MacWorld0206June2002

June 2002 | www ina ' First Look: Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX and Fireworks MX, page 80 REVIEWED: 12 i PHOTO SERVIGES;5 HIGH-QUALITY PHOTO PRINTERS = $s in! mee tee tees 8 aya New G4 Chip | GoLive 6.0 | Automate Your Mac | Mac OS X Users and Groups FOCUS ON VIDEO Special Report: DV Camcorders, Final Cut Pro 3, and More, page 59 menu Actual size, “4 min pur ones T6td Kye TM ned ©2024 water, ne, All rights resented Dear t sexed seunsic: For moreinformation, cull /S00.MY APPLE or rset wteneapplecont “The iPod is the best digital music player yet. It makes previous music layers look like yard-sale 1950s sci-fi toys.” players look like yard-sale 1950s sci-fi toys. + Sebeeinie diet “No one else has this much storage in a package this small. Never has digital music been this well organized.” : — Chris Taylor, Time “It may be the finest portable music player ever built. My iPod cruised at full volume for 13 continuous hours, longer than any other hard- drive-based MP3 player.” me a — David Pogue, The New York Times “Leave it to Apple, maker of some of the world’s sleekest computers, to come out with the world’s coolest MP3 player.” — Troy Dreier, pcmagazine.com “The iPod is simply the best digital music player I've seen.” — Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal now has a big brother: 2,000-song capacity. New features like EQ presets and Contact Lists. Same fits-in-your-pocket size. DEIIONS From the Editor’s Desk RICK LEPAGE Now is a great time to be a digital-imaging fan— or a digital-imaging snob. 16 Feedback Readers respond, 140 Ihnatko ANDY IHNATKO Legos aren't just for kids anymore—they're for Mac geeks, too. Mae BEAT Motorola and the PowerPC's future, iMac price hikes, Apple and Bluetooth, media-reader roundup, Mac-powered airplanes, StageTools’ MovingPicture, and an interview with Microsoft's Kevin Browne. aEEnETS Streamline Your Routines DAVID POGUE Customize your Mac so it’s more in step with your needs, by learning how to automate your daily tasks with QuicKeys X. 100 Add Video to Flash RUSSELL CHUN Add QuickTime video effects to your Macromedia Flash Web site—no matter which version of Flash you're using, 102 Crowd Control DAN FRAKES Master OS X's groups and permissions, and learn how to move user folders to remote servers. 104 Mac 911 CHRISTOPHER BREEN Make your file names OS X friendly, change the sounds that Microsoft Outlook Express 5 makes, take control of scrolling speed, put an end to pesky pop-up windows, and gain the power to empty the Trash in OS X. On the Cover: Illustration by Chris Nurse Vj June 2002 www.macworld.com se STORY Turn Pixels into Prints JASON SNELL Digital photography has many pluses, but it adds an extra step: turning what you see on your Mac's screen into tangible prints. Though iPhoto is an easy way to print your images, it’s not the only game in town. We've tested 12 online photo services and five of the newest ink-jet photo printers, and we can help you decide which route is better for you. ceanURS Macromedia's Dynamic Duo DAVID SAWYER McFARLAND With the newest versions of Macromedia's Web-publishing team, Dream- weaver MX and Fireworks MX, you'll have all the tools you need to build a simple Web page or a database-driven Web store. Here's our exclusive sneak peek at the face of things to come. BODEN SUPPLEMENT Focus on Digital Video 60 Lights, Camcorders, Action 65 DVD Studio Pro 1.5 66 Get Better Video in Less Time Incorporating MacUser [4] Macworto | June 2002 | | wwwmacworld.com_| wwrw.macworld.com 36 «3-D package Web-site—design software $444 Adobe Golive 6.0 OCR applications $$$ FineReader Pro S $883 OmniPage Pro X ATA/133 PCI RAID cards $$$} Acard AEC-6880M/ATA-133 RAID $$$} Miglia Alchemy ATA 133 RAID PCI $886 SIG UltraATA 133/100 RAID $845 Sonnet Technologies Tempo RAID133 $494 Cinema 4D XL 7.3 E | 38 Image-editing application $$8$ PhotoRetouch Pro 1.0 CD-creation bundle $$$ Toast with Jam | 39 Image-processing application $$$ TIFFany3 Professional 3.5 Font-management utility $885 Font Reserve 3.0 Single User Video-editing controllers $888} Contour Design ShuttlePro | $$$} Focus Enhancements CommandPost | Image synthesizer $8} Studio Artist 2.0 48 Scriptwriting program _ 98993 Final Draft 6 FireWire keychain hard drive Art synthesizer $84G ArtMatic Pro 2.5 FireWire hard drive _ Lite SmartDisk FireFly USB microscope $98 Scalar ProScope Reviews in Brief | DVI-to-ADC adapters, eZediaMX 3.0, Maya for Mac OS X 3.5.1, and Toon Boom Studio 1.1 The Game Room PETER COHEN, Get to know the diverse worlds of 4x4 Evolution, Civilization III, Icewind Dale, and RealMyst. June 2002_| MACWORLD | 5 EYE-PC There’s a Xerox network printer that the page at a stunning 22 ppm. With Xerox color, details pop and get noticed. ‘The Xerox white, but speeds out your first color page in just 13 seconds. It Phaser* 7700 tabloid color laser printer will surprise you in prints up to 11x 17 ful-bleed, with 1200 dpi for the photographic countless ways. It not only prints 22 ppm, color or black & color quality you and your clients demand. And PhaserMatch™ {©2002 XEROX CORPORATION. Ad ight sere. KEROK? The Document Compan the digi X* Phaser’ and Thor anew Way to bk at ave regsered ademas and PraserMatch sa acemark ef XEROK CORPORATION *Estimatod US rotal price, Reseller pice may vary, 36USC220506 >| +#& CRE XEROX delivers vivid color that leaps off ‘To see what a difference detailed color can make, simply give us a call at 1-877-362-6567 ext. 1872 or visit us at xerox.com/officeprinting/frog1872 : wy color management software ensures the colors you 4_ want are what you get. Is just what you'd expect from one of the full line of Xerox network printers. = Xerox Phaser 7700 ‘THE DOCUMENT COMPANY $6,999" Choose 101 at wwrw.macworld.comigetinfo SECURE FAST | EASY | VALUE 100% COMPATIBLE | Aeingstc UPGRADING YOUR MAC IS JUST A CLICK AWAY. #1 WORLD'S LEADING INDEPENDENT MEMORY MANUFACTURER, LIFETIME WARRANTY ® kingston ) 435-2600 Fax (714)435-2609. All A notice. Oller limited to qualifying Ki ‘© 2002 Kingston Technology Company, Inc. 17600 Newhope Street, Fountain Valley. CA. 92708 USA ( marks and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Terms and pcang subject to change wi to availability Valid only in the USA. No cash value will be substircted. Additional restrictions may apply served, All registered trade: part numbers and 3s subject 3Y | RICK LEPAGE | FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK _ This Is a Great Time to Love Digital Imaging Photo Play PHOTOGRAPHY IS ONE OF MY PASSIONS. WHEN I WAS 13, MY father gave me his old Agfa 35mm range-finder camera, and I’ve been a con- firmed shutterbug ever since. Sure, in my (much) younger days, I spent time in darkrooms. But the digital darkroom has captured my fancy in a way traditional photography never could. Ic’s one reason I love my job. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with the latest imaging ners (including some very cool drum canners), digital cameras, and printers. These days, s field is pretty fun to play in, but back in the early days of digital imaging, getting the perfect print was an exercise in frustration—or required the use of supremely expensive technology that the average Mac user would never even think of buying. Anyway, I probably spend more time than I should playing around with pictures. | /ike getting ink on my hands. I think nothing of tw ig an image any number of ways just to bring out a small detail in its lower left-hand corner. I've become an imaging snob, and I have to face that fact. I'm in the minority, however. Most people want to snap a picture, download it to a Mac, and get 6-inch print. They don't want complications want to put Apple's much touted digital hub to work. I’m reminded of this every time my wife asks me, “Why can’t you just print the damned picture?” When we started discussing the digital-photo story in this issue, I took the admittedly snobbish viewpoint that there was no way anyone would want to use an online photo service to get prints. It would take too long, and it would prevent tweaking and printing images over and over until you got them right. Better to buy a photo printer, have fun, play around, and print a lot. T still think that anyone truly serious about digital imaging should invest in a photo printer; they're mar- vels of technology at pretty amazing prices. And if you're willing to invest the necessary time, you can produce excellent pictures with the help of an unbe- lievable array of software, paper types, and inks. (Lyson’s new Small Gamut inks [www.lyson.com], for example, look as though they'd be perfect for photog- raphers interested in platinum-, selenium-, or sep toned digital prints.) However, it’s hard to argue with the convenience of an online printing service—especially if you don’t really want anything more than standard prints, or if you don’t think you’re going to print that many images. Sometimes you just want the damned picture, worn macworld.com, and i T to let someone else do the heavy lifting. Even an imaging snob like me can understand that. Macromedia Returns One of the most common questions among industry insiders over the past few months been “What's happened to Macromedia?” The company blew our of the gates a year ago with FreeHand 10, the first professional drawing application for Mac OS X. Then irseemed to fall off the map—in the Mac market and everywhere else, A large part of that was obviously related to the company’s ongoing financial issues and its merger with Cold Fusion developer Allaire, but it was disquieting to see such a strong company disap- pear from the radar screen like that. As you'll read in David Sawyer McFarland’s firs look at the new Dreamweaver MX and FireWork: MX (elsewhere in thi ue), Macromedia is ba with a plan to tie all its disparate products into a hub that lets anyone—from rank amateurs like me to Web professionals—build dynamic Web sites easily. It's nice to see the company back in force and committed to the Mac. More Changes in Reviews Every month, Macworld’s crack team of reviewers evaluates anywhere from 20 to 40 new Mac products and, inevitably, finds products that have a problem or two—and those problems lead to lower mouse rat- ings. Also inevitably, most compa- nies release minor updates that fix those bugs, add a few features, or simply make a program work bet- ter. Until now, Macworld hasn’t really had a place to cover those interim updates; this month, we've added a new feature, Reviews in Brief, designed to fol- low up on those revisions. Reviews in Brief will also include coverage of small, useful products that deserve our (and your) attention but don’t call for a lot of words in their reviews. The new feature is part of our Reviews section. that fact. Let me inal wh what ‘you think—good or bad—about Macworld or anything else related to the Mac. You can drop me an e-mail, at rick_lepage@macworld,com, or join the discussions in our forums, at www .mmacworld.com. I'd love to hear from you. I've become an imaging snob, and | have to face tune 2002 in New! Support for inkjet printing in OS X. My files are important. Very important. VP of ContenvEditor in Chie! | Rick LePage Editor | Jason Snel T only share my files Casa tor Mavocon | tia Smee | with those I trust. Ser entre Er | Te Sie Senior News Editor | Philip Michaels I trust DAVE. Senor Reviews Editor | ler Bag Associate Editors | Kelly Lunsford, Mac to PC, PC to Mac. Nancy Peterson, Cross-platform file and alate print sharing is too aha vital to your business men | Ci = to risk. Trust Thursby, iia tie titons x the company with 15 ; sue H David Blane, Henry Bortman, Chrstopher Breen, Adam C Engst years experience. Trust Bruce Fraser, Jim Heid, Andy thnatko, Ted Landau, Deke McClelland DAVE, the solution with Scholle Saivyer McFarland, Tom Negrino, David Pogue, Stephan Somogyi, Franklin Hessler, a proven track record. x = | Share files and printers across a network with Les no barriers. DAVE Lab Director | Kristina De Nike installs on your Mac Test Manager | James Galbraith with no additional Associate Technical Analyst | Ubssis Bravo software required for | the PC. It’s fast, copy EDIT secure and easy to use. Download a free evaluation today! Managing Editor | Jennifer Werner Assistant Managing Editor | Charles Purdy Copy Editor | Sue Voeliel ART AND DESIGN Design Director | Sharon Anderson Senior Designer | Jenifer Stele Design Associate | Alissa Mach Design Consultant | Paul Carpenter Prepress Consultant | Stephen Sugg MACCENTRAL.COM News Director | sim Dalrymple Senior Editors | Peter Cohen, | Dens Stes | INTERNATIONAL EDITORS 2 if mn www.thursby.com Sebastian Hirsch | Germany The File, share FolkZ’ y atl a sz Bitner | Poland Daniel de Blas | Spain Nils Holmiv | Sweden ak fr M05 DAVE isa regis of Thurs gin Gedik | Turk hursby Sof Leib, ela | Choose 124 at vrwnumacworld.comigetinto Simon lary | United Kingdom 40 | MACWORLD | June 2002 wovw.macworld.com Shanan (and the rest of our team) would be happy to help you configure your Anthro Workstation. urniture ver your heart (or office space) desires, Anthro can come solution just for you. Everything from Anthro is flexible, modular and strong. 