While my full review of the 115GB OWC Mercury Extreme solid state drive is still being drafted, I couldn’t resist sharing a video showing the improved boot time with the SSD installed. Take a look and see for yourself!
-Krishna
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Product: Speck SmartShell iPad2 Case (orange)
Manufacturer: Speck
Date Reviewed:6-15-11
Retail Price: $34.95
Price paid: $25.00
When you spend a small fortune on an iPad, you want to protect your investment. Like most people, I purchased Apple’s own Smart Case when I ordered my iPad. But while the Smart Case does a good job of protecting the iPad2′s screen, it does little to protect the backside from potential damage.
Thanks to the iPad’s overwhelming popularity, there is no shortage of third party iPad protectors. While there are iPad protector solutions to choose from, my needs were pretty specific. I wanted a case that:
- sufficiently protects the rear panel of the iPad2 from scratches and dings, while giving me full access to the front and rear-facing cameras
- integrates well, both aesthetically and functionally, with the Apple Smart Case
- isn’t too expensive (under $35)
My research led me to Speck’s SmartShell iPad2 case. I purchased mine at Amazon. I’m no stranger to Speck – in fact, I have reviewed one of their products before.
The SmartShell case comes in 4 standard configurations: Pink Satin, Black Satin, Clear and Orange. The elegant (and easy-to-open) packaging includes the case.
The SmartShell itself is made of a lightweight, ultra-thin matte polycarbonate material. It snaps into place and fits snugly around the iPad2. The case feels solid, yet light to the touch. It integrates beautifully with the Apple Smart Case, as evidenced in the photos below.
The SmartShell iPad2 case allows for easy access to all ports and built-in accessories, including the headphone jack, both front and rear facing cameras, the USB charger, and the volume rocker knob. The only niggle I have with the product is the difficulty in removing the case. Because of its super-snug fit, taking the SmartShell off seems to be a little difficult.
In summary, with the SmartShell case, my iPad2 feels fully protected. Plus, it looks great and integrates well with Apple’s Smart Case. It’s the protector that Apple should have included. Kudos to Speck for another excellent product!
The SmartShell iPad2 Case earns 4.5 out of 5 Bob Weiners.
Product: Sparrow 1.0.1
Developers: Dominique Leca, Hoa Dinh Viet and Jean-Marc Denis
Website: http://www.sparrowmailapp.com
Date Reviewed: February 21, 2011
Retail Price: $9.99 via Mac App Store
Do we really need another Mac e-mail client? That’s the question that came to my mind when I first encountered Sparrow, just a few short weeks ago.
Sparrow, just a few hundredths of a point release past 1.0 (as of this writing), was garnering a lot of positive buzz around the Mac community – much like Tweetie did when it was first released. As a reasonably satisfied Mail.app user for many years, I was curious to find out what the hype was all about.
As all things tech, my curiosity eventually got the best of me. I visited the Sparrow website and watched the introductory video. After reading numerous reviews online, and buoyed by the positive comments on the Mac App Store, I succumbed to temptation and purchased the program.
Sparrow is the first application I’ve bought without having the ability to test it out first. (The developer’s blog mentions that a free Sparrow Lite version is waiting approval from the Mac App Store as of this writing.)
As of this writing, Sparrow only supports G-mail accounts. IMAP support for other services are promised in the 1.1 release.
First Impressions
The big difference between Sparrow and Mail is the Sparrow user interface. It’s obvious that Sparrow’s minimal interface was inspired by Tweetie, but how well would that interface translate to a regular e-mail user like myself? Is there a compelling reason to switch to Sparrow if you are already satisfied with Mail.app (or any other Mac e-mail application, for that matter)?
Read on, true believers…
I’ve put Sparrow through its paces as my main e-mail client for approximately two weeks before writing this review. Upon first launch, a dialog box appears asking for your name, email address, password and signature. Sparrow then retrieves your e-mail. That’s it! Set-up was incredibly easy.
The first thing I noticed about Sparrow is its streamlined, ultra-minimalistic interface. This arrangement allows me focus squarely on the e-mail messages. I found Sparrow’s small window footprint to be ideal, particularly on my laptop, where screen real-estate is at a premium.
Each received message shows the name of the sender, the subject, and the first few lines of the text body. You can follow conversation threads very easily in Sparrow. Double-clicking on a message will cause the email to pop open in a separate window. If you prefer, you can reveal messages in a slide-out tab, available on the lower right corner of the application’s window.
Managing multiple G-mail accounts is simple – you can configure new accounts within Sparrow’s preferences, as shown below.
Composing an email is straightforward, and drag-n-drop file attachment supports image previews.
