Apple Reviews

I don't know why USB cables such as these go for such high prices at Officemax, Target, etc. A regular 6ft USB 2.0 A/B cable at Target costs $10! At Officemax the "gold plated" 10ft USB 2.0 A/B cables are $27!!! Bestbuy was also expensive despite that they are a category killer in electronics.

This cable is great and has a lifetime warranty.

Bottomline: buy your stuff from Amazon.com, where you TRULY get the lowest price possible.

SUPPORT AMAZON.COM and get your stuff here!!

When I purchased this product I thought I was getting a USB version 1 cable. It turned out to be 2.0. Fortunately the package said it was backward compatible and it was.

The book that came with my printer stated I needed a USB cable with a length of no greater than 6 foot, shielded, etc. They should tell you this before you get the printer. Fortunately, the 10 foot cable connected and worked flawlessly. I always try to buy Belkin since they generally have top quality products and good support.

cheapest on amazon. found the same at officemax locallay for $30. what a joke.

Amazon is simply the best in price & service. returining has been been easier in my life.

This printer replaces an older HP color ink jet for me. Installation was quick and easy using my USB 2.0, the printer is backwards compatable with the slower USB 1.1 ports. The USB 2.0 is about 20 times faster than the older USB version 1.1 ports.

The printer includes six ink cartridges, software, and two different cables to connect directly to Canon cameras but not the needed USB cable to connect the printer to the computer. A nice feature is the included media adapters that will take your camera memory and plug them into the printer's PCMCIA port. My package included a Canon adapter for CompactFlash and another by Dazzle that works for four different types including SmartMedia.

The prints are simply beautiful using the sample of five sheets of included glossy paper. The colors are accurate and sharp. The 4x6 frameless prints take less than a minute to print out, 30 minutes to completely dry and they recommend 24 hours before putting them under glass or in an album.

The printer can be used without a computer connected to it using the LCD screen on the righthand side of the machine and a camera's memory card. The image adapter available for [X] connects to a port on the top of the printer to allow you to preview pictures when used to print without the computer.

It took a lot of searching before I decided to purchase a good printer and this one is a great one. The pictures are clear and they print fast. I showed them to friends and didn't tell them that I printed them at home and they were very surprised when I told them. Spend the extra money and get a good printer. This printer also include photo ink, which is really needed for a clean print. Make sure you also get the right paper.

I acquired an S830D recently.

You don't need the auxiliary screen to print directly from the memory card slot.

To access the cropping capabilities, yes, you need a screen or a compatible camera, but not to print from a memory card. Inserting a memory card (and I've used both CompactFlash and SmartMedia from both Canon and Olympus cameras) causes the S830D to go into a mode that activates automatic print functions on the printer control board. You can print an index sheet of thumbnail images, print all images in a wide variety of multi-print-per-page formats, selected prints using the index and vary the print media and quality from plain paper to Photo Paper Pro.

I have been very happy with both the color and the contrast produced by the printer with no computer intervention.

As for the rest of the printer's features, photo lab quality, good ink economy, fast and quiet operation.

This is the best printer I have ever owned.

It is not jut the best Display I ever had see. I solve two other "problems" in Mac use:
It give tho more USB conectors and it have a switch to turn your Mac On.
If you can afford the price, I recomend.

I write from the college newspaper and we use this monitor to work on the lay-out for the paper each week. This monitor is great because the graphics are clear. We also run programs like Adobe Photoshop, and the graphics are awesome with that program as well. This monitor just works great. We haven't had any problems with it!

i have had mine for 4 months - no problems -- I switch it between my G4 and G5, I'm going to get a Apple 17" soon for the G4. My wife doesn;t think I need both and announced ownership of the G4.

Originally, I had very negative things to say about this product--namely problems with scanning chrome. Well, it took a couple of attempts over the past three years, but Nikon's support crew did a fantastic job once I convinced them of the problem, and they absorbed the entire cost of the repair (which was almost half the cost of the scanner).

