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Pump up your Late ’09 Mac mini with OWC.

Friday, November 20th, 2009 | Author: OWC Chris S.

pumped-miniNow that we’ve got upgrade installation videos for the Late ’09 MacBook and iMacs, we are turning our attention to the other upgraded model – the Mac mini. While we’re hard at work on the upgrade videos for the new Server model, those of you with the standard mini aren’t being left out in the cold. In fact, the videos for your mini are ready to go!

As it turns out, the internals of the Late ’09 mini are identical to those of the Early ’09 model. That means the take-apart is exactly the same, too. So whether you want to put in a larger hard drive or bump up the RAM, the free video instructions can be found both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube channel.

Of course, if you decide after watching the process, you’d rather have this upgrade professionally done, we can help you out there, too. Our Installation Service offers swift turnaround and professional results, all at a reasonable price.

Even though your Mac mini isn’t one of Apple’s “flagship” products, it doesn’t mean it can’t be a heck of a workhorse. Maximize your mini’s performance with upgrades and a little help from OWC.

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Category: Installation Videos
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OWC Offers Free Shipping & Top 10 “Black Friday/Cyber Monday” Gift Giving Ideas

Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | Author: OWC NewsFeed
Other World Computing announced today it has begun offering free shipping on all orders over $150 from its on-line catalog of over 2,500 products and a Top 10 Gift Giving Ideas list with “stocking stuffer” suggestions starting at $3.99 to help consumers make tech/gadget gift giving easier and more economical heading into the upcoming “Black Friday/Cyber Monday” holiday shopping kickoff dates.
“With value and frugality being key objectives of shoppers this year, we wanted to make sure OWC offered the right products and services to make us the easiest, one-stop choice for Mac, PC, iPod, and iPhone products” said Other World Computing Brand Manager Grant Dahlke. “We’ve also extended our operation hours so qualifying orders can ship same day when placed as late as 10:30pm as well as permanently extending our Live Chat support to a full 24/7 service level.”
OWC Top Gift & Stocking Stuffer ideas include:
• Kensington Pocket-Link 3-in-1 Cable $3.99
Provides retractable Ethernet/telephone and USB cords in a single, self-contained housing.
• Cellboost iRecharge $4.99
External battery pack for iPods/iPhones and other USB chargeable devices.
• OWC Memory Upgrade Kits from $15.99
More memory = faster Mac with easy to install OWC Memory upgrades.
• OWC Express USB 2.0 Enclosure $19.99
Pocket-sized, bus-powered 2.5″ SATA hard drive enclosure for the digital mobile lifestyle.
• NewerTech® Charge & Sync + $39.99
Portable charger, battery pack, and sync solution for iPods, iPhones, and other USB compatible devices.
• NewerTech Voyager Quad Interface Hard Drive Docking Solution $89.99
“Quad Interface” hard drive dock for 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA hard drives up to 2.0TB.
• NewerTech Guardian MAXimus $319.99
Plug and Play RAID 1 with two 1.0TB hard drives for protecting precious holiday memories.

presentforyouIn case you didn’t see it mentioned on other news sites, forums, etc, we announced free shipping on all orders over $150 today thru December 31st from our on-line catalog of over 2,500 products and a Top 10 Gift Giving Ideas list with “stocking stuffer” suggestions starting at $3.99 to help you make tech/gadget gift giving easier and more economical heading into the upcoming “Black Friday/Cyber Monday” holiday shopping kickoff dates.

We’ve been reading that value and frugality are the key objectives of shoppers this year and wanted to make sure we offered the right products and services to make us the easiest, one-stop choice for all your Mac, PC, iPod, and iPhone product purchases. And even bigger news perhaps is that we’ve extended our operation hours so qualifying orders can ship same day when placed as late as 10:30pm as well as permanently extending our Live Chat support to a full 24/7 service level.

OWC Top Gift & Stocking Stuffer ideas include:

• Kensington Pocket-Link 3-in-1 Cable $3.99

Provides retractable Ethernet/telephone and USB cords in a single, self-contained housing.