I have several e-mail folders configured within my G-mail accounts, and my initial concern was that Sparrow wouldn’t support them. My fears were quickly put to rest: Sparrow handles G-mail folders with aplomb, making it very easy to archive emails into their specific folder via G-mail labels. Accessing archived e-mails is also a breeze. Clicking on the tag, located on the lower lefthand side of the Sparrow window, will bring up all the archived folders you have created in your G-mail account.
The Sparrow user interface is very intuitive; managing my e-mail has never been easier (or fun!).
Conclusion
Sparrow is a really slick e-mail client, but is it worth the hassle (and $10) to switch from Apple’s Mail.app to Sparrow? After two weeks of usage, I would say a qualified “YES”.
Why the qualification?
If you don’t use G-mail accounts, Sparrow (in its present state) is somewhat useless. You’ll have to wait until Sparrow version 1.1. However, if you live and breathe G-mail like I do, you’ll find there’s a lot to love with Sparrow, particularly if you have multiple G-mail accounts. Basic AppleScript support has been added in Sparrow 1.0.1, for those that need it.
After using Sparrow for 2 solid weeks, I have all but forgotten about Apple’s Mail.app. Sparrow’s speed and streamlined interface makes managing e-mails much easier and (dare I say, fun!). In my humble opinion, Sparrow is worth the $10 asking price – especially if you manage multiple G-mail accounts on a regular basis.
Sparrow 1.0.1 gets 4.5/5 Bob Weiners.
Fontastic Four
I’m a font junkie. I collect fonts on my hard drive the way a compulsive Spider-man collector buys every single appearance of his favorite hero.
Finding and downloading fonts isn’t a problem. There are many such sites that serve quality fonts, such as ComiCraft, DaFont, 1001 Fonts, and BlamBot.
The problem is that there’s no easy built-in solution to organize, view and compare fonts on a Mac or Windows PC. And when you have hundreds (or even thousands) of fonts taking up space on your hard drive, searching for ‘the right font’ can be a major headache.
For years, I’ve played the game of “Quest for the Perfect Font”, and chances are good that you probably have, too. If you haven’t, here it is in a nutshell:
- Open the Type tool, scroll down the list of all your fonts
- Scroll back up, then scroll back down
- Pick a font type for the text you have. The font doesn’t fit the text.
- Rinse and Repeat.
After playing this game for years (and not realizing that it was, in fact, a terrible game), I decided to take a serious look at font management software. I gave up after finding out that the major players were too expensive or too clunky to use.
I wanted a good font management solution that was 1) easy to use 2) affordable and 3) integrated well within Photoshop . Surely this isn’t too much to ask for?
Apparently, the developers at TypeDNA must have been reading my mind, because their $29 application (introductory price), TypeDNA Font Manager, seemed to match my criteria.
What It Does
TypeDNA Font Manager (hereby called TypeDNA for short) is a stand-alone font management program that also works as a plug-in within Adobe CS5 applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign). For this review, I tested on a Mac Pro running Snow Leopard (10.6.5).
While most font management software will group and activate fonts in your library, TypeDNA goes beyond that role with the aid of Creative Font Tools, which lets you find the font you want to use fast.
TypeDNA gives you the option of limiting your search to Similar Fonts, specific attributes (Weight, Width, Italic, and Optical), Complimentary Fonts, or even SmartChoice – where the tool helps you find visual inspiration when faced with choosing among thousands of fonts. These tools alone are what make TypeDNA a very powerful solution; I was able to quickly zero in on the specific font I wanted in a matter of minutes versus the traditional iterative approach.
You can also view the fonts side by side as mini font cards. There’s even CardView, which lets you sit back and relax and watch your fonts whiz by.
You can find duplicate fonts quite easily with TypeDNA and activating / deactivating fonts can be performed with a click of a button.
The Test Drive
TypeDNA has set up a free test drive of its Font Manager application on their website. This approach, in my opinion, is a fantastic way to test out its features before committing to a purchase. For the purposes of this review, I purchased the program.
Installation was simple and straight-forward, for both the plugin and the stand-alone Font Management application. For my evaluation, I spent most of my time using the TypeDNA plug-in, within Adobe Photoshop CS5. Both within Stand-Alone or Plug-in versions, the fonts loaded fast. Changing the font size within the TypeDNA preview window generated a near instantaneous update with the reflected changes. (I’m using a solid state drive, so if you’re running on a traditional HDD, your mileage may vary.)
The big advantage to having access to TypeDNA within Photoshop is that you can incorporate it as part of your workflow in a seamless fashion. You don’t have to leave Photoshop to compare fonts – you can do it directly from within the plug-in.
Like a particular font? Select the text layer in Photoshop and double-click the font from the TypeDNA plug-in. Your changes are automatically reflected. It’s important to note that if you’re currently editing a Type layer (i.e. typing text), you’ll have to confirm your edits before substituting fonts out with TypeDNA.