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Introducing FastTrack Schedule 8, Redesigned for Mac OS X and packed with new productivity features and a bold Aqua interface-FastTrack Schedule 8 has all the tools you need to ensure project success, For a free demo version or to order, call us today at 800.450.1982. www.fasttrackschedule8.com Choose 84 at vawwemacworld.com/getinfo LD _| June 2002 President and CEO | Colin Cravtord \VPIChief Operating Officer | Stephen Daniels Director of Finance | Eos de Femins Accounting Coordinator | Ronda Bittner YP of Human Resources | Sue Murphy Human Resource Manager | Su-TsenWu Network Services Manager | Sean Greathouse DISPLAY ADVERTISING SALES VP of Sales/Publisher | Steve Plevin (415/243-3509) Associate Publisher, East | Cynthia Ramsey (973/243-1197) National Accounts Manager | Paul Bonarigo (508/533-4020) Account Executive | Jo Zottarelli (516/277-4134) Western Advertsing Director | Sara Culley (831/475-0865) Sales Assistant | franck Zamora__ (415/243-3628) Showcase Account Manager | Niki Stranz (415/243-3664) Showcase Account Manager | Carol Johnstone (415/243-3691) Online Sales Manager | Doug Detletsen (415424 3598) Sales & Marketing Coordinator | Kasey MacMullen (415/243-3642) | = MARKETING Senior Marketing Manager PRODUCTION Production Director Prepress Manager Booking and Billing Manager Ad Coordinator ONLINE PRODUCTION | Senior Web Producer Online Production Manager June 202 Volume 18, se not Ma Sharon L. Cordesse Steve Spingola Alan Anzalore Ricardo Sandoval fegan Matteoni Christina Gonzales Ron Neal du Fost ae ademas of AoeleCoruttc.Poted inthe Unted Sates of America. Copyright © 2002 Mac Pubishing, LUC. Al right reserved MITSUBISHI Introducing SpectraView™, the fast, easy-to-use color calibration system that keeps your <— colors uniformly real. Inconsistent colors are a thing of the past, thanks to SpectraView, the new color calibration system on the Mitsubishi DiamondPro* 2060U monitor. It’s accurate and easy-to-use, making it a snap to keep color consistent for your total color environment. It provides highly precise color measurements and enhanced control by communicating directly with the monitor’s internal controls rather than through the video card. So you'll get precise adjustments and the maximum dynamic color range, with a level of accuracy typically available only with much pricier systems. And all in record time. 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To learn more, call 888-646-4223 and speak with one of our knowledgeable CAD consultants and find out for yourself why VectorWorks is the easiest, most cost- effective way to design. Vectsr works VectorWorks. Freedom to do more. 888.646.4223 | www.nemetschek.net Choose 126 at wnwwumacword.com/getinfo HOW TO CONTACT MACWORLD Subscription Information and Services Phone 800/288-6848, fiom the United States and Canada 103/604-7445, from all other US. Mal Jn Sen RO, Box $4529, Boulder, CO 80322. (include 3 mailing label with correspondence.) World Wide Web _tp/service macworld.com (for service) or htp:/subscribe,macwold.com (ta orden) Email subhelp@macy Send your full you subscribe: ldcom ime and the address at which fot send att Fax 641/842-6101, from the United States ‘and Canada 303/604-0518, from al other locations SUBSCRIPTIONS scription rate is $34.97 in for all other counties, Checks must Yaciworld. 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MACWORLD CONFERENCE & EXPO of Macworld Confer 5 10 attend this exciting biannual industry on about registration, exhibitor lists, d much mo ce & Expo, schedules dates, smacworldexpo.com, Vera wewwmacworld.com "By far the coolest drives on the planet." — John Manzione, MacNet2.com “Fantastic product! Well worth your money and investment. The best of its kind." "the nirvana of portable storage in the Mac environment." - Mac Home Magazine - John Nemerovski, MyMac.com “It's a looker and a cooker... Think fast. Think small. Think FireFly and you've got it all!" —Dingbatmag.com Actual Size! ~ Steve Becker, MacEase.com FireFly and FireLite, 5 GB to 40 GB USB and FireWire Hard Drives TS | Macworld SF 2002 _ | 0 | editors Choice Awards | macreviewzone.com Macllome SMe4Rn7T Sisk. Simplifying The Digital Lifestyle” Available at www.smartdisk.com, the Apple Store and other fine Apple resellers. Choose 103 at wwww.macworld.comigetinfo: Fi a | CHRIS SAUNDERS. | out touching a manual. Advanced users OS X-Ready Readers JOHN HALE i] Your article “Feel at Home in Mac OS X” (March 2002) helped me make the change to OS X. Thad concerns that my 17-inch Apple Studio Display (LCD) with a Dr. Bott DVfator wouldn’t work with OS 9.2, and that proved to be true, But MacFixIt (www.macfixit.com) supplied enough infor- mation to work through that problem. Christopher Breen’s closing statement sums it up for me: “Now that your files are in place, your links to the Internet and net- work are established, and your printer is present and accounted for, you and your Mac should feel much more at home.” JERRY STRATTON ies] In your article, you recommend setting aside 15GB for an OS X installation. Allowing so little disk space for OS X is likely to mean that you can’t perform any OS X upgrades, which require hundreds of megabytes of free space. Also, taking up 1.5GB won't leave enough disk space for applications. Though you can install OS X applications on a different volume from the OS X one, doing so means that you won't be able to take advantage of extra features such as services. Finally, 1.5GB won't leave much space for virtual memory (it’s pos- sible to move virtual memory from the OS X volume, but only the extremely techni- cally inclined should attempt it). (es) OS X has the potential to be everybody's friend. Average users can burn a CD with- can | configure Darwin to run an FTP, HTTP, or SSH server daemon in the background and go crazy playing with the back end. My question is, whatis Apple waiting for? Why been about... FEEDBACK Age-old Debates Macworld readers have never been shy about sharing their opinions on everything from tax software to the aesthetics of iPod carrying cases. And while we expected our March issue to spark yet more heated debate about OS X, the most-passionate letters have other letters. A few readers, fed up with complaints about OS X, suggest that critics of the new OS are clinging to the past. Hopefully, the negative feedback we've received about the new iMac will not inspire a wave of letters declaring that the naysayers would be happier using slide-rules and abacuses, are there no T'V commercials triumphantly claiming victory over the evil Microsoft? OS X has real business application. Unix is tried, tested, and true, and it’s stabler than anything Microsoft has ever produced. Samba on Unix has been proved faster at sharing on a server than Windows NT or 2000. This should be it: the coup de grace, the final stroke, the killing blow, But instead, Apple stays in the background. Negative Feedback EDDIE PRESLEY 1 take issue with the ill-informed negativity that clogs letter columns and message boards. Specifically, in his “Waiting for the Apps” letter (Forums and Feedback, March 2002), Harold Pace describes OS X as a slow, unreliable white elephant. OS X is anything but slow on my G4/400, and on a new iMac it’s damned snappy. As for being unreliable, crashing is a routine feature of OS 9 and earlier, and rebooting and recoy- ering RAM is mandatory. OS X is much stabler, and I can Jeave it on all the time. CHRIS LAUGHLIN es} Ie’s interesting that Macworld’s readers, sup- posedly loyal Mac fans, write in only to complain about how horrible OS X is or how Apple should have done this or that, Maybe it’s just the old geezers who don't like the new technology. I'm 17 years old, I love Macs, and J think OS X is great. Macs are the fastest, most innovative, and most technologically advanced computers out there. Things don't stay the same forever. iMac Musings ERIC H. WENOCUR es] Reading about the new iMac (“The iMae: Flat Is Where It’s At,” Special Report, 2002), [ suddenly realized why Apple has become so infuriating. In its rush to bring out the coolest new gadgets, it embraces unproven technologies. It did so when it committed solely to USB and FireWire, despite continuing flaki in the real world. And now Apple is ready to push LCD technology whether we want it or not. LCDs are great in some ways, but they don’t compare to CRIS for many applications. When the first Mac OS arrived, it worked because the concept was brilliant. These days, though, putting only the newest—and probably short- lived—interface on every new machine is not so brilliant. SEAN HITE & The cost difference between Macs and PCs is making it more and more difficult to justify purchasing Macs for businesses. Apple has always charged a premium for its products, For that additional cost, the user gets a far superior product, no doubt about it. But Apple's sistence on keeping the base price of its new iMacs at $1,299 can’t be good for business in today’s IT purchas- ing climate. ANTHONY BUROKAS {es Apple has aiost created the hub of my dig- ital life, bur one crucial part is missing: communication with my phone. Cute pho- tos and iMovie go only so far. I don’t make movies every day, but I do use my phone several times y. Yet it turns out that most phones are unable to connecr with Macs, and phone manufacturers and wire- less services don’t seem to have an interest in developing connectivity software for the Mac. So, no infrared modem for my . no phone-book synchronization on the Eriessoa, no downloading MP3 songs to my Samsung: it’s time for standard wire- 36 MACWORLD june 2002 | weww.macworld.com JUNE 2002 FEEDBACK less connectivity for all of us who have bought into the digital hub. RICHARD RATHE jes I waited anxiously to see whether the new iMac would include something that has been missing from newer Apple hardware: sound input. Alas, it appears that the situa- tion has not changed. My experience with third-party sound-input devices has been less than. satisfactory, When I recently attempted to capture music from some of my old vinyl records (using your Decem- ber 2001 article “Turn Your Cassettes or LPs into CDs” [How-to] as a starting point), LU spent the better part of a day configuring, testing, and redoing what should have been an easy plug-and-play task. Raskin on Raskin JEF RASKIN ist Iwas pleased to see David Read's interview with me (“Mac Daddy,” Mae Beat, March 2002). Ignoring a few small problems (like some of the quotes