s latest and greatest operating system Mac OS X Snow Leopard hit the shelves this morning and the optimization on the back end is absolutely incredible.

Now that the official version is in our hot little hands, we’ll be hard at work here at the OWC labs testing and benchmarking all the compatible machines.  As each set of results is finalized, I’ll be posting the findings here first. So make sure you keep an eye on our blog for the very latest information.

As reported by OWC Chris S. on Wednesday, Adobe did drop their support of Adobe Creative Suite CS3 for Snow Leopard.  Photoshop CS3 was a standard in our memory benchmarking suite for the past several years.

One of the tests we’ve run is the OWC Super-Photoshop Test, which was created as an extended test to our 21 Step Photoshop Action Test. The OWC Super-Photoshop Test measures the time (in seconds) it takes to execute a custom action script comprising of 47 commonly-used, memory-intensive processes on a 21 megapixel image using Adobe Photoshop. It is designed to represent an average photo editing session of a graphic artist. No other processes are running in the background besides those that keep the machine itself running. This is pure, linear computing where every available resource is on hand for the one test running.

In transitioning this test from CS3 to CS4 we decided to take one machine and run the same test between CS3 and CS4 on 10.5 Leopard, then test CS4 on Snow Leopard, just to make sure we were comparing Apples to Apples.

We've found gains in speed of over 20% already.

As you can see, with the standard 4GB of memory installed, updating the software on 10.5 optimized the test by 28 seconds!  That’s over a 10% gain in speed just from Adobe themselves.  Not too shabby.

When running the same test after upgrading the machine to Snow Leopard though, the speed kicks up even further and drops another 51 seconds from the runtime.  Simply put, Apple’s optimization with the release of Snow Leopard sped this one process up by over 20%

More tidbits and a lot more data from our findings will be coming out just as quickly as we can get the numbers together.  Stay tuned as it looks like this kitty has claws!

UPDATE:

By popular request, we have updated the chart to include Photoshop CS3 times as run under Snow Leopard.

Who would have imagined it? Just two months after the initial Falling Prices posts, we’re already in repeats. In June, we announced some great price reductions in our Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID “Triple Interface” model line. Now, we’re happy to announce even further price cuts.

As I mentioned back then, these are really nice units: fast enough for the data I was writing to it and incredibly easy to set up. With all the software and extras included (hint: the secret ingredient is “love”) they were a great deal before; this new price drop makes them an even better value.

In case you’re new (and/or just don’t feel like searching the archives) let’s go over some of the features of this specific OWC Storage Solution:

• Triple-Interface - The  Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID can connect up via FireWire 800, FireWire 400, or USB 2.0. All you need to do is plug it in and go, so it’s great for projects that need to bounce between computers.
• Custom Oxford-based bridge - This A/V Certified bridge chipset ensures fast and reliable data transfer between the drives and your computer.
• Large Capacity - The Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID is available in capacities up to 4.0TB. That’s enough room to store all your music, Photos, capture video, or even make backups.
• Fast, Fast, Fast - There are two 7200 RPM drives, configured in a RAID 0 (striped) in this solution. This provides phenomenal read/write speeds, making disk-intensive tasks, such as video capture and editing, much faster.
• Fully Bootable - With Snow Leopard releasing soon, many people are cloning their old system over to an external drive before installing the new OS. With the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID, you can rest assured that if a key piece of software is incompatible with 10.6, you can boot right to your clone and continue working.
• No searching for cables - Like all OWC products, the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID comes with all the connecting cables you need. Whether you need FireWire 800, FireWire 400 or USB 2.0, the cable is in the box so you can use your drive right away.
• Backup software included - For making your backups easy, we include the full retail version of Prosoft DataBackup III ($59 retail value) for OS X and NovaStor NovaBackup ($49 retail value) for Windows. Also included is the Intech HD Speedtools performance suite and Carbon Copy Cloner. None of these applications are required to use the Elite, but they are excellent applications to have in your utilities library.
• 3-Year Warranty - The Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID is backed by an industry leading 3 Year Full Solution Warranty, underscoring OWC’s commitment to quality, performance and reliability.
• The Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID also qualifies for our exclusive Prosoft Drive Genius offer! Buy Drive Genius now for as low as $25 with purchase of a qualifying storage product – That’s up to 74% off retail price, up to 37% off OWC’s lowest normal selling price!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – these Storage Solutions are one heck of a value, especially with these new, lower prices.

