Computer Connections

Computer Connections 9.03

BY LLOYD PREZANT

9.2003
Issue No.12

G5 - Gee Whiz
Apple is now shipping their latest G series computer - the PowerMac G5. There are over 100,000 pre-orders so far that need to be filled. With the top of the line G5 running a dual 64-bit 2 GHz processor, you are surely going to get a ticket for speeding. Helping out your top end are: 1 GHz front side bus; 400 MHz 128-bit DDR SDRAM memory chips; one 133 MHz and two 100 MHz 64-bit PCI-X expansion slots and an 8x AGP Pro graphics slot. Can you just imagine running at 64-bits, handling 215 instructions at the same time, an optimized velocity engine and having two double-precision floating point units? Oh, I forgot - it's designed to fully support symmetric multi-processing too. The Supplied OS is OS X Jaguar version 10.2.7. The .7 is all about the G5. The following is for all you tech-heads. The faint of heart need not read any further: "The kernel has been updated to take advantage of memory expansion and the vector libraries and math libraries have been optimized," says Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of Hardware Product Marketing. "Any application that does dynamic linking to those libraries will get an automatic benefit without having to recompile." We couldn't have said it better! www.apple.com.

Toast Burns
Roxio Inc. announces that Toast 6 Titanium, their CD and DVD burning software for Mac computers will be available in stores by early September 2003. New to T6T is: recorders can act as shared burners across a network; support for all video and audio formats that QuickTime can recognize; the ability to burn Super VCD's, Video CD's and DVD's that have buttons, menus and chapters and are playable on most home DVD players and DVD equipped computers. More stuff: drag and drop iPhotos for full screen slideshows; the Ken Burns effect of panning and zooming still photos; burn it right off the desktop using a "Toast It" contextual menu and Toast rather than Apple's OS X Disc Burner software and an automatic backup scheduler to burn data to DVD and CD's using 128-bit AES encryption and password protection. There's so much more I left out. If you don't have Toast - buy this. If you do have Toast - upgrade it! New users will see a list price of $99.99. Owners of a previous version get a $20 mail in rebate coupon. See Toast 6 Titanium at the roll-out at the Apple Store in Soho, NYC on September 6, 2003. www.roxio.com.

Plextor burns - too!
Plextor Corp. is now selling the PX-708UF DVD+/-R/RW drive. It is an external unit that has both FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces. Burning at 4x DVD+R and 2x DVD-R, it will read at 8x and 4x respectively. CD's will burn at: 40x CD-R and 24x CD-RW with a read speed of 40x max! Buffer underrun technology with a 2 MB data buffer insures against CD/DVD coaster production. List priced at $359 (they include Toast 5 Lite and a trial version of Dantz Retrospect) this drive will work with OS 9 and OS X. www.plextorshop.com.

NetZero - Net low price
United Online Inc. has added NetZero to its two other Internet Service Providers Juno and BlueLight (formerly owned by KMart). Mac OS X users can sign up for NetZero Platinum service for $9.95 per month. Juno has been offering Mac users the same $9.95 Platinum service since February 2003. United Online is trying to become the leader in value-priced Internet Service. As of today, BlueLight is PC only. www.netzero.com.

Quicken 2004 - Intuit?
Intuit Inc. says that the new version of Quicken is shipping. Quicken 2004: balances your checkbook; pays bills; maintains stock portfolios and tracks income, expenses and investments. New to Quicken: integration with iCal for bill payment scheduling; improvements to Quicken Bill Pay service and an Emergency Records Organizer that lets users store details of financial and insurance accounts as well as medical records and wills. Works under OS 9 and OS X. Costs $69.95, with a $20 upgrade rebate. Get it on the Website: www.intuit.com.

Adobe plugs Photoshop
Adobe Systems Inc. has released a plug-in update for Photoshop that optimizes it for use with Apple's latest PowerMac - the G5. You need to be running Photoshop version 7.0.1 for Mac OS X while using a G5. The plug-in replaces the Adobe Color Engine component (ACECarbolLib) with a new version and modifies many Photoshop operations to fully use the G5 processor's capabilities. Download the 1.4 MB plug-in for free at the Adobe Website. Get your pens ready: www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpid=2132

PodQuest drives you
Mibasoft introduces PodQuest 1.0, their driving directions application for the iPod, that uses Mac OS X. PodQuest inserts a menu in your menu bar that has shortcuts to MapQuest™ and iPod download functions. The MapQuest Website has maps, driving directions a road trip planner and built in Yellow Pages. You need OS X 0.2 or higher and an iPod with iPod software 2.0 or later. The iPod must be set for FireWire disk usage to use the program. After you purchase PodQuest 1.0, all your updates are free. Now, isn't that special? www.mibasoft.dk.

I hope that everyone had a great summer!

Lloyd Prezant is a NYC computer consultant who
buys and sells recent
used Mac computers and
their peripherals. Call him
at (718) 548-1623.

Past Connections
August 2003
July2003
June 2003
May 2003