More results...
Yesterday, Microsoft released several different editions of their Office for Mac 2011 software suite. If the whirlwind of differing editions and licenses left you scratching your head, fear not! We’ve compiled the following quick reference guide to aid in picking the edition of Office 2011 that is right for you. To learn more about Office 2011 and get in on some awesome launch deals click here!
I’m in love with my hard drives. They really are miraculous devices, storing billions of bytes and copying that data to and from drive to drive at amazing speeds. I realize that the world of external storage is pretty vast, with lots of names and terms and numbers, and thought it would be good to do a quickly summarize the differences between external drives.
The first distinction I make between external drives is their physical size. The case around the actual drive may vary in size but there are only two sizes of hard drives–2.5-inch laptop drives and 3.5-inch desktop drives. Desktop drives require more power than can be supplied via USB or FireWire, and so they are considered “desktop” hard drives because you need to plug them into power separately.
Laptop drives often can run off USB power supplied by a USB port, so they are considered more portable. Just like comparing laptops and desktops, you will generally get more performance and space out of a desktop drive than you would from a laptop drive.
If you ever work with large amounts of video or want to play media off of an external drive, then a faster RPM (revolutions per minute) is worth buying. If you are just trying to keep your files backed up, then a lower RPM drive will work fine. The two specifications of drive speeds on the consumer market right now are 5400 and 7200 RPM.
The third thing to check is the connection type of the external drive. Most drives use only USB, but some drives offer FireWire 400, 800, and/or eSATA. For general backup, USB is perfect because it’s fast, reliable, and can be plugged into almost any computer made in the last 5-10 years.
FireWire is a connection also known as IEEE 1394. As anyone who works with video knows, FireWire is often required to download video from a camcorder or videocamera. Drives that have FireWire are generally more professionally geared because FireWire is a lower latency connection that makes transferring lots of small files faster than USB.
eSATA is a very fast data connection but does not supply power. eSata is the fastest type of connection commonly seen in external drives, but Apple does not build this port into its computers at this time.
Mac|Life Magazine is now offering an even better discounted subscription rate to Small Dog Electronics customers. We currently offer copies of Mac|Life at…
Ask any college or high-school student and you’ll discover that online social networking sites like Facebook are so hot right now. One of…
The Malleable Devices SynCh is one of those little handy devices that might help to lighten your load while on the road. This…
Perhaps the most anticipated of Monday’s WWDC announcements, the positive response from attendees was palpable when Steve Jobs announced iTunes Match towards the…
Leaflets is a web portal specially made for the iPhone. Some of them are just lists of web applications made specially for iPhone…