• 640GB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – NOW $179.99
• 1.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – $199.99
• 1.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – NOW $254.99
• 2.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – $259.99
• 2.0TB 7200RPM with 64MB Data Buffer – NOW $287.99
• 2.0TB “Enterprise Class” 7200RPM w/64MB Buffer – NOW $359.99
• 3.0TB 7200RPM with 64MB of Data Buffer – $379.99
• 4.0TB GreenPower w/64MB of Data Buffer – was $679.99, NOW $579.99 (a $100 price drop!)
• OWC Elite-AL Pro RAID SATA HD x 2 enclosure kits are also available without drives as ‘Add Your Own Hard Drives Kits’ starting from $104.99, and have user configurable options for different RAID and non-RAID modes.

Ease of use, speed and reliability make the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID a great solution. These new prices make them a great value.

While OWC Chris S. did a very nice and thorough examination of all the benefits to the FireWire 400/USB 2.0 “Combo Interface” Mercury On-The-Go Pro just last week, I wanted to make you aware of the biggest savings ride offered in this product.

While perhaps not as exciting from a speed thrills standpoint, the USB 2.0 only interface On-The-Go Pro models offer all the same great base benefits but at the lowest prices in the line.

Think of it this way…when you want to go somewhere, and don’t have a lot of green, you can still get to your destination by bus…and in this case, via USB 2.0 that’s found on nearly every legacy to modern computer.

So go ahead, climb aboard the bus…and enjoy the savings from us!

80GB 5400RPM w/ 2MB Buffer    -  $62.99
160GB 5400RPM w/ 8MB Buffer  -  $72.99
250GB 5400RPM w/ 8MB Buffer  -  $82.99
320GB 5400RPM w/ 8MB Buffer  -  $89.99
500GB 5400RPM w/ 8MB Buffer  -  $114.99

250GB 7200RPM w/ 16MB Buffer -  $92.99
320GB 7200RPM w/ 16MB Buffer -  $102.99
500GB 7200RPM w/ 16MB Buffer -  $159.99 (a $30 price drop)

And geez…even the 0GB “Add Your Own Drive” Kit is priced from $25.99. About the only way to travel with your data more economically would be by special Express!

Well, Snow Leopard is on its way, set for arrival in just two days’ time, and is now likely available for order at your favorite retailer. Before the big cat lands, however, you may want to take a look at the software you run every day. As it turns out, some of our favorite apps may need to be updated before it will work with Apple’s latest.

This really isn’t a new thing; each version of OS X has had its share of applications that wound up M.I.A. on release. Though it eventually works out (via update or replacement), it is generally nice to know what kind of hurdles we’ll be facing ahead of time.

So far, the most comprehensive list of applications compatible with 10.6 can be found at http://snowleopard.wikidot.com. Not surprisingly, its depth has made it extremely popular. Unfortunately, this popularity means a lot of hits and, apparently, an overloaded server. As of this posting, getting through to the site is extremely spotty (and, no, that’s not a “Leopard” pun).

Adobe Drops support of CS3

One of the biggest announcements regarding an application’s status with Snow Leopard came from Adobe. The producer of the popular Photoshop application (among many others) announced today that Adobe Creative Suite CS3 would not be supported under Snow Leopard. Not surprisingly, the outcry from the Mac community was considerable.

It should be noted that they did not say that CS3 wouldn’t function under 10.6; they said it would not be supported. This is a key difference. Preliminary reports from many Mac-centric sites show that CS3 seems to be working okay under Snow Leopard (we’ll assume they have the Developer’s Preview) or have only minor errors. However, you’re on your own for troubleshooting.

If you need Adobe support, though, then you may need to either leave your OS where it is, or upgrade Creative Suite to CS4. In the meantime, we all get to look forward to CS5, which is reported to include 64-bit compatibility.

That syncing feeling…

This one hits me a little close to home. It turns out that while Apple was getting rid of old code, it got rid of something else: iSync support for Palm devices.

If you used iSync to synchronize your Palm device with iCal and Address Book, you’ve got to find another solution, as the old iSync conduit no longer works. At the moment, there are no third-party solutions that function flawlessly, though there are reports that basic syncing is possible.

Is it too soon to Snow?

The answer, really, can only be answered by you. Are all your day-to-day applications Snow Leopard compatible? If not, can you live without them until they’re updated?