getting garbled and the photo being printed a bit greenish so that you're not sure if moss is growing in my beard), there is one big slip that’s important to me. I’m quoted as complaining that OS X “doesn’t use any of the research that I’ve been doing,” which makes it sound as if ?m at being ignored. If you read the article on Maeworld.com (www.macworld .con/2002/03/macbeat/raskin.html), you will get the right idea from the context. I'm arly saying that it is Apple’s nonuse of recentand valuable knowledge about inter- face design (research that was done mostly by others, as I state explicitly) that is disap- pointing. Apple—to say nothing of the goblins from Redmond—could do a sot more in terms of making its products eas- ier to learn and faster to use. But Apple is stuck in a 20-year-old-interface rut. Paint- ing it greeny-blucy and changing boxes to baubles doesn't make the grade. Technical Knockout RIC COHN jes T purchased KnockOut 2 (Reviews, March 2002) after reading your recommendation, only to find that the program behaves like beta software, Ir does an excellent job with the supplied samples, but it’s as slow as molasses on larger images (SOMB). The program also isn’t properly integrated as a Photoshop plug-in. It requires its own large memory allocation and opens as a separate program. This experience has greatly reduced my trust in Macworld. Classic Palm Problem DAN BREY & In your review of monochrome handhelds (Reviews, March 2002), you state that the Palm Desktop software is not yet compat- ible with OS X or the Classic environ- ment. This is not true. I’ve been using it in the Classic environment for over six months and have never had it crash. Palm Desktop can work in OS X’s Classic envi- ronment, although it’s not supported by Palm. But there's one condition: Classic must first be running to perform a HotSyne operation. —Ed. Bad Dream EVAMARIE WEISS {es Your write-up of Auto FX Software's DreamSuite (Reviews, March 2002) was right on the button regarding the fact that the application’s interface consumes the entire screen. I purchased this program last December, and I still haven't figured out how to get to the bottom portion of the interface to actually apply and save the effects 1 put on my photos. I feel like a fool, having spent 300 bucks on an appli- cation I can’t use. Taxing Software LEE ALLEN (Es Your $$$¢¥2 rating of TaxCut Macintosh Deluxe 2001 (Reviews, March 2002) is sim- ply not justifiable. After spending wo hours entering data, I got to the point of e-filing, and the program crashed, When T restarted, I found that it had not autosaved along the way. Any tax-preparation soft- ware that does not have an autosave feature shouldn't get more than two mice. PETER HAASE 2 ‘TaxCut feels as though it were at the beta level of development. Many simple things don’t work, such as printing from the File menu. And while the tax information was well written and concise, help within the application itself was sparse and often mis- leading. The error-checking feature is Kludgy, with hard-to-understand explana- sowwmacwarld.com tions of potential problems. When I was done and wanted to back up a copy of my files, the backup feature simply didn’t work. Thave to admit that although TaxCut got the job done at half of TurboTax Deluxe’s price, you get what you pay for. iPod Beauty Tips JOHN SHOFFNER “Pod Protection” (Mac Beat, March 2002) shows a picture of the beautiful iPod horri- bly cloaked in a spongy, black foam night- mare. Who would consider such a nihilistic approach to preserving beauty? The iPod is one of those rare landmark confluences between man, machine, and nature. You certainly can wrap it up in any combination of foam, leather, or nylon, and it won't get a mark on it, But the essence of its remark- able beauty and craftsmanship will be lost on you. You'll be left with only the naked whirl of MP3 electrons spewing from ear buds you can’t even see. And you will have unwittingly contributed to the great karmic imbalance whose debt is borne each year by Steve Jobs and his team of inspired design- ers. So, smudged fingerprints on its shiny case? You bet. A few scratches? Character marks, I say! © Post comments on our forums (www smacworld.com), or send them by mail to [) Letters, Macworld, 501 Second Street, Sth Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107; via fax to 415/243-3545; or electronically to letters@macworld,com. Include a return address and daytime phone number, Due to the high volume of mail received, we can't respond personally to each letter. We reserve the right to edit all letters and posts. All published letters and forum, comments become the property of Macworld. CORRECTIONS Due to a production error, the final sentence of “QuarkXPress versus InDesign” (May 2002) was truncated, The sentence should read: "Nevertheless, if Quark is going to keep cus- tomers from defecting in the future, it must soon prove that XPress can be as innovative and cost-effective as InDesign.” To read the complete article, visit http:// netword.macworld.com/qvid, June 2002 | MACWORID 17 We offer a full line of computer products from leading manufacturers that are dedicated to supporting the Mac platform. Supporting the Mac afficionado since 1987 We know Mac! Rely on Mac Warehouse for: ¢ Our Experience 15 years, 34 million orders fulfilled ¢ Our Knowledge You have a question, we have the answer ° Our Service We're open for business whenever you call Oh, and our 24/7 Tech Support 4 is FREE for the lifetime of @ your product. Authorized Reseller Apple iPod Canon ZR40 Palm m515 Camcorder Handheld 4 Authorized Reseller Al everywhere SONY. ‘authorized reseller ta BLA CIE) “SSARAMA Rams, 15-inch LCD Flat Screen Phenomenal Power Spectacular Experience The Brighter, sharper, PowerPC G4 processor Graphics Digital Lifestyle easier on the eyes ~ with Velocity Engine NVIDIA® GeForce2 MX” iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and adjustable with the delivers unparalleled graphics processing and other powerful touch of a finger performance unit applications NEW! NEW! NEW! NEW! Maoromeae HP DeskJet 990cse We have the Mac you want jas Xx Color Printer — and more! a: Call us today. WAREHOUSE AMICROWAREHOUSE Company 1-800-355-5841 » macwarehouse.com > _ WHAT'S | NEXT | On June 20, hard- core Mac program: mers descend on Dearborn, Michigan, for the annual MacHack confer- ence, where they discuss the lan- guage of Mac pro- gramming and show off hacks. WILL THE NEW POWERPC CHIP MEAN A NEW DAWN FOR THE MAC? | Apollo on the Rise Things looked bright for the Ma when the PowerPC made its 1994 debut. The introduction of the new processor, and its performance gains during the following year, caught Intel and other CPU mak- ers completely off guard, The PowerPC—the product of an alli- ance between Motorola, IBM, and Apple—powered the fastest com- put ilable to consumers, and it seemed the world would soon turn to the Macintosh, But the re s that a number of pundits expected never came. ‘There was no mass exodus to the then faster Mac. The speed mantle was soon lost as the PowerPC fell steadily behind rival CPUs with faster clock sp [20 { macworto | sune2002 | But things could be looking up for the PowerPC. The latest ver- sion of the G4 processor, code~ named Apollo, made its debut earlier this year, ushering the Mac out of the sub-GHz wilderness, Will this processor—named after the Greek sun god—shine a new light on the PowerPC? 1GHz and Beyond? Intel’s Pentium processor enjoys a two-to-one clock-speed advantage over the PowerPC. Despite the public focus on the megahertz gap, Apple has continued to prosper and push ahead, rolling outa dual- 1GHz Power Mac G4 in Janua ‘That Mac is powered by Motor ola’s new Apollo (a user-friendly name for the MPC7455) proc Despite layoffs and the fact tha 2001 was the company’s first money-losing year in 71 years, Motorola is driving hard to develop faster G4s and make up for the delays of the past two years. Motorola thinks ¢ processor has legs." Fehr, Motorola’s director of stra- tegic marketing, says the Apollo processor will soon be taken from its current 0.18-micron fabrication down to a 0.13-micron . Smaller fabrication pro- 's let a CPU operate faster while consuming less energ) “Obviously, when we take that down to 0.13-micron, we'll see some speed benefit,” Fehr s ‘The analysts at Microprocessor Report seem to agree, citing the Apollo’s high clock speed with the 0.18-micron fabrication process as one of the reasons they named the latest G4 chip the best high- performance embedded processor. Rival chip makers, such as Intel and AMD, reached the 1GHz mark with CPUs manufactured using 0.18-micron processes, but those CPUs also featured drasti- cally higher heat generation and consumed more power. Both Intel and AMD have moved to 0.13- micron processes and plan to go lower within the next year or so. In SOI We Trust Motorola recently upped the ante by successfully adding Silicon on Insulator (SOT) technology to the 0.18-micron process used on its Apollo chip. SOI involves the addi- tion of a capacitance-reducing layer to the chip, making the chip’s transistors operate more efficiently. This allows a processor to use less energy and generate less wasted heat. With SOT, Apollo can use a 0.18-micron fabrication process to break the 1GHz barrier and still meet the heat and power- consumption needs of customers who turn to Motorola for embed- ded proce Satisfying those customers is an important consideration for Motor- ola. While Apple is a large and important customer for the chip maker, Motorola sells far more G4s to customers in the embedded- processor market. So when Motor- ola builds a processor, it has to sat- isfy all of its G4 customers; Apple alone isn’t large enough to drive wavwmacworld.com development (see “Stand by Your CPU,” Buzz, August 2001). SOT isn’t a new technology—the idea has been kicking around since the 1970s. But applying SOI to a manufacturing process is tricky, and Motorola made some trade-offs to get it working ata level that makes money. The drawbacks are a larger processor-die size, which makes a processor more expensive, and the amount of time it takes to get SOI into the fabrication process. “Going to 0.13 is just a process change for us,” says Fehr, denying that Motorola will take much time to make its new SOI process smaller, “It’s relatively simple way to bump up speed and reduce cost.” “Everything from this family on will include SOI,” says Eric Boles, Motorola's strategic communications program man- ager. “That's where the performance edge from Apollo came from.” Here Comes the Sun What will moving to a 0.13-micron fabri- cation process mean for Apollo’s future? Microprocessor Report predicts that Apollo could reach a clock speed of 1.3GHz, based on the performance of the 0.18- micron 1GHz chip. Motorola declines to comment on that prediction. But Boles will say that Motor- ola plans to keep focusing on the G4, and that any computing-space G5 is still a long way off. “We're going ahead on G4, and we've got room to move,” Boles adds, ‘The G5, Motorola’ next-generation PowerPC processor, has already debuted in the embedded-processor market. It boasts many of the same features as the G4—such as SOI and a 0.13-micron manufacturing process. Butit also includes. | a revised pipeline and RapidIO—a new high-speed method for integrating a pro- cessor and a system. Motorola’s PowerPC road map also includes 64-bit datapaths that are backward compatible with the 32- bit datapath of the G3 and G4. While these features may make Mac gearheads salivate, improvements are unlikely to arrive while the Apollo has room to grow. Don’t look for the Apollo chip to eclipse the likes of the Pentium or AMD's Athlon CPU. But we can expect the gap between the PowerPC and its rivals to at | least close this year—meaning that bright days could be ahead for the Mac, thanks to Apollo.