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By Brad Cook
This is an exciting time for Mac owners. As the recent Macworld Expo in New York clearly demonstrated, a steady stream of new and improved USB and FireWire products continue to appear, giving Macintosh customers many more options for expanding the multimedia prowess of their systems. Scanning the Future New scanners, for example, were one of the biggest entries at Macworld, offering new options for bringing text and images into the Mac from both the printed page, photographs and slides. Canon led the way with a quartet of new CanoScan flatbed USB scanners. A little more than an inch high and sporting an expandable lid which allows customers to scan thick materials such as books, the new scanners come in gunmetal, smoke gray and champagne colors. Different models offer a range of functionality. Each comes bundled with Canon software, a suite of graphics applications that includes:
The two higher end models also come with Adobe Photoshop LE. For serious graphics professionals, Epson introduced its Expression 1640XL, a flatbed scanner tha can handle larger paper sizes. It offers 1600 x 3200 dpi resolution, one of the highest scanning resolutions available. A FireWire interface can be added at a nominal cost. Small or home office users who like FireWire connectivity will want to check out two new desktop scanners from UMAX Technologies. The Astra 6400 and Astra 6450 both offer 600 x 1200 dpi optical resolution and 42-bit color depth. The 6450 model can scan positive or negative film. New Ways to Connect and Store If you do lots of scanning or have been busy using iMovie to create Desktop Movies to share with friends and family, you know how important it is to have plenty of storage. Then you'll be happy to hear about hard drives and recordable CD drives introduced at Macworld. LaCie's top offerings include an array of PocketDrives in 6 GB, 18 GB and 32 GB sizes, all of which provide both USB and FireWire connections. If you prefer to store your data on rewritable CDs, you'll want to check out LaCie's new FireBooster, a FireWire read/write CD drive which can write at 12x, rewrite at 4x and play at 32x. SmartDisk and EZ-Quest also announced a variety of FireWire and USB drives and Sony unveiled two new models in its Spressa line of CD-RW drives, one of which is the first FireWire drive with 8x rewrite ability. Sony will bundle that drive with a suite of Macintosh software which includes Discribe CD Creation, Retrospect Express and Mixman Studio. Looking for backup? Consider these tape drive options from Imation and OnStream. Imation recently introduced the Travan FireWire 20GB Drive, which is bundled with Dantz Retrospec Desktop Backup. Retrospect also comes bundled with the new Echo FireWire and Echo USB 30GB Tape Drives from Onstream. |
Adding FireWire Capabilities If you own a Macintosh desktop computer that doesn't include FireWire but would like to take advantage of some of the scanners or external storage devices available for the Mac, you may want to take a look at the MACh Fire PCI expansion card from XLR8, which comes with a FireWire cable and VideoShop 4.5. Keyspan sells similar FireWire expansion cards and bundles them with QuickTime Pro. Or maybe you have a peripheral with a SCSI connector that you'd like to use with a newer Mac with USB or FireWire ports. If so, both Adaptec and Orange Micro have products you may find interesting. Adaptec has just announced USBXChange, an adapter that lets you connect peripheral devices with a SCSI port to the USB port on newer Macs. Orange Micro, meanwhile, showed off their new Orange Converter, which allows SCSI devices to connect to FireWire ports. Multimedia Extras If you're looking for an affordable digital camera you can use to bring digital snapshots directly into your Macintosh, check out the new Digital DualCam 640, a USB-enabled digital camera from IXLA which takes pictures in 640 x 480 resolution. Using IXLA's user-friendly software, you can make all kinds of fun changes to your photos and send them to your friends. Gamers will be happy to hear that 3dfx will be bringing them the Voodoo5 5500 PCI video card, the first in what 3dfx says will be a complete line of high-end Mac graphic accelerator products. And since no game is complete without great audio to accompany those amazing 3D graphics, you'll be pleased to hear that speakers with a variety of connections are also now available. Apple partner Harman/Kardon used Macworld to introduce its SoundSticks, a set of cool, clear speakers which look like they just came from the set of a science-fiction film. They come with a subwoofer and are USB-enabled. In addition, Altec Lansing introduced two new series of speakers. Gamers who prefer peripherals in one of the many colors available for iMac will want the 40-watt ACS66i system, which includes two speakers and a subwoofer in blueberry, grape, strawberry, tangerine, lime or graphite. The ADA70 system comes with two 7-watt speakers and a 20-watt subwoofer. It takes advantage of the benefits of USB connectivity by using digital audio, which is processed in the subwoofer for a better signal-to-noise ratio. Take It From Here Macworld Expo New York turned out to be a great show not only for Apple but also for the many third-party vendors who are committed to delivering great peripherals to enhance your computing experience. If you're interested in more information about the many great products available for Macintosh, be sure to check out the Macintosh Products Guide, which lists over 15,000 hardware and software products. |
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