If your apps are all up-to-date and compatible, then go right ahead and update to Snow Leopard; its pretty spiffy (or so I hear).

If, however, you have a “must run” app that isn’t compatible yet, then you’ll obviously want to hold off until it is. Just do what I do: keep a close eye on MacUpdate. When an app is updated, it’s usually listed there first.

Yowza! It’s been one heck of a week around here, as we all get ready for the release of Snow Leopard. I’d go into details, but it’s much more fun to leave it hanging at that in order to build suspense. :-D

To distract you, I’ll remind you of the fact that it has been a couple of weeks since we’ve introduced a new Instructional Video. Well, I’m glad to say that we’re back on schedule with our videos, and have a new one for you this week.

This time around, we’ll show you how to install a pair of 3.5” SATA hard drives in an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID Enclosure. Whether you’re using the Triple or Quad interface model, this video shows you how easy it is to drop a pair of drives inside.

Following these instructions, you’ll have a nice, fast RAID 0 going in no time.

As always, you can find this video (along with all our other instructional videos) both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube Channel.

About a month or so ago, we had a series of price drops across our line of external enclosures. Well, the trend continues, this time extending into our popular Mercury On-The-Go Pro series. I’m a big fan of these drives, owning a couple for several years now, and these new prices have me looking at purchasing yet another one to compliment my new MacBook Pro.

I’m not alone in praising the On-The-Go Pro; it has received praise from the likes of MacFormat UK, The Mac Observer, Photoshop User, CNET and Macworld. It has even been used by Macworld as the drive to beat when comparing  other portables. Why all the love? Let’s take a look at what this pocket-sized powerhouse offers:

• FireWire and USB 2.0 connectivity - No matter what computer you want to hook it up to, the Mercury On-The-Go Pro can accommodate. Whether you want to use the fast FireWire connection or the near-ubiquitous USB 2.0, the OTG (as we like to call it around these parts) can not only connect, but it can even be powered by your bus of choice. Leave that tag along AC adapter at home!
• Fully Bootable - This is great for backing up your system on the road. If something happens to your main drive and you’ve cloned your system to the Mercury On-The-Go Pro, all you need to is hook it up and you can continue working as if you were running off your internal drive.
• Fast, Fast, Fast - The Mercury On-The-Go Pro features Oxford Performance chipsets (FireWire), and the best qualified HD mechanisms for optimum performance and reliability.
• Made for travel - The small form factor lets you conveniently stow it in your laptop bag, a desk drawer, or even your shirt pocket! Its shock absorbing design further protects the drive (and your valuable data) from the rigors of day-to-day travel.
• Backup software included - Backing up with the Mercury On-The-Go Pro is even easier with the included software bundle. We include the full retail versions of Prosoft DataBackup III ($59 retail value) for OS X and NovaStor NovaBackup ($49 retail value) for Windows. Also included is the Intech HD Speedtools performance suite and Carbon Copy Cloner. None of these applications are required to use the drive, but they are excellent applications to have in your utilities library.
• Accessories included - The Mercury On-The-Go Pro comes with all the cables you need to use the drive right out of the box. We even include a nice carrying case to keep it all together when you’re on the road.
• 3-Year Warranty - OWC stands behind its products. The Mercury On-The-Go Pro is covered with an industry leading 3-Year Full Solution Warranty.
• The Mercury On-The-Go Pro also qualifies for our exclusive Prosoft Drive Genius offer! Buy Drive Genius now for as low as $25 with purchase of a qualifying storage product – That’s up to 74% off retail price, up to 37% off OWC’s lowest normal selling price! This isn’t a “limited/non-support” version, either – it’s the full retail version! It’s a great deal on a great product.

Now that we’ve established what makes the On-The-Go Pro so popular, let’s take a look at the great new prices that will make the On-The-Go Pro.

• 80GB 5400RPM 2MB Buffer – NOW $ 74.99
• 120GB 5400RPM 8MB Buffer – NOW $84.99
• 250GB 5400RPM 8MB Buffer - $99.97
• 320GB 5400RPM 8MB Buffer - $109.99
• 500GB 5400RPM 8MB Buffer – NOW $139.99

• 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Buffer – NOW $112.99
• 320GB 7200RPM 16MB Buffer – $125.99
• 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Buffer – was $219.99, now $199.99 (That’s a $20 price drop!)
• Also available, OWC On-the-Go 2.5” Kits ‘add your own drive’ now priced from $25.99

Built for performance, reliability, and durability, the Mercury On-The-Go models have been recognized with top reviews and include ‘Very Good’, ‘Gear of the Year’, and Editor’s Choice award bestowments. Bus Powered, Pocket Sized – High Capacity Storage in the palm of your hand!

