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Archive for January 29th, 2010

Looking Back At OWC Over The Years.

Friday, January 29th, 2010 | Author: OWC Jen

While I celebrate my 13th anniversary of working at OWC this month, I thought a virtual stroll down memory lane might be informative and entertaining. When I first came here, there were only about six employees, so we all did whatever was needed to make sure orders got out the door and customers were happy. I would take an order in the morning, help run it through the credit card terminal later in the afternoon or evening, and sometimes help enter it into the Fed Ex terminal at night.

I had a number of paper pages stapled together that gave me the latest prices on 30-pin and 72-pin SIMMs, 168-pin DIMMs and everyone’s favorite SCSI drives (is my SCSI fast, wide, ultra, ultra fast, ultra wide, fast wide?).  Notes were all over it since we didn’t yet have the website we have today with all its helpful information. With the Apple II I used once or twice in the library at my grade school being my only Apple/Mac experience, I relied heavily on www.everymac.com and a program called QuickConference to instant message Larry (a.k.a. OWC Larry) or our other techie guy to figure out what was compatible with what.

You can check out early iterations of our website here by typing in “www.macsales.com” into the field at the top. If you aren’t familiar with the Wayback Machine (not to be confused with the WABAC machine), it is a very cool tool and project. Article Continues…

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Category: OWC Difference, Random Thoughts & Topics
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The Apple iPad, Casual Home Computing Untethered

Friday, January 29th, 2010 | Author: OWC Erik

I was out last night and someone asked me what I thought about the Apple iPad, saying that they thought of it as a great new mobile computer.

I stated back that I didn’t really think of it as being a “mobile computer” as much as I thought of it creating a new category of “untethered” home computers. No wires, not to the wall, and not to a mouse.

While it can definitely be thrown in the car or in a bag and taken out on the road and have access to 3G wireless connectivity (if you are willing to pay for it), I think that it will play a big part in the living rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms of the future.

The Nintendo Wii is kind of responsible for what has been coined “casual gaming”. I think the iPad will be the device that spawns the term “casual computing”.

I am sure iPhone and iPod Touch owners would agree that they rarely sit down at their computers to check their e-mail anymore, they just pull out their iPhone/iPod wherever they are at the moment. When out and about that will not change as those devices will be what is in their pockets, but in the home the iPad will become the go-to device as it expands the experience of touch-based computing with a larger screen and more power.

While I, and others, have some complaints about iPad’s glaringly obvious missing features, I am still very optimistic about it and it’s product line’s future.

This post has 7 comments.
Category: Fresh from Apple, Product Spotlight
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Plug and Play eSATA Card Makes Your Mac Pro Faster

Friday, January 29th, 2010 | Author: OWC Grant

The benefit of eSATA is high performance data transfer typically 2-3 times faster than FireWire 800 for connecting external devices. A drawback has been the need to install and maintain drivers for modern eSATA controller cards… Until now.

The NewerTech MAXPower eSATA 6G PCIe 2.0 Controller Card is among the very first in eSATA Controller cards for the Mac Pro and PCs that is fully Plug and Play. No drivers required for Apple OS 10.5 and later (also Plug and Play driverless with Windows Vista and later), this ACHI compliant PCI Express card is as easy as it gets for adding external SATA device support. Just “install it and forget it” by plugging it into an available PCIe slot and you can then enjoy the performance offered via the eSATA port standard on many OWC, NewerTech, and other third party single drive and hardware RAID solutions. This card isn’t for multi-drive Port Multiplier enclosures/solutions that require software or special RAID controller to enable RAID operation – but it’s an excellent choice for those solutions like the NewerTech GMAX, OWC Elite-AL Pro RAID, and OWC Qx2 solutions that provide a hardware controlled RAID solution and support higher data throughput via standard eSATA ports.

And for all you speed freaks out there, we’ve created the ultimate performance bundle. And we’ll have some benchmarks up soon showing just how fast you can go!

But I digress…back to this awesome card…it offers exceptional ease of use without the worry of a driver that may not work with a future OS release – it’s also an exceptional bargain priced at just $59.99. Because it doesn’t have those pesky drivers to maintain and possibly cause incompatibility down the road, one of its greatest benefits – that Plug and Play ease – also allows it to be exceptionally affordable too.

Bottom line…if you’ve ever wanted to enjoy the higher level of performance available from eSATA – but with the Plug and Play operation that you’ve grown accustomed to with FireWire – the NewerTech MaxPower eSATA 6G PCIe 2.0 Controller Card is your ticket to the fast lane.

This post has 6 comments.
Category: New @ OWC, Press Releases, Product Spotlight
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