In other words, Nikon stands behind its products. And you can't beat that. Buy it.

I've had this since it was first released and have found it to be a superb scanner.
As someone else has pointed out, there are occasional issues with slides, but from my experience that is a glitch in the NikonScan software and not the scanner itself. Using other scanning software (eg. Vuescan or Silverfast) has solved those issues for me.

The Coolscan IV is definitely worth the price for scanning negatives. I looked at flatbed scanners and cheaper film scanners previously, but in the end I bit the bullet and bought the Coolscan. I have no regrets about doing this. The resolution of the scanned negatives is amazing - I can see details that were not visible the original prints. What really makes the investment worthwhile is the Digital ICE technology, which "cleans up" dusty or imperfect negatives. I am in the process of converting my entire film library into digital images.

This brings me to the downsides of the scanner. It does not utilize USB 2.0, and the process of scanning negatives at high resolutions is very very slow. I basically have to devote 45 minutes to an hour to scan in a roll of film because I have turned on Digital ICE as well as the other touch-up features available on the scanner. However, this is by choice, so for people who don't want the highest resolutions, the process may be somewhat faster. The other problem is that the included software is very powerful but has a steep learning curve. I spent a lot of initial time tweaking the settings to find what produced the best images.

Overall, though, the gripes are minor since the quality of the images is so high. This has changed how I take pictures now. Since the resolution of the digital images is higher than any reasonably priced digital camera on the market, I am now shooting most pictures with a film camera and scanning the negatives. This provides the best of both worlds - a set of cheap prints as well as high-quality digital images. Now I just need to get another hard drive to hold all the images that I am scanning in...

As a software developer with broadband internet and a TV tuner in my PC, I usually have a ridiculous number of things on screen at the same time. It's not uncommon to catch me writing code in one window, reading documentation in another, and watching TV in a third. Attaching two side-by-side LCD displays to my PC would manage this just fine, and probably more cheaply to boot.

But I also like to play games and watch movies, and for that, I wanted a single large panel. The only thing that fit the bill was the Apple display.

I purchased it after much ogling of showroom displays, and attached it to my PC's DVI port (with the help of Apple's DVI-to-ADC adapter). Windows XP detected the new monitor, my video card (ATI 9700 Pro AIW) recognized the higher resolutions, and I was instantly using Windows in crystal-clear 1920x1200 resolution, with no dead pixels.

There are a few negatives:

- The brightness does drop a bit at about 45 degrees, so the sides of the screen may appear darker than the center, but only if you sit really close to it, and are really paying attention.
- On a PC, the Power and Brightness buttons do nothing (except glow in a really cool way when touched). You'll have to use whatever display settings your video card driver provides for color, brightness, contrast, etc. As for turning it off, you'll have to either use Windows' screen-saver option for powering the display down after a few minutes, or unplug it.
- The two built-in USB ports don't suport USB 2.0.
- The ADC connector is proprietary to Apple computers (and only a few models - go figure), so you'll have to buy an adapter (either VGA-ADC or DVI-ADC) to hook it up to your PC.
- Even with my Apple-manufactured DVI-ADC adapter, I get a small amount of "static", especially on black backgrounds. My eyes are trained not to notice it anymore, but considering how pricey these are, it's annoying. UPDATE: I have since found a setting in the ATI configuration that fixes this ('Alternate DVI operational mode'). So this is no longer an issue.
- On my PC, the display doesn't show anything until Windows XP has started up. This means you can't see the BIOS diagnostics or boot menu. On forums, some people have reported this as a problem, and some say it works fine for them. If anything ever goes wrong with the boot process, I'm not sure what I'll do.