Is It Worth It?
I have not used another Font Management application. I do not share fonts on a local network. I’m a single user using fonts on one machine only. For my usage, TypeDNA is an amazing program. It’s really changed the way I approach selecting fonts for my design work. The price is a very reasonable $29 – you’re not going to find anything that comes close to that price with the same feature-set that TypeDNA Font Manager has.
There are a few caveats. The big one is: If you are using an earlier CS version (CS4 and lower), you will not be able to use the TypeDNA plug-in. You can, however, still use the stand-alone TypeDNA Font Manager software.
For me, TypeDNA Font Manager was a no-brainer purchase. If you use Adobe CS5 applications like Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign, it’s easily the best $29 you’ll spend on font management software (heck, it’s only $9 more than the recent Comicraft New Year’s font sale!). Run, don’t walk, and buy it while it’s still cheap!
If you work with numerous fonts on a regular basis, and do not have any need for network level font management, TypeDNA’s Font Manager is a must-buy.
TypeDNA’s Font Manager gets 5 out of 5 Bob Weiners.
I generally find Mac OS X very pleasant to use in my day to day computing. It stays out of my way, allowing me to focus on the task at hand. It’s a really good operating system. But, is everything perfect?
No. Of course not.
No operating system is.
One of my biggest gripes in my day to day use of Mac OS X (most notably Snow Leopard) is when a trashed file refuses to empty from the Trash Can. As a neat freak, I like to keep my Desktop and folder structure pruned and spotless. I always try to delete temporary files on the Desktop (like screenshots or images saved to the desktop) after I’ve finished using them. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Let’s take a specific scenario:
- Using Command-Shift-3, I capture a screenshot, which is then saved to the Desktop.
- I compose a new mail message in Apple Mail and include the screenshot as an attachment. I then send the e-mail off to its recipient.
- Now I try to take the screenshot that’s on the Desktop, drag it to the Trash Can and proceed to empty it.
it’s at this point that I receive a dialog box which says that the file is in use and the Trash Can is unable to empty. The work-around solution for me has been:
- Close Apple Mail.
- Empty Trash.
- Curse Apple for impairing my productivity.
Apparently, I’m not alone in encountering this problem. It turns out there’s actually a utility that will force the Trash Can to empty, by the name of Trash It!, from NoName Scriptware. Trash It! is donation-ware, and does exactly what it says it does.
When you launch Trash It!, you’re presented with a dialog box that has two options. “Just Delete” will do exactly that. “Secure Delete” will delete the files to where you can’t retrieve it (When it’s gone, it’s gone.) You’ll have to enter your administrator password to confirm what you are about to do. And that’s it!
There’s really not much to review in this software. It works well, and – as I mentioned eariler, is donationware (you pay what you think the software is worth, if you find it to be useful.)
What would really be great is if Apple would address the problem in their OS – but in the meantime, if you’re looking for a quick, friendly method of Force Emptying the Trash Can, you can’t go wrong with Trash It!.
-Krishna
By now, many of us have realized (painfully or otherwise) that having a back-up drive is important mandatory. Over the past two years, prices for drives have dropped to relatively affordable levels. Case in point: the average internal SATA terabyte drive is under $100.
I make two separate back-ups to two separate drives, using both Shirt Pocket Software’s SuperDuper and Apple’s own Time Machine. SuperDuper runs nightly, building a fully bootable backup of my main internal drive, while Time Machine runs hourly, performing incremental back-ups.
This system has served my needs very well on my desktop system. On my laptop, however, it’s a completely different story. Because of its mobile nature, it can be up to two weeks before I remember to make a back-up. Backing up a laptop’s hard drive takes more effort because it needs to be tethered to another device. (I haven’t yet made the jump to an online back-up system.)
Most external drives are big and bulky and are difficult to transport around. What I needed was a portable drive with a very small footprint, for back-ups on-the-go.
To that end (and for the purposes of creating an offsite back-up), I purchased a Maxtor 160GB OneTouch 4mini drive from CompUSA this past week.
The price was reasonable – I paid $44 + tax for the unit. Inside the box is a small instruction manual, the drive and a USB cable. The cable has two separate USB connectors on one end (one for power only, the other for power and data), in addition to a small connector that connects directly to the drive.
Maxtor’s instruction manual recommends to plug the Power USB connector first, then the small connector, followed by the Power + Data USB connector. This implies having two free USB ports on your system. Thankfully the drive works just as well when only using the Power + Data USB connector.
I didn’t install the included back-up software, so I can’t comment on that. Both Mac and PC versions are provided. The drive comes formatted for Windows (NTFS). This format is read-only on the Mac. I reformatted the drive using Disk Utility to allow both reads and writes to the drive.
