In 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.

If you upgrade a Mac to an SSD drive – having good management of your files is important where you use an additional drive or drives to have capacity for your photo, music, video libraries, etc.  With the relatively small sizes of SSD drives, they can fill up with data fast; but the performance benefits of SSD are undeniable.

If you’ve been following our blog since the beginning, we’ve given several tips on relocating these types of files off your internal storage on onto external storage solutions. Today’s modern operating systems make this pretty easy.

For those audiophiles out there, an iTunes library can quickly become an overwhelming size.  Back in March, we showed you how to move your iTunes library to an external hard drive such as the Mercury On-the-Go Pro.

Photography enthusiasts will also find their pictures taking up more and more hard drive space.  You can also move your iPhoto library to an external drive to keep your primary drive lean and operating at top speeds.

My basic rule of thumb to follow is to keep the Operating System and your applications themselves on the main, internal hard drive while storing the files, documents, pictures, movies, music, etc. on the separate drive.  By doing so, you can even use a 64GB SSD for boot and application performance benefits WHILE maintaining access to extensive file libraries that can’t all fit onto an SSD.

Check out OWC’s full selection of SSD Drives and External Hard Drive Solutions to find the fit that’s right for you.

NewerTech’s Guardian MAXimus® is the Plug & Play solution that keeps your data safe with real-time data redundancy via hardware RAID-1 Mirroring. Connect to any Mac or (or PC) with FireWire 800, FireWire 400, eSATA, or USB 2.0 and it does the rest. Perfect for the ultimate Time Machine backup too!

Fast, Easy to Use, Priced Right too!

The NewerTech Guardian MAXimus RAID-1 FW800/400+eSATA+USB2 ‘Quad Interface’ solution provides high performance, exceptional data protection/reliability, and plug and play simplicity with its Oxford936 based bridge interface. This solution is a hardware RAID 1 ‘Redundant Mirror’ which automatically and real-time keeps your data backed up to protect against a hard disk failure. LED indicators on the front of the solution indicate the status of the two drives. Should a drive ever experience a malfunction, normal data operation continues seamlessly. If the malfunction if a recoverable ‘soft’ type, the Guardian MAXimus will rebuild the mirror (also without data interruption) automatically. If the disk failure requires a drive to be replaced, once the new drive is installed – again, the Guardian MAXimus will automatically rebuild the Mirror without loss of data to time.

Available in capacities of up to 2.0TB + 2.0TB Mirrored, the Guardian MAXimus is a sleek, compact Aluminum design of only 9.0″ Long x 2.8″ Wide x 5.8″ High. In addition to the benefits of Hardware RAID 1 Mirroring, these solutions are full certified for Audio/Video, Backup, Graphics, Music, General Data needs and more! With 2 x FW800, 1 x FW400, 1 x USB 2.0/1.1, & 1 x eSATA Ports – units are fully Bootable and provide excellent access flexibility to stored data based via whatever interface choice(s) are available on systems solution may be connected to.

NewerTech Guardian MAXimus FW800/400+USB2+eSATA RAID 1 prices:

• 320GB + 320GB Mirror 7200RPM w/32MB total Data Buffer –  now $219.99 (a $10 Price Drop)
• 500GB + 500GB Mirror 7200RPM w/32MB total Data Buffer –  now $229.99 (a $10 Price Drop)
• 750GB + 750GB Mirror 7200RPM w/64MB total Data Buffer – remains at $299.99
• 1.0TB + 1.0TB Mirror 7200RPM w/64MB total Data Buffer – remains at $319.99
• 1.5TB + 1.5TB Mirror 7200RPM w/64MB total Data Buffer – remains at $399.99
• 2.0TB + 2.0TB Mirror 7200RPM w/64MB total Data Buffer – now $519.99 (a $30 Price Drop)

Solutions all include connecting cables for FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB, and eSATA + Intech HD Speedtools Utility Suite for Apple OS X, Prosoft DataBackup III – Full retail application for Apple OS X ($59 retail value), NovaStor NovaBackup – Full Retail Application for Windows ($49 retail value), everything you need to plug and play and go. Solutions are further backed by a full THREE YEAR NewerTech Solution Warranty.