Just bought the 23" Apple Cinema display. It works at full res with a GeForce 4 4600 and Windows XP. It has no hardware brightness/contrast controls, but the NVidia driver has these controls + gamma. You can save configurations (such as nighttime, cloudy, office etc) and access them quickly from the taskbar. I have one dead pixel, but at this resolution it is hardly noticeable. You have to buy the DVI to ADC converter to get it to work with an NVidia GeForce card ($$$). There is no loss in quality when using the converter (it is all digital). Color quality and brightness are even across the entire screen. The pixel response is fast for an LCD, but not as quick as a CRT. Still, DVDs and flight simulator rarely exhibit ghosting. Definitely happy with my purchase.

This monitor was designed to be used with Apple's latest G4 Macintosh product line- A single proprietary cable (called the Apple Display Connector, or ADC) provides power and video information to the monitor as well as USB connectivity to the two port USB hub built into the back of the screen. The 1.5" surrounding bezel is grey, encased in clear plastic, giving it a crystal look matching the G4 Cube or Tower decor.

By utilizing Apple's ADC to DVI Converter (not included- provides backward compatibility with non-ADC Macs such as Apple's Powerbook notebooks) as well as a graphic card with a DVI (Digital Visual Interface) port, such as NVidia's GeForce4 4600 or ATI's 9700 Pro, the Cinema Display can be used by both older Macs and PCs. The converter combines AC power, DVI video data and USB data into one port for the monitor's ADC input cable.

The LCD display is roughly one inch taller and two inches wider than two sheets of paper (8.5 x 11) placed side by side- perfect for displaying two full page word processing documents, web page design, or any other applications which might require a number of simultaneous open windows.

There are three minor issues that I noticed. Most monitors have some kind of adjustment buttons... contrast, brightness, hue, tint, etc. Rather than provide external adjustment buttons, The Apple Cinema Display comes with their Apple Displays Software- Apple's "all digital", Mac-only display adjustment solution. PC users must make adjustments to the display via their videocard's driver software. The two touch sensitive buttons on the front bezel are specifically to turn on a G4 Mac and to access the Apple Displays Software... when attached to a PC with the converter, they serve no purpose (although they glow when touched).

Another caveat... Apple doesn't provide an *.INF file for Windows Plug and Play recognition. Windows XP just lists it as a "Plug and Play Monitor". It's an insignificant detail, but when there are few flaws to speak of, the insignificant ones tend to stand out.

Most flat panel displays are suspended from central hinge and mounted on a stand. The size and weight of the 23" Cinema Display make it difficult to implement this, so it stands on three feet- two 2" legs at the base of the screen and a central leg mounted in the back, similar to how a picture frame stands up. This makes the monitor tilt up at an angle, rather than flat in relation to the viewer. I corrected this by putting a video cassette under the back leg.

My Test System: Athlon 2800+, Asus A7N8X+ motherboard, 1Gb PC3200 DDR RAM, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

First, I decided to watch a DVD. I had mixed results, but not due to the display.

Wide-format DVDs can be encoded two ways- either in full widescreen leaving the DVD software/player to create the black bars above and below the image when displayed on a standard monitor or television, or it can be encoded with the black bars as part of the video frames. This produces a normal widescreen look on a 4:3 ratio television or monitor, but a widescreen display will display black borders on the sides. As a result, the first TRON DVD release (not the 20th Anniversary Edition) and the theatrical release of DUNE (not the Sci-Fi Channel mini-series) that I watched had a two inch black border surrounding a widescreen video image.

Both Intervideo's WinDVD and Cyberlink's PowerDVD software exhibited the same problem, although PowerDVD does have a software zoom solution that cuts a little bit off of the left and right sides.

Independence Day and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace were a different story though. The Cinema Display has a 16:10 ratio, while standard widescreen format is a 16:9 ratio. Because of this, playback of true widescreen movies on this monitor will still have black bars above and below the video image.

According to the Apple Website, The Cinema Display has "lightning-fast pixel response for full-motion digital video playback." They weren't overstating their claim either... I could not detect any of the "ghosting" that occurs with some LCD monitors when high action/fast movement video sequences are displayed.