• Cellboost iRecharge $4.99

External battery pack for iPods/iPhones and other USB chargeable devices.

• OWC Memory Upgrade Kits from $15.99

More memory = faster Mac with easy to install OWC Memory upgrades.

• OWC Express USB 2.0 Enclosure $19.99

Pocket-sized, bus-powered 2.5″ SATA hard drive enclosure for the digital mobile lifestyle.

• NewerTech® NuPower® Charge & Sync+ $39.99

Portable charger, battery pack, and sync solution for iPods, iPhones, and other USB compatible devices.

• NewerTech Voyager Quad Interface Hard Drive Docking Solution $89.99

“Quad Interface” hard drive dock for 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA hard drives up to 2.0TB.

• NewerTech Guardian MAXimus $319.99

Plug and Play RAID 1 with two 1.0TB hard drives for protecting precious holiday memories.

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Category: OWC Difference, Press Releases, Special OWC Deals
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Early “Black Friday” RAID deal from Macsales.com

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual-Bay RAID “Quad-Interface” Solutions use the latest Serial ATA drive technology and a custom Oxford 936DS based bridge design to provide total interface GlobemanShoppingflexibility along with Sustained Data Rates of well beyond 200MB/s. These solutions are excellent for a wide range of applications and data storage needs – including all the way up to live High-Definition video capture! High-Performance, Plug & Play, and Reliability backed by an industry leading 3 year full solution warranty.

They’re constructed of aircraft-grade aluminum, measure only 9.3″ L x 2.8″ W x 5.6″ H, and are fully A/V Certified as well as EMC Retrospect Backup Certified for all your A/V, Backup (Time Machine Ready), Graphics, Music, General Data needs and more! You can Plug & Play on whichever best interface option is available on your systems today as well as have future compatibility with 2 x FireWire 800 ports, 1 x FireWire 400 port, 1 x USB port, and 1 x eSATA port. Completely transparent, total interoperability of data access, read/write regardless of what computer(s) and/or interface you switch between…ease of use just doesn’t get any better than this.

Prices start at just $199.99 for these solutions with capacities going all the way up to 4TB. And speaking of that 4TB model, that’s the early “Black Friday” deal…now just $499.99…a $50 drop! And if you want to look at it on a per byte basis, that’s like $0.12 per gigabyte of storage. Or further still, you could use this 4TB model as a home media center and store up to 481 uncompressed DVD’s.

But getting back to the reasons why OWC is better than other brands – we provide detailed information in our descriptions of the exact hard disk drive models you’ll find inside our solutions as well as performance throughput test data so you can see what these fastest in class solutions can offer you in real-world use.

Like all OWC storage solutions, ,the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual-Bay RAID models 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 complete Intech HD Speedtools performance suite. None of these applications are required to use the Elite, but are excellent applications to have in your utilities library. Plus, don’t overlook the convenience and cost-savings of the included FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB, and eSATA connecting cables.

If you like everything you’ve read thus far and have your own SATA hard drives, we even have DIY Enclosure Kits starting at $107.99 for different RAID and non-RAID modes.

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Category: Product Spotlight, Special OWC Deals
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OWC benchmark tests prove iMac i5 & i7 machines solid to the core

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 | Author: OWC Michael

imac21527Today we completed the benchmarking of the last two iMac computers that Apple introduced last month: The 2.66GHz iMac Intel Core i5 and the 2.8GHz iMac Intel Core i7.

With the ability to simultaneously run 4 cores and 8 cores respectively, these machines are quite the powerhouses of processing power.

It’s interesting to note that even with faster starting times than the other iMacs in this series, the RAM Hog II test (which simulates powerhouse usage where 80% of the machine’s resources are busy with other processes) was rendered satisfied after 12GB of memory was installed.

Not to say that 16GB didn’t show significant results in its own right. The After Effects Render Test (which spawns subprocesses for each core processor) showed steady improvement in times as more and more memory was added to the computer.

And speaking of that 16GB upgrade, to put a spotlight on the results, the i5 model was up to 44% faster in that RAM Hog II test with the maximum memory installed.