Double Feature – further falling prices!

You may recall that the original set of price drops were for the NewerTech miniStack. Well, aficionados of hard drives with integrated FireWire and USB hubs can rejoice – we have even more price reduction on these to announce.

• 160GB 7200RPM w/ 8MB Buffer – $139.99
• 250GB 7200RPM w/ 8MB Buffer – $142.99
• 320GB 7200RPM w/ 16MB Buffer – $144.99
• 500GB 7200RPM w/ 16MB Buffer – $149.99
• 750GB 7200RPM w/ 32MB Buffer – $179.99
• 1.0TB 7200RPM w/ 16MB Buffer – $184.99
• 1.0TB 7200RPM w/ 32MB Buffer – $199.99
• 1.0TB “Enterprise” Class 7200RPM w/ 32MB buffer – NOW $237.99
• 1.5TB 7200RPM w/ 32MB Buffer – NOW $247.99
• 2TB “GreenPower” w/ 32MB Buffer – NOW $349.99 (a $30 price drop)

That’s two drive series Price Drops in one post! In these economic times, every penny counts, so we here at OWC are making sure you get the best bang for your buck every day!

About a year ago, OWC CEO Larry O’Connor had this to say in his Tips and Deals Newsletter:

“It’s fun to talk about the ‘latest and greatest’ – but certainly not practical to buy that new top of the line each time it comes out. Fortunately, since you’ve got a Mac – it happens to have far more longevity than the average Windows PC out there and with some simple upgrades, it can be made better than new. Even if you’re buying a new Mac, for what can be a very nominal investment, it’s still well worth the while to maximize the Mac or Macs you’re still going to keep running.”

It was a very good point then, and it is still valid today.

He also went into five different ways to upgrade your Mac that can extend its useful life. Like the above paragraph, these five upgrade options remain incredibly valid today. The only difference is that we’re looking at new technology and a new Operating System. So, let’s revisit these concepts and see how they’re relevant today. more…

At the moment, most – if not all memory upgrades – are still selling for substantially below the prices the same upgrades went for this time last year. What’s significant is that those prices a year ago were pretty much at lows already with the chipmakers (Micron, Hynix, Samsung, Etc) selling the parts at prices under that which it costs to produce. These companies have posted – individually – billions in losses on these memory chip sales over the past 2 years. Micron alone has lost over $2 billion during that period. When 4GB was selling for $99 last August – those prices were not sustainable. Due to the global economic meltdown at the end of 2008, costs that were already way below what was supportable dove to all new lows as the chipmakers needed to keep cash flow going. In 2009, we’ve seen productions reduced and entire producers (Qimonda/Infineon for example) completely exit production. As a result, prices had been easing up over the course of this year as the supply/demand equation has come into balance.

Today’s prices are still as much as 50% less than where the cost of various modules could easily be heading. Just over the past five days we’ve now seen cost increases of another 5-10% on DDR2 and DDR3 memory that was already up about 20-30% just over the prior 3-4 weeks. After about two years+ of supply imbalance, we are seeing things start to move swiftly back to a cost level that – if nothing else – will ensure memory continues to be available while these producers stop bleeding red ink to turn out the parts.

Currently, we have stock that doesn’t reflect the latest cost increases. More memory makes a tremendous difference for performance and will make an even bigger difference with Apple’s 10.6 Snow Leopard too. I have no crystal ball – with respect to real costs and supply – but it’s far more likely for pricing to continue ticking up a slope than go downhill again. It’s finally come to the point where the remaining chip makers no longer can continue producing parts sold below true cost vs. that long time bit about it being better to keep production lines going. They can’t afford to and the adjustment to supply is starting to show.

So, how do you turn this somewhat scary price ride into a fun, thrilling experience? Add some speed thrills to your Mac by getting in line on our site right now with these deals:

Add up to 8GB of Memory / Ram to Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro models with 4GB kits from $62.99

Add up to 8GB of Memory / Ram to Apple iMac models with 4GB kits from $62.99

Add up to 4GB of Memory / Ram to Apple Mac mini Models with 4GB from $62.99

Add up to 32GB of Memory / Ram to Apple Mac Pro Models with 8GB Kits from $25.62 per GB of upgrade

Your model not listed above? Never fear…we have upgrades for nearly every Mac produced during the last two decades!

