Steve Zalot @ Macs@Pacs

Saturday May 16th 2009
Come to listen and learn with
Steve Zalot
Senior Apple Systems Engineer

From Macs@Pacs on the Web

Time: 9am to 11:45 am
Come early because seating may be limited.
New Location:
All meetings, unless otherwise noted are held at:

Community Center 2nd floor
Super Giant Food Store
315 York Road
Willow Grove PA. 19090

http://pacsnet.org/directions.php

Steve Zalot returns

Saturday September 20th, 2009
Come to listen and learn with
Steve Zalot
Senior Apple Systems Engineer

Time: 9am to 11:45 am
Come early because seating may be limited.
New Location:
All meetings, unless otherwise noted are held at:

Community Center 2nd floor

Super Giant Food Store

315 York Road

Willow Grove PA. 19090

http://pacsnet.org/directions.php

IDF and the new Mac notebooks

ZDnet news provides this information:

The Intel Developer Forum makes it clear what Apple’s new notebooks - which I (Robin Harris) predict will be announced Tuesday, September 16 - will offer. Will it be worth the wait? If longer battery life and higher performance are important to you - yes.

And if you weren’t waiting? The new designs and features may make you rethink your allegiance to Windows - as so many already have.

IDF tells us a lot
So what’s coming? Here’s what the Storage Bits crystal ball reveals:
* Quad cores.
* Switchable graphics.
* WiMax.
* Solid-state disks.
* Larger memory capacity.
* RGB LED backlight.
* No internal optical drives.
* Blu-ray support.
* 64 bit hardware -
* A glass trackpad the size of …
* Pervasive power management.

But what will they look like?

Apple has lots of other technology that it can incorporate to create a real geewhiz experience. No one in the industry does it better. Whatever they do there will be some hits and some misses but the image of their design leadership will continue.

The Storage Bits take….

Apple’s notebook team has been working on these products for years. Their tight HW and SW integration coupled with Microsoft’s long development cycles means that Apple will be well positioned to take market share.
Click here for the complete article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=352

WD Caviar GreenPower

New 500GB drive promises to save power

By Peter Cohen

Western Digital (WD) on Monday announced that it’s shipping in volume its WD Caviar GreenPower (or GP) 500GB hard disk drive mechanism. The drive costs $149.99.

The WD Caviar GP is a 3.5-inch hard disk drive bound for external enclosures or internal chassis inside computers that use Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces. The “GreenPower” moniker indicates that this unit is especially designed to be power-efficient. WD claims the drive is the industry’s coolest and quietest running eco-friendly 500GB drive.

The GP 500GB model uses the same technology as its 1GB counterpart. It yields and average drive power savings of four to five watts over other drives in its class; WD claims that results in an annual CO2 emission reduction of up to 13.8 kilograms per drive per year, or the equivalent of taking a car off the road for about three days per year.

The drive utilizes special technology that reduces power load during startup, and optimizes spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms. It will automatically unload its recording heads during idle periods, for example, which reduces aerodynamic drag. It also reduces less noise and lower vibration rates accordingly.

The drive sports a 16MB data buffer and an average read seek time of 8.9 milliseconds (ms). Transfer rate is 3 Gb/s for the buffer-to-host (SATA) speed, and 1,160 Mb/s for the buffer-to-disk transfer rate.

Review: Newertech Universal Drive Adapter

Check out this website for technology reviews: http://www.clickheretech.com./

The Universal Drive Adapter allows practically any hard drive (or optical drive) to be attachable to your current Mac via USB. Because the hard drive isn't protected in a case, this is not a long term solution. If you want to use a internal hard drive via usb (or firewire) over a extended period of time, purchase a quality external case.
Pros: Sturdy, reliable way of adding practically any hard drive to your Mac
Cons: A bit pricey, but you get what you pay for often. This device, like all USB bridges, are for temporary use only. It would be nice if it had firewire

For the complete review by David Greenbaum check the above link.