A
bumper crop of new gadgets
from tech heavyweights
by Alan Zisman (c) 2002
First published in Business in
Vancouver,
Issue # 640: January 28- February 04, 2002, GearGuide column
Apple drops
fruit flavours for ice-white, DVD burners, and a personal power nap
assistant
This month I'd
like to take a look at three new products, each a class act in its own
way - and at something for those of us who would rather be asleep.
Taking the
colour out
For
the past few years, the colour of Apple's computers has made
them
stand out in the midst of the mostly beige Windows competition. The
company's
iMacs and iBooks sported a range of fruit-flavour colours and even
(briefly)
polka-dots and flowers. But all that was so '90s. Apple has put all
that
behind it.
The new iMac,
along with the revised iBook and Apple's iPod MP3 music player, come in
any colour you want -- as long as it's ice-white. But colour isn't all
that's new about the new iMac, revised from the ground up. The
eye-catching
design houses the actual computer in a space-saving cantaloupe-sized
half-sphere
that is connected to a 15-inch LCD flat panel monitor by an
industrial-strength
hinged arm.
Power has been
boosted to a 700 or 800 MHz G4 processor, while the top-end model
includes
a SuperDrive that can read and write CDs and DVDs. Prices range from
$2,049
to $2,899.
Putting the
colour back in
Colour, whether
a spot of colour in a letterhead or logo, or in charts and photos, adds
punch to written communication, but while many of us have colour
printers
at home , we may have to settle for black and white printing at
work.
Okidata's
C9000 series of printers is aimed at bringing fast, crisp colour output
to offices and departments. Resolution is 600x1200 dpi (1200x1200 dpi
for
the C9400dxn model) with good, though glossy, print quality. Print
speed
is exceptional: 26 pages per minute for black and white, 21 pages per
minute
for colour output.
The printers
can handle paper sizes up to 12 x 18 inches, and heavy card stock up to
110 lbs. Built-in hard drives in most models allow storage of large
print
jobs, while networking cards mean that everyone on the office network
can
easily share these printers. They're big (75 kg) and expensive ($10,500
- $12,300), but their speed means everyone can have access to quality
colour
pages.
When 640
Mb isn't enough
Recordable CD-drives
("burners") are increasingly popular computer options, either
pre-installed
in new computers, or as after-market add-ons. For some of us, though,
the
640-700 Mb of a CD isn't enough. The 4.7 Gb capacity of a DVD disc is
useful
for backing up today's large-capacity hard drives, for distributing
graphics,
video, and other large files, and more.
Apple, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and other
computer manufacturers
are starting to
include DVD burners on selected models, but you can also add a DVD
burner
to your existing system. HP's DVD100i DVD-Writer ($899) uses the
DVD+RW,
one of several competing standards, to make DVD and CD-recordable discs
that can be played on most computers and commercial DVD players.
Optionally,
the DVD100i allows DVD or CD discs to be written like large (in the
case
of DVD, very large) floppy disks, but in that case, the discs
can't
be read in standard (read-only) drives. Blank DVD+RW disks are about
$20
each.
When 8 hours
isn't enough
I'm a big fan
of Handspring's Visor series of PDAs, which use the popular Palm
operating system, but include a Springboard slot to make it easy to add
modules to expand the handheld's capabilities.
Among the newest
Springboard devices is Jetlog's
24x7
PowerNapping
module ($150). According to the company, "JETLOG's onboard
sensor interface times Power Naps according to the most beneficial
sleep
stages, allowing rapid fatigue countermeasure deployments." What
exactly
this means is anybody's guess. Apparently the thing goes off
periodically
if you set it just before you start to doze, to keep you from falling
into
too deep a sleep.
The company
notes that it's "compliant with NASA Napping Policy." For more
information,
visit www.jetlog24x7.com.