The Maxtor OneTouch mini is extremely portable and seems to be constructed very well. It’s slightly larger and thicker than an iPod Touch, making it very convenient to transport. The drive itself is very quiet – so much so that if it weren’t for the large blinking LED indicator, I couldn’t tell if the drive was ON or not.
Read and write speeds were decent – no quantifiable numbers here – but certainly much faster than copying data onto a Flash USB drive.
I’m generally satisifed with my purchase, but I do wish Maxtor had included a travel pouch for the drive and cables. Aside from that minor quibble, the OneTouch Mini makes for a good portable back-up drive.
I use mine to back-up all my important documents and photos. I’m planning to purchase another OneTouch mini in the near future to have a rotating monthly back-up drive that I can place off-site.
Given that a decent 500GB drive can be had for $70, $40 for 160GB doesn’t seem like such a great deal on a GB/dollar ratio. What you are paying for, first and foremost, is portability.
I’d recommend this drive for laptop users wishing to have a portable back-up drive. If you have a desktop system or work with your laptop in a mostly tethered setting, there are better deals you can find elsewhere.
Highly recommended.
-Krishna
After spending 3 weeks with my Wacom Intuos4 tablet, I feel ready to write about my experiences using it.
The Intuos4 is the 4th tablet I’ve owned from Wacom: My first being the ArtZ model, followed by an Intuos, then Intuos3. I upgraded to the Intuos3 shortly after it was announced, and made a similar move with the Intuos4.
The Intuos4 comes in small, medium, large and x-large sizes. Being that I don’t work on overly large canvases or draw with broad strokes, I ruled out the larger two models. For me, the medium size is the right fit.
Included in the box are a stylus, a USB cable, the tablet itself, a stylus holder (with 10 pen tips), a mouse, and a CD. I didn’t take any unboxing photos, but there are enough of those found on the web already. But I will say this, the unboxing experience was very Apple-esque. If you’ve ever opened a box for a Mac, you’ll know what I mean.
Installation was straight-forward: First, simply plug one end of the USB cable to the tablet and attach the other end to the computer. Then, install the driver software.
I had problems installing the driver software from the supplied disc, so I wound up downloading them from Wacom’s site. This was about the only “niggle” I had with the out-of-box experience.
The best thing about the Intuos4 is the feel of the surface and its pressure-sensitivity. The Intuos3 boasted 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity, while the Intuos4 has double that amount. Also new with the Intuos4 are the LED buttons on the tablet and a scroll wheel, reminiscent of the iPod. The LED buttons display the appropriate keyboard button (Shift, Cmd, Option, etc.), which can also be reassigned as the user sees fit.
When using the Intuos3 tablet, I found myself disabling the buttons on the right-hand side because they got in the way. Thankfully, with Intuos4 can be used with the buttons on the left or right hand side, depending upon whether you are right or left-handed. For me, a righty, the buttons are oriented on the left, out of harm’s way.
The tablet itself works very, very well. Gone is the plastic shield overlay from the previous Intuos models. The plastic overlay was mildly annoying because if your hand perspires, the surface can quickly become sticky. The Intuos4 model’s surface has more ‘tooth’ to it, while similarly allowing for fluid movement. The tablet is VERY sensitive (in a good way). I did not need to bear down on the stylus as much as I would have had to with the previous tablet. Not that I press the stylus down very hard to begin with, but the sensitivity of the Intuos4 makes it to where I don’t need to press down on it as much as I did before.
The stylus itself is slightly smaller, but fits very well in my hands. On the top of the stylus is an eraser, and on the side of the barrel is a click-button, which you can assign to a specific function.
Drawing with the Intuos4 is a true pleasure. I’m very happy with my purchase.
The obvious question I’ve been asked is: why not get a Wacom Cintiq instead? The Cintiq still holds a place in my artistic heart, but I’m not ready for the added expense. (Cintiq’s start at $999, and the Intuos4 model I purchase clocks in at roughly $340.) At some point I will own a Cintiq as well, when the form factor is improved. What I like about the Intuos vs the Cintiq (even the 12″ model) is the portability factor. I can take this tablet with me anywhere, with minimal fuss.
Using a tablet takes some getting used to, especially if you’ve never drawn on one before. If you’re new to drawing on a tablet, or are especially budget conscious, my recommendation would be to purchase a Wacom Graphire Bamboo tablet instead.
If you have an Intuos3, do you NEED an Intuos4? If you use one on a regular basis, and appreciate the nuances of the Intuos line, then I would say YES. There is a substantial difference between the two model lines. You will notice it when you draw on the tablet’s surface. If you have a Graphire Bamboo and are considering an upgrade, the Intuos4 is an excellent step-up.
The last several weeks of strips were all produced using the Intuos4. Just like the Intuos3, I know I will be using this for a very long time. Highly Recommended.
-Krishna