Next I tried gaming. The two games I have installed are Funcom's Anarchy Online and Dreamcatcher's Hegemonia: Legions of Doom.

Hegemonia is a 3D space battle strategy game. It had only a few resolutions available in it's graphics options screen- the highest being 1600 x 1200. When I played this game, like the 4:3 ratio DVDs, there were black bars on each side of the screen. This is understandable though- few games are written to take advantage of non-standard screen resolutions. Other than that the image was sharp and clear with no distortions.

Anarchy Online is a "massively multi-player online role-playing game", or MMORPG. It was written to be able to utilize any display resolution, either in fullscreen mode or in a window, and I was able to play the game easily at 1920 x 1200. Every so often, though, I'd see the screen "twitch" as I played the game... It could've been any number of things, from the software itself, to Microsoft's DirectX API, to a build up of static. When I actually started playing the game, (after about 15 minutes of "ooohing" and "ahhhing" over the image) the twitches were hardly noticable... in fact, I've noticed them occurring less and less, which leads me to believe that it was indeed a minor static issue.

Summary: The 23" Apple Cinema Display is, simply put, one of the absolute best displays on the market. ... more.

The battery on my ipod died after a year of having it. Now the charge only lasts about twenty minutes. I still use it every day, but only in my car with a charger attached.

I own the 3rd Generation iPod with the buttons on it and it's amazing. My brother owns this new 4th Generation iPod and it is also amazing. It doesn't come with the dock, however, this is not a much needed accesory. You can still transfer songs onto it and charge it if you use the firewire cable. Amazing MP3 player. It holds 5,000 songs- something you're not going to fill up anytime soon. Mine has about 900 on it and I've had it a year now. Once again amazing product, stop by the store and pick one up for yourself. You'll be doing yourself a favor!

If you are looking for a real good mp3 player, this is the one to get! It has everything i am looking for. First off it has a 20gb hard drive which can store 5,000 songs. my iTunes playlist has at least 600 hundred songs! second it has the new click-wheel which makes things much more easier to manuver around. the 3rd gen. iPod is real nice too but i don't like that the play, pause, stop buttons are at the top. finally the design is really high-tech looking. It has a nice white coating on the front and a metal finish at the back. it's thin as ever now also! i bought this for my wife for christmas but i also bought one for me too! these 20gb were sold out evrywhere!

I've been looking for a while to replace my lagging Lexmark printer. I found a great deal on this Canon printer. I checked the reviews, which were mostly very favorable. I purchased it without hesitation. I'm glad I did.

It does not come with a USB cable, so expect to purchase one. It does come with a sample pack of 5 - 4x6 Canon picture paper, so you don't even need to purchase paper first to test it out. And it does come with a cartriage of color and black ink, both need to be installed. In addition, the cost of the ink is lower than many other printers, ranging about $10 a cartriage.

The software is very nice, so far. You open up their picture printer program. Select the photo(s) you want to print, then you choose from the paper types, from 4x6 to 8-1/2x11 and then how you want the photo(s) printed, ie with/without a border. Pretty much just a three step process.

The results? OY! The pictures are really fantastic. Now I must state that the quality of the print will be based more on the quality of the picture (jpeg/gif/bmp) you are printing. For example, I took a jpeg that I had from my website. In order to use it on my website, I needed to cut the resolution down. When I printed the that picture (4x6), there was a noticable grain to the photo quality. This is not in any way the fault of the printer. When I took a similar jpeg and printed it at its original resolution, the quality was as if I got the picture from a photo store. I decided to take a high resolution jped, about 12 MB, and print it 8-1/2x11. The quality was excellent. I won't say it was perfect. Upon close inspection, ie staring right in front of it, you'll notice slight indications that it was printed, however, I couldn't guarantee that you could go to a photo store and get a better quality image reproduction. However, from just casually looking at the picture, the quality is excellent.