As always, what level to upgrade your Mac is a personal choice. You can check out all the Late 2009 iMac memory and hard drive upgrade options and decide if you want to go mild or wild.

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Category: Benchmarking/Performance
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Fueling Yourself After Feeding Your Mac

Monday, November 16th, 2009 | Author: OWC Grant

chef-globeLet’s face it, you love your Mac and “feeding” it with upgrades, accessories, updates, and tweaks to keep it running at optimum performance levels is one of your passions. And, as you can imagine, that’s pretty much Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) around these parts. But by maxing your Mac, you might be neglecting to take care of yourself. Our wonderful customer Robert M. from New Hyde Park, NY, shared a great recipe from his mom that can nourish you faster than perhaps how your Mac runs after one of our upgrades. And if you’re a guy, ya’ just gotta love the idea and the ingredient measurements!

Scrambled Eggs in a Mug

Ingredients:

  • 1 qty “two serving cup” of Egg Beaters (or the Stop and Shop version)
  • 1 or more handfuls of shredded cheese
  • 1 teaspoon or so of bacon bits
  • 1 cooking spray, preferably butter flavored (optional)

Preparation:

  1. Spray interior of a 16 oz coffee mug with the cooking spray. (Robert prefers 16 oz Dixie PerfecTouch travel cups)
  2. Shake and pour “two serving cup” of Egg Beaters into mug.
  3. Drop shredded cheese to taste into mug.
  4. Drop bacon bits into mug. A teaspoon or just a bit more is enough otherwise it tastes a tad salty.
  5. Mix all ingredients together.

Cooking:

  1. Place in microwave for about a minute.
  2. Stir and then place back in microwave and cook until done which is defined as when the eggs are no longer runny.

Like all good informational sources, Robert recommends “keeping an eye on the eggs as you nuke them because they’ll fluff and possibly overflow the mug during the ‘nuking process!” He assures us that they will settle after cooking though.

Hats off to you Robert for keeping the Mac faithful fueled. About the only thing better than Robert’s recipe is an idea from a movie I still want to go into business on someday…

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Category: Random Thoughts & Topics
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New Video: Upgrade the memory in your Late ’09 iMac

Friday, November 13th, 2009 | Author: OWC Chris S.

09imacfam_memoryOne of the biggest changes in Apple’s lineup last month was the addition of two more memory slots to the new iMacs, giving them a total of four. This gives the new iMacs the capability to handle up to 16GB of RAM. While adding more memory will always improve performance, 16GB really makes a difference.

Apple has generally made the iMac’s memory easy to upgrade, and this revision is no different. Some people, though, like to see it done first before diving in themselves. That’s why this week’s addition to our Instructional Series of videos is all about adding memory to your Late 2009 iMac! It doesn’t matter if you have a 21.5″ or 27″ model, or whether you have a Core 2 Duo, i5, or i7 processor, the process is the same for all of them and we show you how to do it.

As always, you can find this video (and all of our instructional videos) either in our Tech Center or on our YouTube channel.

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Category: Installation Videos
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27″ iMac i5 Unboxing

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 | Author: OWC Michael

We just got our first 2.66GHz Quad-Core 27″ iMac i5 machine within the last hour and I really wanted to share our excitement with you.  So we took photos of our unboxing of this unit.

The box itself is sturdy and strong with a comfortable enough handle to lug this baby with it’s monster screen wherever you need:
iMaci5unboxing1

Article Continues…

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Category: Fresh from Apple, Product Spotlight
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Happy Veteran’s Day!

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Major and sincere thanks to all our Veterans! Words can hardly express as we honor and recognize your service today and every day.

OWC is proud to have several veterans among its ranks and have several whose loved ones have served in the armed forces. The dedication and service to the founding principles of our country is an overwhelming example to all.

OWC recognizes that today’s would be a different one without the service and sacrifices of all our service men and women. Many thanks to all those who have served the United States.

Also, a happy 234th ‘birthday’ to the United States Marine Corps.

armedforces

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Category: Misc.
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