—paviD READ eww macworld.com _ | “Product Watch | Coolpix 2500 | ect. Unfortunately, you also don't know THE LATEST DIGITAL CAMERAS | | In Focus | Don’t look for digital-camera makers to dwell on the blahs that are affecting the rest of the computer industry. They're too busy churning out cam- eras for all types of users—from inexpensive, entry-level models to 6-megapixel single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras designed for advanced amateurs with thick wallets {also k known as prosumers). In recent months, three companies with strong film-cam- era backgrounds—Canon, Nikon, and Leica—have unveiled new prod- ucts, which are now appearing on retailers’ shelves. Canon (800/652-2666, www.usa.canon,com) has introduced the EOS D60 (see Mac Beat, 2002), a $1,999 6.3-megapixel digital SLR camera that succeeds the company’s highly successful 3-megapixel D30. The D60 accepts any Canon EOS lens, so it’s ideal for | amateur and professional photographers. With the D100, Nikon (800/645-6687, | www.nikonusa.com) has finally entered The Canon EOs D60 the prosumer space, The 6.1-megapixel SLR camera, which can use any compatible Nikkor lens, has an estimated street price of $1,999. Ir should be available this summer. Nikon has also announced the Coolpix 2500 ($380), a 2-megapixel pocket-size camera with a unique inner- swivel lens and a 3x optical zoom. Leica (800/222-0118, www.leica-camera.com), the company that pioneered the 35mm camera back in 1924, has announced the Digilux 1, a 4-mega- pixel camera priced at $999. This camera has a 3x optical zoom, a large 2.5-inch LCD display on its back, a hot shoe for an external flash, a 64MB Secure Digital memory card, and a three-hour lithium-ion rechargeable battery.—RICK LEPAGE, The Nikon PANTONE COLORS—TO GO | Color Coordinated You never know when or where you're going to stumble across the perfect color for a proj- whether you'll be able to re-create that color from memory once you're back in the office and poring over swatch books for the right color code. For designers who want to avoid the color-identification blues, Pantone (866/ | 726-8663, www.pantone.com) offers the Pantone Color Cue. Just 6 inches long, 1.6 inches wide, ‘and 1.5 inches tall, and weigh- ing in at 3.4 ounces, the portable spectrocolorimeter is about the size of a miniflash- light. Place it over any color that catches your eye and then press a button, and the Color Cue instantly displays on its LED screen the closest number from the Pantone Matching System color standard. The Color Cue also lets you scroll through other information about the color, such as Pantone Color ink formulas and CMYK, RGB, sRGB, HTML, Lab, and Hexachrome values, Available in gunmetal gray—that’s Pantone 430 C in color-code talk—the Color Cue sells for $349, less expensive than larger spectrocolorimeters. A $399 version comes with the Pantone Solid in RGB Guide, providing a handy visual reference that will make finding the right color less ofa gray area.—PHILIP MICHAELS __| June 2002 | MACWORLD | 21 MACS Do you know any inter- esting stories about Macs in the work- place? Send your tale to Macworld’s Philip Michaels, at pmichaels MACS ATWORK_| P —— WORKING Strength in Numbers Dean Dauger wanted to know what kind of perfor- mance you’d get if you hooked up a lab full of Macs to make a computer cluster. More than idle specula~ tion prompted his question: Dauger is the founder of Dauger Research, which aims to make high-perfor- mance computing accessible and easy to use. One way to do that is through computer clustering, which can help small labs with limited budgets amass consider- able computational power by linking computers so they act as a single system. Clustering can also benefit computation-intensive tasks such as video editing, 3-D rendering, and special-effects creation. So last winter, with the help of researchers and staff at the University of Southern California, Dauger and UCLA research physicist and adjunct professor Viktor Decyk hooked up 56 dual-533MHz Power Mac G4s and 20 dual-450MHz G4s, at USC's Language Arts computer lab, to test the scalability of a Mac cluster. The largest cluster Dauger and Decyk had previously tested consisted of 16 Macs. ‘The results of the 76-Mac experiment? Software running on the cluster achieved 233 gigaflops, a measure of computer speed that tallies floating-point operations per second. “I believe we found that reusing a large Mac lab as a computing cluster was a viable possibility,” Dauger says. ‘They ran the experiment on Mac OS 9.2.1 to avoid the hassle of installing OS X on 76 machines. Since the software used in the test runs on both versions of Mac OS, Dauger thinks the results would have been about the same on OS X. “It doesn’t matter; it just works,” he says. “I think that’s the way H Fy 2 Hy Soaring to New Heights AeroVironment uses computers to help its unmanned Helios Prototype aircraft fly 18 miles above the earth, so the last thing it wants is a machine that crashes. No wonder, then, that the company, based in Monrovia, California, turned to Power Mac 6100s and 7200s to display the plane's instruments and record flight data. “Tt has to run without bugs. . . . we need reliability,” says AeroVironment’ vice president Bob Curtin, ‘Those Macs help keep aloft a 1,500-pound aircraft that’s 7 feet long from nose to tail and has a 250-foot wingspan with 14 propellers—described by Curtin as “basically a long, skinny wing.” AeroVironment wants to build unmanned aircraft that can stay at high alti- tudes for prolonged periods to serve as low-flying satellites—the equivalent of 18-mile-high towers that will offer services such as broadband wireless trans- mission more efficiently than orbiting satellites. In an August 2001 test conducted with NASA, the @macworld.com. it should be, and it demonstrates a really great thing Helios reached an altitude of 96,863 feet; only rocket- unique to the Mac.” —pritip MICHAELS propelled craft have gone higher.—PiitiP MICHAELS DIGITAL PHOTO TOOLS Avid Readers: Media Savvy Before you can enjoy prints of your digital photos (see “Turn COMPANY Addonics Technologies Belkin PRODUCT PRICE CONTACT SUPPORTED FORMATS 408/433-3899, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory wwwaddonics.com Stic, Microdrive, Multimedia Card _ (MMC), Secure Digital Card (50) CompactFlash, SmartMedia 800/223-5546, Pixels into Prints,” elsewhere in this issue), you need to get images from your camera to California your Mac. Media readers offer some help, allowing you to Drives. transfer files from a CompactFlash or SmartMedia card Imation instead of forcing you to lug around a USB cable and your digital camera. Now media readers are providing flexibility, with the ability to read and write in more formats than a United Nations translator. Addonics Technologies, Ima- tion, Keyspan, LaCie, SCM Microsystems, and Y-E Data sell media readers that can accept six different types of media—ideal in offices where many users transfer images from digital cameras that support varying formats. It's Reader vwinwsmartlsk.com another way to keep Apple’s digital hub connected to its Y-E Data 847/887-7540, many spokes.—PHILIP MICHAELS Dye wwleweilata.com wwawbelkin.com sales@aldives.com, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, -—ywewwcaldivescom Microdrive 888/466-3456, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory www.imation.com Stick, Microdrive, MMC, SO =; 510/222-0131 CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory wowukeyspan.com Stick, Microdrive, MMC, SD CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Microdrive, MMC, 5D CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Microdrive, MMC, SD CompactFlash, SmartMedia Keyspan Lacie H 7 503/844-4500 lacie.com ‘SCM - s! 88% -8045, Microsystems ~_wwnudazzle;com ‘SmartDisk 941/436-2500, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Microdrive, MMC, SD | 22 | MACWORLD | June 2002 wowmacworld.com PRO FILE | Q&A WITH KEVIN BROWNE BLUETOOTH COMES TO MAC OS X | OFFICE MATES Once Apple's fiercest rival, Microsoft has emerged as one of Apple's model developers during the past five years. Part of the credit for the improved relationship between the two companies goes to the efforts of Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, headed by 11-year Micro- soft veteran Kevin Browne. Macworld recently spoke to Browne about the Mac Business Unit and what to expect from the group in the future. —PHILIP MICHAELS ') ATA GLANCE ) KEVIN BROWNE "| Mac Business Unit GM, Microsoft | MAC: 400MHz Titanium PowerBook G4 SOFTWARE: Adobe Photoshop Elements, Blizzard Diablo I How has the Mac Business Unit's focus evolved in the five years since it was formed? We started as a team to port one version of Office to the Mac. ‘This was in January 1997, before the [Apple-Microsoft] agree- ment [in August 1997], before Apple turned it around. We still focus heavily on Office, but we've also expanded our scope to include Internet products that are important to customers. We also decided that we weren’t going to just port products; we wanted to understand the Mac customer's needs, and make the right products for them. We prioritize feature investments dif- ferently. There has also been a huge amount of turnover in our staff, and I think we're a stronger group than we've ever been. The Apple-Microsoft pact expires in August. What will that mean for future dealings with Apple? Microsoft will continue the Mac business after August, and we intend to continue it on all the same terms that we've pursued in the past. The technology agreement that we signed with Apple does not drive today nor has it ever driven Microsoft sup- port for the Mac. We got into this business before we signed the technology agreement with Apple, and we'll continue doing the business after because we've said we've got to approach the bus- iness like a business and do the right things for our customers. How does OS X figure into your future plans? We were among the earliest and most vocal supporters of OS X, even when there wasn’t necessary software out there that you could point to and say, “This is why we believe.” We're betting the whole business on OS X. We're committing to doing our work only on OS X across our product line. We won't do another major release of any of our products on OS 8 and 9. So if Apple fails with OS X, so do we. We go down the drain, too. Hopefully people can take that as commitment, rather than a signed agreement. More Info: | www.macworld.com/2002/06/macbeat/browne.html H In Macworld’s online interview, Kevin Browne talks about the first Mac | he ever used and Microsoft's work on Office v. X. True Blue Bluetooth has found a friend in Cupertino. Apple (800/692-7753, www.apple.com) is adding support for the wireless connectivity standard, named after a medieval Danish king, to Mac OS X. Apple’s preview software, available as a free download, lets your Mac wirelessly connect to Bluetooth-compatible cell phones, PDAs, and other devices. The software should work with any USB adapter compliant with Apple’s Bluetooth stack, but the company is teaming up with D-Link (949/788-0805, www.dlink .com) to produce the $49 Mac-compatible DWB-120M Blue- tooth USB adapter. Other companies embraced Bluetooth more than three years ago; why did Apple wait to support the short- range wireless-networking protocol? “What was important was to be early but not so early that it wouldn’t make sense for our cus- tomers,” says Greg Joswiak, senior director of hardware product marketing. Bluetooth-enabled PDAs are now available, and cellu- lar phones are starting to support the standard. By producing | software now, says Mike Bell, vice president of software engincer- ing, Apple hopes to provide developers with a single Bluetooth | spec, pushing wider adoption of the standard. “We want [compa- | nies] producing Bluetooth devices to test them with Macs first,” Bell adds.