The speed is pretty nice, about 1 4x6 in 40 seconds. Normal print outs are obviously faster, though I haven't done much with that. One other thing to bring, the paper feeder seems very reliable. My Lexmark needed to be manually feed, one sheet at a time, to print and that was such a hassle. However, this printer has a great feeder.

Overall, this product is excellent. Remember to get a USB cable to go along with it.

This printer does a very good job for the price. The color pictures are pretty crisp and clear and sometimes better than Lab quality. You can use this camera as a regular printer too. Set up is real fast. The ink cartridges are cheap and last long. Do not buy the perforated Canon Glossy paper, the regular Canon Glossy paper should be fine. I did not notice any difference in print quality between the Canon Glossy Paper print and the Canon Pro paper print. Overall I recommend this printer if you are willing to spend less that 75$ (I bought mine for 39$ look out for deals), dont go by the low price of this printer you will be amazed at the quality of the print outs.

This printer has been great. Bought it for $50, after a $50 instant/in-store rebate. The black ink cartridges are inexpensive and longer lasting than my previous, and costly, BJ-100 cartridges. The printer is fairly quiet and prints at an acceptable speed. So far the print quality (black & color) has been excellent. I have yet to use it for any photo pics though - so can't comment there.

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~ ~ Between my old beloved Macintosh, and my new PC, I must have gone through 10 Mouses (Mice?).
Each one, no matter what brand, ended up getting "stuck"- the ball inside that guides the mouse's
movement, would stop rolling smoothly. I'm willing to share some of the blame, occasionally I have
nicotine fit while working, and I know the ashes spell death to the Mouse's performance. The same problem
occurs with the sticky fingers the kids sometimes have when using the computer.

~ ~ I do a lot of amateur photo-editing. (Adobe Photoshop and less expensive, Photodeluxe are great!) This
means that having a mouse with really precise and accurate tracking is absolutely vital! I was a little
skeptical about the optical mouse, but I bought this Logitech basic optical mouse on sale.
It is wonderful. I can even notice the difference in the wonderfully precise movements when I play simple
online games like "Collapse" and "Bounce Out".

~ ~ For any work that requires precise cursor movement (Photo-editing, Illustration, fast-paced Games), this
mouse is terrific. I've had it for 2 months now. A normal mouse would have required at least 2 cleanings of
the inner ball mechanism, but the Mouse hasn't let me down yet.

I highly recommend the Logitech Optical Mouse as an inexpensive investment, which will greatly improve
the way you succeed with many of your applications. This purchase was a winner!

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Update... 9 months later... It's STILL wonderful, not a single problem!!!

I have always liked Logitech's products. I own a wireless keyboard, the Trackman FX mouse alternative, Wingman Rumblepad, Extreme 3D joystick, cordless Playstation2 controller, and now, this humble little optical mouse. Every single one of those Logitech products exceeded my expectations.

I bought a used computer on ebay to add to my home network. It did not come with a mouse. So, not wanting to spend a whole lot of money, I went for this inexpensive optical mouse and ordered from Amazon, along with a KDS 17-inch monitor. I thought it would be necessary to install the included drivers to get it to work with Windows 2000 Advanced Server. However, using the USB port, the mouse immediately began to work without the need to install the drivers from the CD.

This particular computer system is in a dark part of the house. I can plainly see the red light start to glow brighter from the bottom of the unit during use. This device works on a variety of surface, so you do not need a mouse pad.

I highly recommend this Logitech mouse. It is a very good product even if you do not factor in the low price.

I will write a review of the KDS 17-inch monitor as soon as I have had a chance to evaluate it further.

i've been using it for 3 years and it still works perfectly, the only thing i don't like about it is that it seems to be a little too big and the wheel seems to make very loud noise.. guess it's cos i've been using it for so long

I bought this as a monitor for my home office, thinking I'd use the TV tuner as a PIP (picture-in-picture) image while working. So far it hasn't gotten to my desk! I first set it up as a TV in the bedroom, just to be sure it worked. It is a great little TV! Then it went on the kitchen counter. So much better than a big boxy TV taking-up a lot of space. I want at least one more of these! Two minor issues: the sound is a bit tinny from the small built-in speakers (turning up the Bass setting helped.), and the on-screen controls are hard to read from more than a couple feet away. (The optional captions are larger and easy to see.)