More than just the original factory maximums, we also have tested and support configurations that were not or in some cases still not available from Apple. This includes up to 6GB or 8GB on various MacBook, MacBook Pro, and iMac models that were limited to 4GB; 16GB or 32GB on Mac Pro models originally limited to 8GB or 16GB. When you select memory upgrades by your model – our site shows exactly what upgrade options we have tested and support for your specific machine. Outside of Apple, OWC has the most extensively Apple Mac computer equipped testing lab which enables us to truly confirm all aspects of memory operation. This lab includes nearly every Apple Mac model that has been released over the past 15 years. We don’t just produce & sell memory for Mac – we know Mac memory inside and out.

Not all memory is created equal – OWC guarantees all our memory to meet or exceed Apple Specifications with particular attention to Apple specific requirements including (but not limited to) cooling/temperature, temperature sensor chips, SPD firmware, and gives you purchasing confidence by backing it with a Lifetime Advance Replacement Warranty. Heck, we even offer cash back rebates for your old Apple memory modules!

So go ahead, buckle on in and let us help you take your Mac on a thrill ride before the “admission fee” increases.

Have you heard about that nifty little gadget by Apple? Apparently it’s some sort of cell phone combined with a music player that you sync using iTunes, and is apparently quite popular…

I am, of course, referring to the near-ubiquitous iPhone. To avoid hearing about it or its music-only iPod brethren, you’d have to avoid television, radio, magazines, Web sites, and pretty much not go out in public at all. In other words, its everywhere.

With something that popular, there are going to be a lot of people using it in a lot of different ways. This opens the door for all kinds of different accessories.

Newer Technology, no stranger to the iPod arena, has released a couple of new sync cables. The first, the NewerTech 3 in 1 Audio/Sync/Charging Cable for iPod and iPhone is a standard sync cable, with something a little extra – a mini stereo jack that outputs a line-level signal. Now you can go from charging and playing music at your desk, to playing your music in your Auxiliary input equipped car stereo without changing cords.

If you don’t have a car stereo with an Auxiliary input, but would still like to charge your phone in the car, NewerTech has also released an auto charger. It does what it says: plug one end into your iPod/iPhone, the other into your car’s 12V accessory outlet  and your iPod/iPhone will charge as you drive.

Psst… a secret tip.

While each of the two cables is useful in its own right, they really shine when you’ve got both pieces. The auto adapter features a USB connection – the sync cable is a standard USB/dock connector cable.

You can plug the “3 in 1” cable into the auto/USB adapter component of the auto adapter and use it to charge AND play through. You can then use the cable from the auto adapter as a second sync cable, useful for work, travel, or replacement. This allows you to sync, charge and play music from your iPod/Phone via iTunes when at your desk, then unplug from your desktop and continue to listen and charge in the car.

And if you want to charge your iPod/iPhone via a wall adapter at home or while traveling, just use the new Auto Charger with NewerTech’s 120-12V Power Adapter.

This is definitely a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts!

While there has been quite a debate over Apple’s decision to provide an SD card slot rather than an ExpressCard slot on the MacBook Pro 13″ and 15″ models, the fact of the matter remains that these machines are available and that many of us will be using these laptops. So how do we make the best use of our new port?

The first few suggestions are obvious – use the card reader to read the information from your SD compatible camera, PDA, or cell phone. Also use the SD card for removable storage just as you would use a USB flash drive.

In my overall review of the MacBook Pro at its release, I had gone into detail on the storage capabilities of the SD cards to come. And I touched on the bootability aspect of the SD card slot. But what makes this important? Well the answer is twofold. A trim, clean, uncluttered startup disk boots much faster than one with all your programs and files installed on it. As a laptop typically only comes with one hard drive, we used to be limited to using the internal drive with all our saved data and programs cluttering it up, or carrying around a separate external boot drive such as a Mercury On-The-Go or Express. The SD card is physically so much smaller and an 8GB card has more than enough room to hold a trim, clean version of OS X 10.5 (a 16GB SD card has enough room to hold a full version of the OS).  Just make sure you don’t pull out the SD card while you’re still using it.