—priLip MICHAELS BRINGING STILL IMAGES TO LIFE_| Motion Pictures If you watch a Ken | Burns documentary, you | can’t miss the scenes in which a camera slowly pans across a photo of | | the Brooklyn Dodgers or zooms in on an image | from the 19th century. Creating shots like these | | usually requires expen- sive hardware. But the | $199 MovingPicture, | from StageTools (www .stagetools.com), can On the Move StageTools’ MovingPicture creates give you the same pan and zoom effects for still images. a | effects. The Moving- Picture plug-in works with many nonlinear editors—including Adobe Premiere and After Effects, Apple’s Final Cut Pro, and Media 100 systems—while letting you work with high-resolution scans directly from your timeline. Recently updated to version 3.0, MovingPicture adds motion blur, timeline scrubbing, multiple-image Flash output, and OS X compatibility. StageTools also offers the $199 MovingPicture Producer, a stand-alone pro- gram that’s ideal if you use an unsupported editor or don’t want to tie up your high-priced editing station. The nonrendering ver- sion—which lets you create motion paths on almost any com- | puter and then render them on your registered system—is free. Just because your video relies on still images doesn’t mean that | you can’t add a little action to the final cut. JONATHAN SEFF www.macworld.com | tune 2002 | acwoRLD 2B mact BEHIND THE HIGHER iMAC COST | The Price Is Right? If you're thinking of buying Apple’s redesigned iMac, the good news is that you won't have to wait as long as some of the first purchasers to get your hands on the G4-powered, flat-panel com- puter. The bad news? You'll pay $100 more than they did. 24 __maqwor Apple says that it’s now shipping 5,000 iMacs a day— enough to catch up with orders backlogged from January by the time you read this. In addition to the normal challenge of ramping up production on a new computer, Apple had to deal with more pre-orders than it'd had for any other Mac, says Greg Joswiak, senior director of hardware product marketing. At the same time, higher costs for flat-panel displays and memory forced the company to raise prices by $100 for all three iMac configurations (Apple is honoring existing orders at their original price). Since the iMac’s January introduction, Joswiak says, flat-panel prices have risen 25 per- cent while the cost of memory | has tripled. “I’s not a surprise | they’ve increased,” he adds. “It’s a surprise they’re increas- | ing so quickly.” Blame the rising cost of compu- ter parts on “good ol’ supply and demand,” says Bob O'Donnell, research director for device tech- nology at technology forecast firm IDC. With flat-panel dis- plays, for instance, prices fell dra- matically in the last few years, causing a jump in demand, But at the same time, supplies remained flat, causing prices to spike upward since last fall. “Apple is also hit by the fact that it’s not buying on the scale of a Dell, so it’s not able to protect itself,” says Jupiter Media Matrix research director Michael Gartenberg. To adjust for the higher costs without raising prices, some PC makers are scaling back on features such as memory and storage capacity, masking those changes by increasing processor speed. That wasn’t an option for Apple. “If we were to deconfigure, you would know what we were doing,” Joswiak said. Instead, Apple figured a $100 price hike would be the most painless way to deal with higher costs. Will that turn out to be true? Consumers are generally turned off by price increases, but analysts say that the iMac is a unique product. “If people are willing to pay $1,800 [for a top-of-the-line iMac], they'll pay $1,900,” Gartenberg says. “You're still getting a very good value, even for the addi- tional $100 you're paying.” ‘—PHILIP MICHAELS | | PRODUCT WATT Frame by Frame Recent Adobe releases (800/833-6687, www.adobe.com) have reflected the company's interest in network publishing; Adobe wants to make it easy to simultaneously publish in multiple for- mats, such as print, the Web, and handheld devices, FrameMaker 7.0, the latest version of Adobe's publishing software for books and technical documents, is no exception, with new features including a wider range of output options, improved XML support, and better collaboration tools for sharing files across a network. The previous version of Frame- Maker came in two flavors— | the $799 standard edition and a $1,449 FrameMaker+SGML edi- tion, which let designers create complex, structured documents using Standard Generalized Markup Language and—to a lesser extent—XML. FrameMaker 7.0 combines both editions in one $799 package. Among FrameMaker's XML improve- ments is the ability to import, validate, and export XML files and document type definitions (DTDs)—rules that define the structure and validity of your XML. At the same time, you can now edit content in a WYSIWYG environment. If you need to export your document as a PDF, you can use FrameMaker 7,0 to create Tagged PDF files, which allow content to reflow to fit a variety of screen sizes. Smaller improve- ments include greater flexibility in using Master pages; support for importing PDF 1.4, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), and native Adobe Illustrator files (version 9 and higher); and bet- ter file sharing with support for the WebDAV protocol, One thing you won't find in the new FrameMaker, which should hit retail shelves by early June, is native OS X support. The updated version runs in OS 9, but it won't run natively in Apple's mew OS.—KELLY LUNSFORD \ Displays 23-inch LCD monitor from Apple (800/692- 7753, www.apple.com); The Apple Cinema HD Display ($3,499) is an all-digital flat-panel display that offers 1,920-by-1,200-pixel resolution. It supports 16.7 million colors, offers a 160-degree viewing angle, and features a 16:10 aspect ratio, allowing users to view a full 11-by-17-inch two- tion to its $399 5GB MP3 player, Apple has introduced a 10GB iPod ($499), which it says can store 2,000 CD-quality songs, Apple will also offer $49 laser engraving so users can personalize their iPods with two lines of text (with as many as 27 characters per line). Printers Five ink-jet printers from Lexmark (888/ 539-6275, www.lexmark.com): The Lexmark 265 ($199) features 4,800-by- 600-dpi resolution and prints at speeds of 15 pages per minute in color and 21 pages per minute in black-and-white. The Lexmark 255 ($129) offers 3,600-by-600- dpi resolution and print speeds of 13 pages per minute in color and 17 pages per minute in black-and-white. The Lexmark 245 ($89) features 2,400-by-1,200-dpi resolution and print speeds of 9 pages per minute in color and 15 pages per minute in black-and-white. The Lexmark 235 ($69) features the same resolution but prints 6 pages per minute in color and 11 pages per minute in black-and-white. The Lexmark 225 ($49) features 1,200-by- 1,200-dpi resolution and print speeds of 6 pages per minute in color and 9 pages black-and. EONS WNW ANDTANARTALUK COM June 2002 wwwsmacworld.com APC introduces the best protection available for your Mac 10 million computer users can’t be wrong about APC power protection Don't let a lightning storm destroy your Mac system in the blink of an eye. Your hard drive, modem and RAM are all at risk, not to mention peripherals like your zip drive, scanner, monitor and printer. Rely on an APC Back-UPS Pro® to save your invest- ments from high voltage surges. APC power protection also provides clean, continuous power that lets you function without frustrating interrup- tions, unlike cheap power strips that don’t prevent any of the power problems that can cause keyboard lock- ups, systems crashes, and lost Internet connections. And if your system is ever damaged by a surge, even lightning, APC’s Lifetime Equipment Protection Policy* will pay up to $25,000 to replace your equipment. * (see policy for details) Discover why 10,000,000 customers trust in APC’s Legendary Reliability” and protect your Mac system with an APC power protection unit today. 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(See APC’s Website for complete promotion details) Enter now: Visit http://promo.apc. com Key Code e838y - Call 888-289-APCC x4097 - Fax 401-788-2797 -CIDOEF-USs * PowerFax: (G00G47-FAXX « Esti ancinfotapce com * 132 Faxgrounds Re, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA (©2002 American Power Conversion. All Tradematks are the or Choose 73 at wwvw.macworld.com/getinfo (PRODUCT WATCHTJUNE 2002)— << Storage Devices WHAT'S HOT A Quick Look at the World of Tech 4. Apple's latest iPod | doubles the MP3 player's storage capacity. Ironically, with its 10GB capacity, the ‘iPod can now hold more music than Napster. 2, Apple announces sup- port for Bluetooth, a tech- nology that will let cell phones, PDAs, and other devices connect wirelessly to your Mac. However, the technology will do nothing to make elaborate cellphone rings less annoying. 3. Rising component costs force Apple to raise the prices of all three new flat-panel iMac configura- tions by $100. Look on the bright side—that’ only lke, $48 Canadian. 4, Hewlett-Packard and Compag shareholders approve the merger of the two companies. Execu- |_ tives of HP and Compaq crow, “Now we can focus on what | our companies do best~build- ‘ng computers that no one cares about.” ACCESSORIZING YOU! A tape backup system from Exabyte (800/ 392-2983, wwwwexabyte.com): The VKA AutoPak 1x10 ($2,995) contains one VXA-1 tape drive and ten VXA tape car- ‘ridges. It can store as much as 660GB of compressed data. Aline of portable hard drives from lomega (888/446-6342, wwwiomega.com): The omega Portable Hard Drive has a FireWire interface and is available with a capacity of 20GB ($229) or 30GB ($279), There's also a USB 2.0 drive ($199 and $259) that's back- ward compatible with USB 1.1 on the Mac, System Hardware Processor upgrade cards from Sonnet, Technologies (949/587-3500, www.sonnet tech.com): The Harmoni G3 600MHZ Fire- Wire and processor-upgrade card ($400)— the second member of the Harmoni family of CRT iMac upgrades—features a 600MHz 1BM PowerPC G3 processor with 256K of Level 2 cache. It's for 233MHz, 266MHz, and 333MHz iMacs. The Crescendo/PB G3 466-1M ($300) is a processor upgrade for the PowerBook 1400; it offers a 466MHz PowerPC G3 CPU with 1MB of Level 2 backside cache. Software cross Platforms Celview 3.0, from Celcorp (780/438-2323, www.celview.com): The latest version of the terminal-emulation products the first 5250/3270 emulator to run on OS X; it also supports Mac 0S 8.1 and later ($295 for AS/400 or Mainframe edition; $175 for Celview SNA Gateway; upgrades, $79). Science Software ‘SPSS 11.0, from SPSS (800/543-2185, wwwwspss.com): The data-analysis software ‘now runs on OS X. It adds linear mixed RiPOD | ‘models for accurate predictive models when working with nested data, SPSS 11.0, which will ship in the third quarter of 2002, also features enhanced statistical procedures and data management ($999 for commer- cial users; $599 for academic users; upgrade pricing not available at pres time). Utility Software ile Buddy 7.0, from SkyTag Software (919/ 933-9595, wwnskytag.com): The fleman- agement utility rns on 0S 9 and higher, including OS X. It features support for long file names and name extensions, as well 7256, vaw.palm,com): The POA synching software now has 0S X support, as well as support for vCard and vCal files for sharing information with Microsoft Entourage X, 05 X Address Book, and Palm Desktop for Windows (ree). Announce! Acquisition The purchase of Zayante » (831/461-4900, www -zayante,com) by Apple: Zayante makes IEEE-1394 silicon and software used by computer- product and semiconductor manufacturers to produce FireWire-compliant products. Apple says that the purchase extends the ‘company’s commitment to the high-speed connectivity standard. New Price {price cut for 3-D-animation software by Alias|Wavefront (800/447-2542, vaww aliaswavefront.com): The price of Maya ‘Complete, which runs on OS X, has dropped to $1,999 from $7,500. The price cut follows the release earlier this year of a free downloadable version of Maya called Maya Personal Learning Edition. —CoMPED BY PHP MicHaRLs Do Touc One of the iPod's greatest advantages is this portable music player's ability to store a vast catalog composed entirely of your favorite tunes. But what if you want to share your music library with other people in a car or at your house? You have two options: tote around a rat's nest of adapter cables or pick up an adapter such as the iRock 300W, from First International Digital (847/202-1900, www. myirock.com). To combine the wonders of an iPod's playlist with the | capabilities of a stereo, all you have to do is plug the iRock into your iPod, select one of four frequencies, and tune your radio to that frequency. Like the iPod, the iRock is compact, measuring 2 by 3 inches. Unlike the $399 iPod, the iRock 300W can be had for the price of a couple COs—$30. For a few dollars more, you can get the iPod Connection Kit, from Dr. Bott (877/611-2688, www.drbott .com). This $50 kit inc! recharger for your iPod—enough to guarantee you'll be able to shale your tunes with 26 | MACWORLD | June 2002 h That Dial ludes a wireless FM transmitter and a anyone in earshot.