As a monitor this one gets 5 stars... as a TV it gets 4 stars... overall 4.5. When using it as a TV image quality decreases at closer ranges, and also sound quality could definetly be improved... the good about the TV is the PiP mode, 64x Digital Zoom, and that the built in TV-Tunner is NSTC/PAL/SECAM compatible...

Ahhhh... It only weights around 9 pounds...

I've been in the market for quite some time to replace my aging CRT monitor, especially since it takes up an enormous amount of my desk. Looking at the monitors in my price range, it basically seemed like I could purchase either a 15" or 17" monitor. I'd been told to always buy the biggest monitor you can afford, but I'm not so sure that's true in this case. I took a chance and purchased this 15" Samsung, and so far I'm extremely glad I did. The picture is extremely sharp, bright, and very clear, every bit as good as any other 15" inch monitor I previewed. Furthermore, this monitor seems like just the right size for my desk, any larger and I honestly think it would take up too much space. But, the thing that really makes me happy is the fact that it can basically act as a very high quality TV, complete with a remote control and pretty decent speakers. Maybe in a year or so, I'll change my mind and decide to upgrade to a larger LCD monitor. Well, I'm sure prices will have dropped quite a bit, and there will always be more bargains to be found. However, I can always use this current Samsung as a TV next to my bed, placed on a wall somewhere, or in my kitchen. I can't say the same for any other monitor I could have bought. In other words, maybe in a few years I'll buy a new monitor, but there will be plenty of great uses for this one. Any other monitor I'd probably junk. If you're in the market for an LCD monitor, consider the fact that it will probably last you many years. Wouldn't it be nice if not only it could be a great primary display, but also could be used a few years down the road for something else? I can't recommend this monitor highly enough, and I'm extremely pleased with my purchase.

This is a great laptop. It's light and sleek with tons of great features. I especially like the built-in Bluetooth, which lets me connect to my printer and PDA without wires. I highly recommend this PowerBook!

Finally retired my Sony Vaio (850Mhz) and made the switch to a powerbook--wanted to do that ever since I realized that Mac OS X is pretty much BSD Unix with a killer desktop. What a great machine this is. Much better than the comparable IBook...twice the processor cache for starters...and none of the problems that have plagued the 1Gz iBook. Weighs just 4.6 pounds and is very portable...aluminium case is very scratch resistant. I get GREAT range with the add-on Airport Extreme card going to a LinkSys 11g access point (there's an antenna in the lid of the unit). I'm very happy with the battery life, the operating system, and the apps I use on this machine (Office X mostly). About a month after getting and using this machine I got a G5 for my desktop and I'm quite happy. If you're looking for a gaming rig, forget Apple but if you're looking for a business-oriented machine that fits in very smoothly with a PC-based office, this is the ticket. Networks much easier than a Windows machine!

A fantastic ultra portable laptop. I bought the 12" Powerbook G4 1Ghz, and have been blown away by it. It has a good metallic design and its size is very easy to carry around, this is the major disadvantage of larger bulkier notebooks. I have had mine upgraded to 1.25 GB Ram, and the performance of applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop is great. You can even play games like Halo on it pretty well, if that is your thing. You can have up to 80GB of HD, and my advice is to buy the largest you can afford. I also have an Airport (802.11g) card installed, and it allows wireless connectivity with a pretty good range. In addition, Bluetooth built-in allowed me to use a very nice wireless mouse with it. The Keyboard is of good quality, an important feature if you have to write long documents in Word! The LCD screen is of good quality too. All in all it made a pleasant switch from my previous bulky Sony Vaio Lap. I would recommend this computer very highly.