Also Available – do it yourself GMAX RAID-1:
0GB Kit – build your own Guardian Mirror available now $139.99 (an $8 price drop) – software bundle & cables included.

Special Offer: NewerTech Guardian solutions qualify for Prosoft Drive Genius OWC Exclusive Special 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! Details online here: http://eshop.macsales.com/special_offer/prosoft_Drive_Genius

Back in August ,when Apple updated their MacBook Pro line of laptops, the ExpressCard slot was replaced with an SD cardslot.  Here in October, Apple again has added this feature to the entire iMac lineup. It’s located just beneath the optical drive on each machine.

This would be a good time to revisit my prior article: What good is the MacBook Pro SD card slot anyway? to learn how to make the most out of this added feature.  It goes into detail on making a boot drive out of an SD card as well as an emergency startup disk.

Additionally, the widescreen form factor of the new iMac lends to using the machines for multimedia displays.  An SD card makes a great medium for transferring your multimedia data between computers.  A DVD quality movie takes up about 2GB per hour of playtime.  With SD cards ranging from 2GB to 32GB currently, one could store up to 16 hours of footage on a single card.  More exciting is the introduction of the SDXC format which as early as 2010 could have us storing from 64GB up to 2.0TB on a single card.

I for one wouldn’t be surprised to see movies, TV shows and other media being distributed on SD cards just the same as we see CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs currently. Time will tell on that one.

Since we’ve started with the price dropping blog posts around here, we’ve never before seen a product win the “Triple Crown” of price reductions.  On June 25th, we watched as the 4.0TB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID FireWire 800/400+USB2 storage solution triumphantly crossed the finish line with a $70 price drop.  On August 27th, we marveled as this same 4.0TB unit gave an impressive victory with an additional $100 knocked off the price.  Now, we’re pleased to report that one more $60 price drop today will have earned this product a $230 total reduction in price since Summer!

Quality, Performance, Reliability.

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID FireWire 800/400+USB2 storage solutions utilize the latest high-performance, custom Oxford based bridge coupled with the latest Serial-ATA HDD technology to provide overall superior reliability and performance. These solutions are further backed with an industry leading 3 Year Full Solution Warranty.

Now available with up to 4.0TB (4000GB) of capacity, Elite-AL Pro RAID is a sleek and compact Aluminum design of only 9.3″ Long x 2.8″ Wide x 5.6″ High. These Elites are Fully A/V Certified as well as EMC Retrospect Backup Certified for all your Audio/Video, Backup(Time Machine Ready), Graphics, Music, General Data needs and more! With 2 x FW800 Ports, 1 x FW400 Port, 1 x USB 2.0/1.1 Port – solutions are also fully Bootable and provide excellent data accessibility via any of the available interface ports, whichever best/desired interface is available on the system(s) it’s being connected to with complete interoperability of read/write functionality and accessibility.

Current OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FW800/400+USB2 RAID prices:

• 640GB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – remains at $179.99
• 1.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer - remains at $199.99
• 1.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – was $254.99, now $249.99 $5 Drop
• 2.0TB 7200RPM with 32MB Data Buffer – remains at $269.99
• 2.0TB 7200RPM with 64MB Data Buffer – $287.99, now $279.99 $8 Drop
• 2.0TB “Enterprise Class” 7200RPM w/64MB Buffer – remains at $379.99
• 3.0TB 7200RPM with 64MB of Data Buffer – was $379.99, now $349.99 (a $30 price drop!)
• 4.0TB GreenPower w/64MB of Data Buffer – was $579.99, now $519.99 (a $60 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 $107.99, and have user configurable options for different RAID and non-RAID modes.

See the complete line up here.

Solutions all 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 in the complete Intech HD Speedtools performance suite and Carbon Copy Cloner. None of these applications are required to use the Elite, but excellent applications to have in your utilities library & the DataBackup can hardly be beat. FireWire 800 connecting cable, FireWire 400 connecting cable, USB connecting cable, and 3 Year Warranty also included.