—tisa SCHMEISER X Updates powered by (vean | versiontracker Adobe Illustrator 10.0.1 Speeds up launch time, copying and pasting, and opening and saving files ‘Adds contacts menu and new equalizer to MP3 player ‘Apple iTunes X 2.0.4 Expands AppleScript support ‘Audiox 1.0 Tool records sound from any input source Bias Peak DV 3.0r3 Digital-audio-editing software Bookends X 7.0 Bibliography and reference-management system Canon ScanGear CS-U 6.2 Drivers for CanoScan N670U, N676U, and NI240U Cocoa eFax 0.9.4 Fax software Desktop Rebuilder 1. Rebuilds OS X desktop files Epson Scan to File 1.0 Beta drivers for Epson Perfection and Expression scanners FWB SubRosa 1.0.1 Encryption and shredding tools for data protection HP Deskdet 1.3 0S X printer drivers for most HP models iPNetMonitor X 0.91 Monitors and trouble: Kensington Mouse Driver software for USB or ADB KidsGoGoGoX53 Parental-control Web-filter application MacVCD X 4.0.2 Fullscreen VCD player Mailsmit E-mail client Netscape X 6.2.2 Improves Web browser's autocomplete and downloading functions Panopticum Tools 1.1 After Effects plug-ins Rumpus 2.1 FTP server software Speed Download 1.8fc5 Download accelerator | StarfishMonkey 1.0 | ‘Antispam software Traffic Report X 1.1.3 Web-serverstatistical- and marketing tog analysis | VST FireWire Disk Encryption 1.0.1 | Security tool for the external hard drive Wacom Tablet 4. Driver for USB tablets Watson1.5 } ‘Adds four new tools to desktop Web-services app | intemet connections 4 and trackballs | For these and other current updates, visit: | | www.macworld.com/subjectupdates | vewwmacworld.com | In with the new... TechTool Pro 3 is the super utility for your Macintosh. Besides repairing and recovering data, TechTool Pro can help you circumvent problems in the first place. Our new virus detect and repair feature, as well as our software conflict check feature, lets you keep your computer in tip-top shape. When booted from the included emergency CD, you can even check, repair and optimize your OS X computer. Every day, more and more Macintosh professionals are choosing TechTool over other system utilities. In fact, even Apple Computer includes TechTool Deluxe with every copy of their AppleCare” Protection Plan. Simply put, TechTool Pro 3 is the most complete and powerful troubleshooting utility available for your computer. Why would you settle for anything less? WiMicromat Inc. 800-829-6227 707-566-3831 In with the newer... The first a ind f ( Cc for Mac ost Sully > BRIVE:G For Apple’s next-generation operating system, you'll need a next-generation disk utility. That's why Micromat has introduced Drive 10, the first and final disk utility for Mac OS X. Problems with your drive? Drive 10 can repair almost any drive problem with one simple click of your mouse. All within OS X's native environment. While Drive 10 is a new product, it is derived from TechTool Pro, Micromat's world-class diagnostic and repair utility. Using TechTool's time-tested routines as well as some new routines developed exclusively for OS X, Drive 10 offers many tools for checking and repairing any drive on your system. Don't entrust your OS X drive to ancient utilities. Protect your data and drive safely with Drive 10. info@micromat.com www.micromat.com ©2001 Micromat, Inc. All rights reserved, TechTool is a registered trademark of Micromat, Inc. Drive 10 is a trademark of Micromat, Inc. Macintosh and AppleCare are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Choose 37 at www.macworld.com/aetinto 11x17/1200 dpi Laser! “Price valid until June 30, 2002. CLEARLY™ Adobe <> IMAGING Dy same OO ‘ANTE announces the latest in office laser printing solutions. The new XANTI AW1200 excels in outputting up to 11" x 17", printing up to 1200 x 1200 dpi, and maintaining the physical qualities and size perfect for the office environment. All for the low price of $995*. You won't break the bank or your back when you get the latest in high performance office printing from XANTE. Durable, small, quiet, and very affordable, the AW1200 will satisfy all of your office printing needs: VOXANTE Innovations in Printing Technology ©2002 XANTE CORPORATION. XANTE is a regi 90 is either a registered trademark or a trade USA. Phone: 251-473-6502, Fax: 251-473-650 ipt logo are trademarks of A er license, XANTE CORPOR, ly Adobe imaging Al 36616-0526, Box 16 PAE EAT) More Printing Solutions En ‘om XANTE: Plate Maker 3 *Computer-to-Plate printing Quality plates ready press Resolutions up to 2400 dpi FilmMaker 4 | *Computer-to-film printing Resolutions up to 2400 dpi Eliminates expensive outsourcing costs lAccel-a-Writer 3G Resolutions tp to 2400 dpi Outstanding graphics printer | eSuperior halflones up to 150 lpi op ually ofice/network V printing | 1 920 pages-per-minule | | eOutput up to 13°x 18.5" ColourLaser Series Photo Quality Color Printing) | Resolutions up to 1200 dpi Y) *XANTES color management Output up to 12 NTE's color management #Low cost-per-page I Screen Writer 3 | © High-quality film positives | *Resoltutions up to 1200 dpi Output up to 13° x 35.5" Colour ScreenWriter *Dye-Sublimation printing ‘Heat Transfers Output up to 13°x 19° ‘Color proofing, labels, more 11 Pe CEP EERE PEELE E ent XANTE introduces the latest high volume and most dynamic digital printing solution. Along with the precision color performance and consistency you've come to expect from XANTE, you get a high speed, high quality digital print solution. The XANTE ColourLaser 21 is the ultimate digital color workhorse combining XANTE's color Management expertise, product versatility, and an affordable price. Its quality is unsurpassed, * High volume, high performance * Oversized printing up to 12” x 35.5” * Duplexing capabilities © XANTE's color management * Low cost-per-page ¢ And much more! Lease prices starting at**......$257 per month **$0 down, 3 year lease with no payments for 90 days! $1 buy-out available after lease expiration. 1-800-926-8839 exr.2140 ©2002 XANTE CORPORATION, XANTE and XANTE ColourLaser are trademarks or registered tradematks of XANTE CORPORATION. Adobe, PostScript PostScript 3 and the PostScript logo are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. PANTONE® and other Pantone, Inc. Maria he prope ol Pantone I. ther Bands and pad anes aa adr reir vader lhe pve fers. XANTE CORPORATION. Post Office Box 16526, Mobil, AL 36616-0526, USA. Phone: 251-473-6502, fax: 251-473-6503. nte.com, Choose 113 at wwwzmacworld.com/getinfo BY GLENN FLEISHMAN sed to be that Adobe GoLive 4 strong second to Macro- media Dreamweaver—it was a prettier way to hand-code Web pages, But with version 6.0, GoLive has matured from a pro- gram with strong potential but a somewhat incomplete feature set into a powerhouse server suite and workgroup-integration tool | that validates HTML code and lets you serve database content relatively easily—and does it all ata nice price. Like Adobe's other recently released products, GoLive 6.0 works natively in both OS 9 and OS X, and it requires only a single installation. GoLive 6.0 running in OS X is not much faster than GoLive 5.0 running in OS 9, and GoLive 6.0 runs slightly slower in OS X than in OS 9 on the same machine. But this version is very reliable in OS X, especially compared with GoLive 5.0’s sometimes flaky performance in OS 9. Showing Its Face Although Adobe has brought GoLive to OS X, it has left the interface almost untouched. GoLive 6.0 does have more palettes, which offer more con- textual settings and advice for users, but you'll still find vestiges of old interface quirks. To pre- view the contents of frames, for example, you have to click on a VCR-style display with square buttons that control stopping and playing. Nothing else in the pro- gram looks like this, and there's no good reason to confuse users with an inconsistent approach. One Page at a Time As it has since its inception, GoLive lets you build a page by dragging graphical elements (which are categorized by type— :, forms, head, frames, and Get Organized Gotive 6.0's revised Diagrams feature employs icons and a gfid to help you create site maps. The icons placed on the grid correspond to real fies, which can be edited and then copied toa live ste so on) from the Objects palette or by typing directly on a page. GoLive 6.0's page-design fea tures have been only incremen- tally improved. One notable improvement is version 6.08 updated Tables palette, which displays exact pixel dimensions; in previous versions, you had to examine each cell in a row and add padding and spacing to create an absolute pixel mea- surement for a tble’s width. Disappointing JavaScript Several versions ago, GoLive introduced interface-driven Java- Script and DHTML, which it calls GoLive Actions. These Actions are ordinary yet difficult- to-write activities for which GoLive includes standard code libraries, as well as a friendly palette that hides the complexity of the code. Adobe includes more than 80 Actions in GoLive 6.0, But support for JavaScript has not been improved: GoLive has a JavaScript text editor, but if you have problems with your code, you're on your own. A long-unresolved, incomplete feature shows all links on a page a .” This means that you have to edit source code to insert link triggers such as clicks and mouseovers. Are You Good HTML or Bad HTML? A major complaint in our review of GoLive 5.0 (699%; Reviews, December 2000) concerned the program’s inability to write pages that passed the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) validation test, which checks for well-writ- ten HTML that browsers can interpret without a hitch. Since that review, Adobe has revamped both the writing and checking of code in GoLive. An expanded Syntax Checker lets you check a page’s code against several major standards, and it produces a click- able report of errors. Reviews’ views you ce can trust; Macworld rates only final shipping products, Not prototypes. What we review is what you c can an actually buy. ADOBE GOLIVE 6.0 Web-Site-Management Software Provides Heavy-Duty Features, Approaches Parity with Competitors Powerful Site Maps One of GoLive's strengths i is site organization and The program organizes pages and media files into a graphical site window, and drag- ging files into or out of folders that correspond to the pages rewrites all the links to them and within them. A variety of site fea tures extend this approach: an Errors tab that shows problems with site links and missing files; FTP and WebDAV (Web Dis- tributed Authoring and Version- ing) tabs for incremental or full site synchronization with remote 's; and an Extras tab con- taining two kinds of templates, one with locked areas and one Diagrams in version 6.0, was one of GoLive 5.0’s most helpful. It let you use a large grid to proto- type new sites, or parts of existing sites, by creating relationships benween icon representations of the site's parts. The Diagrams feature includes custom icons representing different file types, as well as more-sophisticated output controls that Jet you turn your prototypes into clickable PDF and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) files. that can be opened in Web browsers. All Together Now It may be hard to get excited about file transfers, but the implementation of WebDAV will make you jump for joy. WebDAV not only lets you check your files in and out of a server, but also exchanges infor- mation about the files. The power here is that a server can coordinate many users editing the same files, as well as track revisions of files over time. GoLive 6.0 continues to expand upon the miracle of WebDAV by including the Adobe Web Workgroup Server (AWWS), which allows a group | 30 | MACWORLD | June 2002 |__www.macworld.com 30 Web-site-design software 6 3D package 41 Video-editing controtlers 46 Art synthesizer Adobe Gotve 6.0 Grema 4D XL7.3 Contour Design ShutlePro, Anat Pro 25 31 OCR applications 37 Image-editing application Tos Eitancemens 48 FireWire hard drive FineReader Pro 5, PhotoRetouch Pra 1.0 CommandPost SmanDisk FireFly OriniPage Pro X 38. CD-creation bundle 43 beage synthesizer 49. USB microscope 33. ATANI33 PCI RAID cards Toast with Jam Sones Scala ProScape ‘Acard AEC-6880M/ATA-133 RAID, SES 45 Scriptwriting program ion in Gi 38 sing applcatios 4 Migha Alchemy ATA 133 RAID PCI, bora anh ag Final Dratt 6 scape any sper SMS ulwaSTA 133/}00 RAD, ‘Sonnet Technologies Tempo 40 AADTS3 Font-management utility Font Reserve 3.0 Single User 46 FireWire keychain hard drive ‘WiebeTech Fete Keychain eediaMtX 3.0, Gefen Ex-tend-t DVI to ADC, Maya for Mac 05 x 51. The Game Room 4x4 Evolution 2, orzation i, Realttyst, ewend Dale 70 Ink-jet photo printers Canoe $8200, Caron $900, Epson Stylus Photo 7BSEPX, Epson Stylus Photo 820, Hewlett Packard Photosmart 1315 355.1, and Toon Boom Studio 1.1 OUTSTANDING: 86#9% VERY GOOD: 6984 Goon: ee FLAWED: §@ UNACCEPTABLE: @ of users (or even an individual) to store all the files associated with a GoLive site on a server and check them in and out for editing. And not just Adobe software is com- patible with the AWWS—other WebDAV-enabled software, such as Goliath and Dreamweaver 4, can access it too. GoLive 6.0. also brings intraprogram connections to a whole new plane by supporting Adobe's latest technology: Vari- ables. Variables let you set par- ticular layers, objects, or text in Illustrator 10, Photoshop 7.0, and LiveMotion 2.0, so that GoLive can modify them. Commanding Data Let’s say you have a catalog of 500 widgets, with part numbers, pictures, descriptions, and prices. GoLive lets you take database content and, using a graphical tool that creates templates for these various widget fields, feed it to your Web si Adobe dram: GoLive 5.0 Dynamic Link technology, which attempted to replicate Macromedia's Ultra- Dev database features. Now called Dynamic Content, with icons as placeholders for data- base content, it lets any designer or Web producer build dynamic pages, but the overly complex initial setup and poor documen- tation don't make this as easy as it should be. Adobe includes an excellent extra to help jump-start database use: a package called GoLive Preconfigured Servers, which includes the Apache Web server already set up to work with PHP; the Tomcat JSP server; and the MySQL database server. Granted, this software is all available separately—for free— from open-source developers, but Adobe is supplying it already configured in a single package that installs in Mac OS X 10.1 or Windows XP and 2000. It’s hard to beat a product that’s both free and well put together. Technical Support GoLive comes with 90 days of tech support activated by the first call—not enough given the difficulty of this program but similar to what competitors offer. When the 90-day period runs out, the Web-based Adobe Forums offer limited, free tech- nical support through posted messages; other users often | answer questions, and Adobe | personnel frequently respond within minutes. Macworld’s Buying Advice With version 6.0, this former | challenger to incumbent Dream- weaver 4 is now a near equal, and we'll have to wait and see how it stacks up against the nearly ready Dreamweaver MX. GoLive’s databas integration support alone is worth the price of the program, and the pow- erful Adobe Web Workgroup | Server makes GoLive suitable for workgroups. Although it lacks JavaScript debugging tools and has its | interface quirks, GoLive 6.0 delivers a top-notch approach to hundreds of page-design and Web-site tasks. RATING: 6699 PROS: Some oddities in previous feleases fixed; database and workgroup-server software and support; improved graphical site prototyping. | CONS: No JavaScript debugging | tools; some longtime leftover ] interface quirks; complex database- integration setup with poor documentation, | PRICE: $399; upgrade from previous versions of GoLive and PageMlil, $99 OS COMPATIBILITY: Mac 05 9, Mac 0S X COMPANY: Adobe Systems, 800/ 833-6687, www.adobe.com/golive OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION APPLICATIONS FineReader Pro 5 and OmniPage Pro X Get the Job Done—with Your Help BY CHRISTOPHER BREEN Converting a printed page into accurate and editable text has long been one of the great chal- lenges facing computer users. Advances have been made over the years, but the current profes- sional optical character recog- nition (OCR) applications for | the Mac—Abbyy’s FineReader Pro 5 and ScanSoft’s OmniPage Pro X—demonstrate that turn- ing paper into pixels remains an imperfect process. The Basics Both of these programs handle the basics: they accommodate any TWAIN-compliant scanner in Mac OS 9.2 and earlier, they let you fine-tune the OCR process by designating areas of text, graphics, and tables in a document, and they let you save files in a variety of formats. And on the surface, FineReader and OmniPage are very similar. Both programs present a main window containing two panes—an image of the original scan is on the left, and the software-recognized text is on the right. The program imposes zones—boxes that denote a page’s text, tables, and graphic elements—on the scanned image. The software can render these zones automatically, or you can use the included tools to map out the zones yourself (see “Recog- nize Me?”), FineReader provides greater access to each step in the OCR process than OmniPage. For example, FineReader includes an Analyze Layout button, a fea- ture missing from OmniPage. When you click on this button, FineReader quickly analyzes the | document and maps out the zones. This is helpful if you want to change inappropriately recog- nized zones before letting the software scan the text. Omni- Page's Perform OCR button cre- Recognize Me? OmniPage Pro X detects most zones correctly in some complex documents. The recognized text is on the right, and the original scan is on the left. June 2002 MACWORLD | 31 | | | | REVIEWS ates zones and recognizes text in one step. Once those processes are complete, you can then change zone types and, if neces- sary, run the OCR process again. ‘The two programs have simi- lar export options, allowing you to save recognized text and pictures in Rich Text Format (RTF), AppleWorks, Microsoft Word and Excel, PDF, and HTML. Although both pro- grams allow you to “scan” files from standard formats such as TIFF, JPEG, and PICT, only OmniPage can import’ PDF files. OmniPage is also the only OS X-native option of the two, but because few scanners work with OS X, this is not currently a tremendous advantage. Spelling Counts Of the two programs, Omni- Page has the better spelling- checker interface. Its Proofread OCR window lets you move eas- ily through the spelling-checker process, thanks to Ignore and Change buttons activated with the return key. On the other hand, FineReader requires you to click on every button with the mouse and open and close a new window whenever you wish to add a new word to Fine- Reader's dictionary. This is an important differ- ence, considering that you'll spend a lot of time using the spelling checker. If our tests are any indication, you'll spend more time in FineReader’s spelling checker than in Omni- Page’s, as FineReader ques- tioned more words than Omni- Page and, of those flagged words, got more of them wrong. Head to Head ‘To test the automatic-recogni- tion capabilities of the program, we scanned two documents with a multifunction HP OfficeJet G85 in black-and-white at 300 dpi—settings designed to pro- duce a clean sean (see “Midrange Flatbed Scanners,” April 2002, for more on getting a good in). The first document was a imple press release that con- tained a logo anda large block of text with some italic and bold- face words. The second was a Macworld page comprising small type, multiple columns, a large graphic, and a table. We set up the two programs to automati- cally create zones and recognize the pages. We ran them through the spelling checker and then exported the pages as RTF (opened and read in Word) and PDF files, Simple Fare For documents that have simple layouts, FineReader does an acceptable job. The program correctly identified the press release’s logo as a graphic, put all the text except the contact information at the bottom in a single text block, and correctly identified the bold and italic text in the exported RTF and PDF file (though it underlined the bold headline). ‘To get similar results in OmniPage, we had to tell the Tas poe apa REVIEWS: Ie Hak spat Deane Erne: | | MIDRANGE FLATBEL Checkered L— FineReader Pro 5 is hampered by a clumsy spelling checker. 