Additionally and more importantly, an SD card with the operating system installed can be used as an emergency startup disk. In the case of a corrupted drive directory structure, this can come in very handy if you find yourself unable to boot your MacBook Pro. For more detailed information on restoring a corrupted drive, read OWC Larry’s article “Resolving System Problems”

So, how do you go about making a bootable SD card? It’s actually quite simple.

To install OS X 10.5, you’ll need at least an 8GB card (There should be smaller space requirement for Snow Leopard, but we won’t know for sure until after its release).

Format the SD card using disk utility. Under the “Partition” tab, highlight the SD card you want to format. Set the card for one partition and Format: Mac OS Extended Journaled. Give the volume a name and click on “Options”. You need to choose GUID partition table in order to boot from the card. Click “Apply” and the drive will be erased and formatted correctly.

Once formatted, use your OS X 10.5 install DVD and run the installer. Select the SD card as the destination. Follow the prompts until you get to the “Install Summary” page.

Choose “customize” on the Install Summary page and uncheck Printer Drives, Additional Fonts, Languages, etc. so all you’re left with is the “Essential System Software” checked. Don’t worry, it should be grayed out as an option that you can’t accidentally uncheck. This will cut the installation space in about 6.2GB from 11.6GB. Click install and let it work. When its done installing it is ready to use. Along with the OS, it is also a good idea to keep a few disk utilities on your emergency startup disk. Just a few we suggest are:

TechTool Pro
DiskWarrior
ProSoft Drive Genius
ProSoft Data Rescue II
File Salvage

To boot exclusively from the SD card, set the SD card as the Startup disk in System Preferences>Startup Disk.

Otherwise, insert the card and hold the option key at startup to manually choose the SD card as your Emergency Startup Disk.

It’s been a while since I’ve lobbed some free software your way. Since we don’t have an installation video this week, I figured this was an optimal time to talk about a couple of pieces of Freeware I’ve recently come across that you might find interesting.

Smile for the Cameras!

This is an awesome concept for a piece of software. Normally, whenever you plug in a camera, Image Capture automatically opens your image editor of choice. As with most people, this works well for me, as all I do is plug in my camera, iPhoto opens, and I can import my pictures.

Unfortunately, this setup breaks down a bit when you also have an iPhone, which is also seen as a camera. This can become inconvenient in some cases. If you have an Aperture library of several thousand pictures (this is not unreasonable – I know multiple people that have libraries this large), you don’t want it launching every time you connect your iPhone.

This is where Cameras comes in. This free preference pane recognizes each camera-enabled device you attach to your computer, and sets custom system behaviors for each one. You can set it so your DSLR can open Aperture while your point-and-shoot brings up iPhoto and your iPhone does nothing at all. It’s one of those things that should have been built into the system in the first place.

I’ll admit that I haven’t had a chance to use this software to its best ability, simply because I don’t have an iPhone and only one digital camera. However, as I said before, this is an amazingly great concept and those around the OWC offices that are using it have reported no problems, so I’m passing along the information to you.

Let’s get Geeky!

For the most part, I’m not too keen on using the command line; I’m more of a “graphical” thinker and a terrible typist to boot. There are, however, some things, such as relocating your Home folder, that are just plain easier and/or faster to do in the Terminal.

There are also a number of different command-line tools that provide useful information. The problem with using these tools is they require me to keep one or more Terminal windows open, which is hardly convenient when I have several other programs open at once.

I came across Geek Tool a while back, and liked that it could display all sorts of Terminal results on my desktop, but found it was too difficult to get anything to work the way I wanted it to. With its latest incarnation, though, things have gotten a lot easier to use. I now use it to display a monthly calendar (using an adjustment of the cal command), my upcoming iCal events (using the free command-line tool, iCalBuddy), and a couple other bits of information, such as internal/external IP addresses, uptime,  and a log file or two.

Geek Tool is definitely not for everybody; it is best utilized by folks with a lot of experience with Linux tools. For those who can use it, though, this can be a helpful way to monitor your system.

While we don’t have an instructional video for you this week, we’ve got something just as educational, if not as animated. Not resting after designing OWC’s new look, our crack product development and graphics departments put together a nifty resource center to help de-mystify RAID setups.

While I would be hard-pressed to find the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Performance 7200RPM RAID, the Guardian MAXimus or the Elite-AL Pro Qx2 to be lacking in multi-drive capability, sometimes you need something larger and/or integrated.