As with any major sporting event, there is always a prize over and above the satisfaction of winning.  In this case, we give the extra prize to you, our customer…

Special Offer:   OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Solutions qualify for Prosoft Drive Genius OWC Exclusive Offer!

Buy Drive Genius now for s 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! Details online here: http://eshop.macsales.com/special_offer/prosoft_Drive_Genius

We’re continuing  our diligent work here at the OWC testing lab benchmarking every machine compatible with Snow Leopard and should be ready to start posting some of the results soon.

In the meantime, however, we found some great nuggets of information that we’d like to share!

For our latest test, we took two machines in which the most memory that can be installed was 2GB, maxed out their memory, and checked the performance gains that installing a faster hard drive can provide.  The results were quite impressive!

The Contenders:

The original 2006 MacBook 13″
1.83GHz Core Duo running OS 10.6.1

The 2004 iMac G5 20″
PowerPC 1.8GHz running 10.5.8

Heres what we found:

• The Photoshop Action 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 CS4. 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.  Lower times are better.
• Our Stress Test is a variation on the Photoshop Action Test where the test is performed while iTunes is playing music with the visualizer running. This test adds one additional program to represent that additional light computing we do on the side in real life. With the Visualizer on, the resource draw on the machine is not limited to processor power and memory but to the video card and memory allocated for video as well. Lower times are better.
• The 16 Program Launch test simply measures the time (in seconds) it takes for 16 common programs* from OS X and iLife to open simultaneously.  Lower times are better.
• The Boot Time Test is exactly what it sounds like – the time it takes to boot the machine.  Again, lower times are better.

Considering the investment that a new Apple computer can cost, it makes sense to get all you can out of the machine you have before taking the plunge.  Installing a Solid State Drive can certainly extend the retirement date of your existing Mac for a fraction of the cost of a new computer.

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.

Upgrading your machine is a great way to bring out the best in it and allow it to do what you need it to accomplish. Over the years, there have been some common problems that keep popping up. Though most of you probably know them already, it sometimes slips by the wayside in eager anticipation of getting all those benefits the upgrades will bring.

To help avoid the most common problems, here is a compiled list of reminders that we like to call “The Golden Rules of Upgrading.” We’ve broken it into two parts: things to consider before buying your upgrades and things to consider after you have received the new goodies and are ready to put them to use.

more…

OWC Mercury On-The-Go Pro FireWire+USB2 Combo Portable solutions provide convenient, interface flexible storage at a competitive price. Built for performance, reliability, and durability; all models are bootable via FireWire and/or USB2. And now this lightweight powerhouse can be had at a lower price!

Each drive is bus-powered (no external power required), feature Oxford performance FireWire chipsets, and the best qualified HD mechanisms for optimum performance and reliability. The shock absorbing design further protects the drive and valuable data from external forces. All connecting cables, carrying case, and an industry leading 3 Year OWC Warranty are included. We also include a $200 retail value disk utility bundle of award-winning Prosoft DataBackup 3 for OS X, Intech HD Speedtools, and NovaStor NovaBACKUP® for Windows.

Don’t take our word for it!

These drives and their sister, OWC On-the-Go 2.5″ Kits, now priced from $27.95, solve all your travel needs, but you don’t have to take our word for it. Here are links to recent reviews of our On-The-Go solutions:

12/11/08 – OWC Mercury On-The-Go (320GB) – PCMag.com, by Joel Santo Domingo.

12/09/08 – OWC Mercury On-The-Go FireWire 800/400 + USB 2.0 320GB – Macworld.com, by Chris Holt. (By the way, don’t miss the comments section for even more user testimonials.)

11/25/08 – Photographer Scott Kelby’s travel photography workflow, which depends on OWC On-The-Go drives.

4//19/08 – OWC’s Triple-Interface Mercury-on-the-Go 500GB HDD, Gizmodo, Australia.

If these recommendations don’t convince you, take a look at who 9to5mac shows using two OWC Mercury On-The-Go drives with a MacBook…President Obama!