32 | MACWORLD | June 2002 | program that the page con- tained a single column (this is done via a pop-up menu located in the toolbar), Although the italic text appeared in the Word document, the only bold type that appeared in the RTF file was in the headline, and spaces between paragraphs were exag- OmniPage incorrectly identified the logo as text—but it did correctly recognize that text. In the PDF file, OmniPage again failed to produce the bold formatting in the body of the press release and, in places where the bold formatting should have appeared, often dropped words below the base- line of the surrounding text. Labyrinthine Layouts With the more complex Mac- world page, OmniPage out- performed FineReader, After v selected the Mixed Pages option in the toolbar, OmniPage cre- ated numerous text blocks. The exported OmniPage RTF file matched the layout of inal page, though it con- tained some odd line breaks and s and suffered from the aseline problems. Even after we told FineReader that the page had multiple columns, it lumped a couple of parallel columns together in a single zone, causing the exported text in the RTF file to be jumbled. PDF files created with the two programs were cleaner. Although FineReader correctly identified the graphic and included it in the PDF file, i overly broad selection of text blocks caused it to leave out lines where the zones bordered each other at the end of some paragraphs in the exported file. Both programs properly pro- duced the magazine page’s table, but where FineReader included a mixed set of font sizes, Omni- Page produced more-consistent text formatting. Manual Transmission We were able to rectify many of these problems by manually adjusting the zones before hav- ing the programs analyze the documents. Both programs let you create rectangular and polygonal zones, and they let you combine adjacent zones. Converting the text zone around the press release’s logo to a graphic zone allowed OmniPage to correctly export the graphic. Likewise, drawing more zones on the magazine page improved the formatting of the RTF and PDF files exported from FineReader. But the fact that you have to resort to the manual tools calls into question the usefulness of the programs’ batch-processing capabilities and support for scanners with sheet-feeder attachments—features designed to let you scan and convert multiple documents with little user interference. Macworld’s Buying Advice Neither OmniPage Pro X nor FineReader Pro 5 is perfect, But OmniPage—with its power to more easily recognize complex documents automatically, abil- ity to import PDF files, and cleaner spelling-checker inter- face—is closer to the mark, par- ticularly if you plan on scanning a lot of documents that have complex layouts, FINEREADER PRO 5 _ RATING: $89 PROS: Admirably converts uncompli- cated documents; timesaving Analyze Layout feature. CONS: Clunky spelling checker; no POF-import support; poorly handles automatic recognition of complex documents, PRICE: $129 OS COMPATIBILITY: Mac 0S 9 COMPANY: Abbyy, 510/226-6717, www.abbyyusa.com OMNIPAGE PRO X Lie PROS: Flexible recognition options; imports POF files; superior spelling checker interface. CONS: Exported files have line-break problems; lacks feature for analyzing layout; list price is inflated, PRICE: $499; upgrade from other OCR package, $149 ‘OS COMPATIBILITY: Mac OS 9, Mac 0S X COMPANY: ScanSoft, 800/654-1187, www.scansoft.com wwwmacworld.com ATA/133 PCI RAID CARDS Four Products That Let You Hook Up Fast, High-Capacity Storage, without a Lot of Clutter BY KRISTINA DE NIKE If the inside of your Mac is no more mysterious to you than the inside of your sock drawer, an internal hardware RAID (Redundant Array of Indepen- dent Disks) array may be the perfect way to add lots of very fast storage to your because two bare ATY drives are often much less expensive than one external FireWire or SC twice the I drive wi ith Storage this fast is well suited to editing DV video, accessing large graphics files, or serving up Web pages. An internal array also. prevents the clutter of external drives and their cables. Our Willing Subjects We tested four ATA PCI RAID cards that combine two ATA drives to create one large, fi volume using the latest, 133 ion of ATA: Acard’s Alchemy ATA 133 RAID PCI, SIHG's UleraATA 133/100 RAID, and Sonnet echnologies’ ‘Tempo RAID133. Each PCI card employs hard- ware made by Acard, which also sells its own card. Asa result, the four cards looked and behaved exactly the same—the choice you make will come down to Four Cards of the Same Suit: Pscnil ‘Acard AEC-6880M/ATA-133 RAID Miglia Alchemy ATA 133 RAID PCI SHG UltraATA 133/100 RAID Sonnet Tempo RAID133, single ATA drive price, the quality of the card’s manual and technical support, and the length of its Give RAID a Chance ‘These cards provide the easiest RAID configuration the Mac hi ever seen. You simply use an AT! cable to connect an ATA drive to a port on the PCI card, use another ATA cable to connect a second ATA drive to the next port on the card, flip a switch on the card, and reboot, The PCL card then reports to the CPU that the drives are a single SCSI device and that they appear as one volume on your desktop. You can then use any Mac drive- formatting software that works with SCSI drives—including OS 9's Drive Setup and OS X’s Disk Utility—to format the RAID array. The PCI cards accomplish this feat by using RAID Level 0, which alternates the tream between two or more drive! Since both driv rite data at the same time, a two-drive array has the potential to be tw sa single dri When we ested this theory, the speed improvements of using a single drive were closer to 25 percent than 100 percent, but we were able to capture uncom- pressed video to our ai it 27 , which we were no to do with a single drive. How le Mac 0S X Finder FILE DUPLICATE Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1 , the catch with RAID arrays s that if either drive fail lose the data on both driv In a Dead Heat Be Il of these products use the same hardware, it’s not sur- prising they turned in nearly identical performance results in our tests, The hardware RAID configurations of two 80GB drives were faster than a single 80GB drive by as much as 25 percent. The only exception was the Adobe Photoshop Save test, in which a single drive was slightly faster. For “Advanced RAID"), In our Finder File Duplicate test, the software-based RAID percent slower than the hard RAID and 30 percent 4 single drive. This is because a software RAID array relies on the CPU to send a quick series of commands alternating between two drive: and FireWire Quality of Manuals software RAIDs also experience a h ATA PCI RAID card we slowdown, but unlil , these sted included a useful manual Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1 __Norton S Speed Disk 6.0 in c 059 9 BEST RESULTS IN BOLD. REFERENCE SYSTEM IN TALIS. All scores are in minutes'seconds. Out test system was a Power Mac dual-1GHz G4 with Mac OS X 10.1.3 installed and 5121 < Better ‘of RAM, We formatted our Seagate Barracuda drives with O5 X's Disk Utility, The File The SHG UltraATA 133/100 RAID technologies better handle con- current data, softening the per- | formance hit to a system. As a result, SCSI and FireWire soft- ware RAIDs tend to perform faster than a single drive but slower than a hardware RAID. If you plan on adding a single drive to your desktop Mac, you don’t need to invest in an ATA PCI card at all—you can connect an additional drive to the ATA/66 internal bus that ships with mod- erm Macs. We tested this configu- | ration against the ATA/133 bus on the PCI cards, using Barra 80GB Uln ATA/100 from Seagate, ‘To see 133 bus on the ster than the ATA/66 s built into current Power we configured our test aslave and moved it to the ’s internal bus, where the hoot drive w so located. This configuration performed ideni cally to the 80GB drive attached to the PCI cards, Not surpris ingly, our single drive transferred data at no faster than 66 MBps. OPTIMIZE < Better Duplicate test was performed with a 400MB file. Macworld Lab's Photoshop Suite test runs asctpt of five tasks on a SOMB file inthe Classic environment. Photoshop's memory partition was set to 32MB and His: | tory was set to Minimum, The Photoshop Save test was performed with a 400MB file, We booted into Mac OS 9, used Drive Setup to format the dives, and then used Norton Speed Disk to optimize 700MB of data 0 LAS TESTING BY KRISTINA OE Nine ‘on the test dive— wawwmacworld.com | tune 2002 | MACWORLD | 33 | If you're looking to get into RAID, here's some further information Advanced RAID | you might find helpful. Software or Hardware RAID? Anyone who wants to create a RAID array should know that there are two methods: using the hardware configuration the ATA PCI RAID cards provide, or using RAID software, such as SoftRAID's SoftRAID, Intech's Hard Disk SpeedTools, or Apple’s Disk Utility in Mac OS X. In a hardware RAID, the data moves in a single stream from the CPU to the PCI card, which splits the data into alternating stripes, In a software array, the software splits the data stream, and the CPU alternates data traveling to and from the individual drives. Although hardware RAID cards are more expensive than software RAID packages, they are often faster, because a software array taxes your CPU much more heavily. Another advantage of a hardware array is that you can boot your system from it. We were able to boot both OS 9 and OS X from each of our hardware arrays. | Advanced RAID; Two Arrays Are Not Twice as Good | If one array isn’t enough, you can attach another two drives to the other 34 MACWORLD port on the PCI RAID card and create another hardware array. To make this work, you have to identify one of the two-drive arrays as the master and one as the slave. You must first set the jumpers, which are about the size of a grain of rice and fit over the pins on the drive (they're usually found between the drive’s power plug and the ATA connector on the drive)—we recommend using tweezers. Although you can connect two master drives and two slave drives to the cards to create two RAID Level 0 arrays, the addition of the slave array will negatively affect performance. The fastest configuration is two master drives of the same size and speed. If you use two drives of different capaci- ties, your array will be only twice the size of the smaller drive, Waiting for the Bus If you currently have a drive connected to your Mac's original internal bus, it will not automatically mount on your desktop if you reconnect the drive to the ATA/133 RAID card, To remedy this, you can update the ATA drive's drivers with a formatting package such as FWB Software's Hard Disk Toolkit or Intech’s Hard Disk SpeedTools. You can also make the drive visible by reinitializing the hard drive, but any data on the drive will be wiped out. Drives formatted with Mac OS X's Disk Utility can be moved from the internal ATA bus to the ATA card without this problem. Getting Back to Normal For troubleshooting your RAID array of drives, there is a small switch on the PCI card that lets the two drives operate in Normal mode, so the individual drives appear as themselves, letting you scan or repair them independently of one another with a disk utility but not retrieve data or boot from the drives. If you plan to use the drives separately on an ‘ongoing basis, you'll want an ATA/133 card that does not have RAID capabilities: each company featured in this review also sells less expen- sive non-RAID ATA cards, ATA/133 RAID Cards Compared COMPANY Acard PRODUCT Miglia SIIG* Sonnet Technologies une 2002 MOUSE RATING $08) 9906 PRICE | OS COMPATI- BILITY Mac 0S 9, Mac 0S X Mac 0S 9, Mac 0S X Mac 0S 9, Mac 0S X Mac 0S 9, Mac 0S X yweww.sonnettech.com with instructions on how to install and configure the card. ‘The documentation also co ered initializing the drives in both OS 9 and OS X. However, the hardest part of setting up an internal a physically installing the internal drives in your computer. Miglia and Sonnet do a good job of explaining how to configure a master or slave with ‘The Acard and Sonnet manuals have useful and clear diagrams showing how to attach the master drive to the end of the ATA cable. Because using an ATA card is an economical way to replace an older SCSI drive, Miglia goes so far as to include illustrations on how to install a single drive in a range of pre-G3 Power Macs, beige G3s, and blue-and-white G3s. Miglia also. includes instruc- tions in French, Spanish, Ital- ian, and German. The Acard Web site has a list of supported drives from Sea- gate, Quantum, Maxtor, Fujitsu, IBM and Western Digital. ‘These are the drives Acard has tested, but these are not nec sarily the only drives that will work with the cards. Both Son- net and SIG confirm that they have been able to use the card with a variety of drives, including ATA/133 drives and older ATA/33 drives. Technical Support Each vendor hopes to differenti- ate itself by providing superior technical support. Although Acard’s only office is in Tai they contract with Mars Tec! nologies in the United States (www.getlaptop.com) for their technical support. We were able to get through to a technician EVIEWS » CONTACT WARRANTY PROS (886) (2) 8512 2290, 2 years Phone support _wwvewacard.com ial available. {44} (0) 870 747 2968, 2 years wanxmiglia.com installation instructions for older Macs 510/657-8688, Syears Long warranty; wwnwsiig.com lowest price. 949/587-3500, 3years Phone support available. within five minutes. And in less than ten minutes, Sonnet's phone support was able to answer o