Unfortunately, unless you have some experience building a RAID, picking out the appropriate hardware can be kind of tricky. That’s where this resource really shines. Using this page, you’ll have your RAID hardware picked out in no time!

Selecting RAID components in eight simple steps.

1. Select the computer you want to attach your RAID array to and how big you want it to be.
2. Click the “Show RAID Options” button. You will be presented with a selection of the kinds of RAID levels supported by controllers compatible with your computer.
3. Select the Type of RAID you want. If you’re not sure what kind of RAID to choose, there’s a series of QuickGuides to the right that will give you a decent grounding in what kind of setup will work for your needs. Once you select the RAID kind you want, the list of compatible cards will adjust to show only the cards that support that RAID type.
4. Select the card you want from the next list. There’s not much science to this; choose one that has the manufacturer/features/price you want. The enclosures list will adjust to enclosures compatible with this controller card.
5. Select the enclosure you want. Again, this is a matter of personal preference. Once you do, a list of compatible cables will be listed beneath them.
6. Select compatible cables to connect the drives to the controller card.
7. Click the “Add selected items to cart”.
8. Select the SATA drives you wish to add to your RAID – keep in mind that, in most cases, they should all be the same size. Other than that, though, your choice of drive is really up to you.

It’s that easy!

Sometimes, when I feel the urge to tinker, I poke around the various “resource bundles” of applications on my Mac. Its not always a smart thing to do (which is why I always work on a copy) and very often, there’s not much interesting in there besides some icons and a couple of code fragments that aren’t very interesting.

Sometimes, though, you find something incredibly useful. While poking about in the latest version of Safari, I came across a document that lists out the various keyboard and mouse shortcuts.

If you have Safari 4 installed, you can view it by entering this URL into your address bar (or just right-click the link and open it in a new window…) -  file:///Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Shortcuts.html

While most of these shortcuts are old hat for many Safari users, it was nice to have all the combinations listed out as a reference. I later found out that you can also access this page if you have enabled Safari’s Debug menu. This can be done by using any of a number of Free/Shareware Safari add-ons or by entering the following command in Terminal

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1

(thanks to Mac OS X Hints for this tip.)

While the Debug menu may be useful for programmers and the like, there really isn’t too much that’s useful for the rest of us, outside a couple of amusing “party tricks” (ooh… transparent windows…) and the aforementioned shortcuts list.

What I find much more useful is the “Develop” menu. This is another menu that’s disabled by default. It’s easy enough to turn on, though.

1. Go to the Preferences in Safari.
2. Click on the Advanced tab.
3. Check the box next to “Show Develop menu in menu bar.’

In this menu, you’ll find a bevy of tools that will prove useful from time to time.

If you have a page that’s refusing to load via Safari, you can choose to open it directly in another browser you have installed by using the “Open Page With” selection. Similarly, if there’s a site that “requires” a particular browser even though there’s nothing “browser-specific” about it (banking sites are notorious for this), you can change Safari’s “User Agent” string by selecting the “required” browser from the list.

One of the features I use frequently is the Web Inspector. This multi-tabbed interface allows you to check out the source code, images, scripts, Cascading Style Sheets, and other elements of a site. I’ve used it to troubleshoot pages I’ve put together, grab images I’d otherwise be unable to get, and see what causes a particular page to take so darn long to load.

There are a bunch of other selections, as well, including options to turn off  images, CSS, JavaScript and a number of other items. My advice on those is to leave them alone unless you’re sure they’re what you need to turn off. You can find more information about this menu by looking up “Develop menu” in Safari Help.

Though it is doubtful that I will ever say that it is the only Web browser you will need, Safari 4 is a very capable one. Now, with just a couple of tweaks, it becomes even more flexible. While it may not have all the extensibility of Firefox, these options make it my primary browser both at work and at home.

With the recent unveiling of our new site look, you may have noticed the site “wrapper” space theme. If you have been an OWC customer or follower for any amount of time, you likely will have heard or read about our affinity for Star Trek and all things space related as well as the impetus for our company name.

As such, it was only logical to create a background with that theme. Sorry, I couldn’t resist that and in no means am I as quick with the Trekkie nods as OWC Chris S. was in our movie recap.

So, if you would like to boldly give your Mac’s desktop a look that is from an Other World and join us in stargazing, you can use the very same OWC Blue Star Field background.