Apple Reviews

This is an excellent mouse for those of us who don't need a whole lot of extra buttons. I got it after trying a friend's wheel mouse. If you don't have a wheel mouse; get this -- I would have a hard time going back to browsing without the convenience of the wheel.

For me, the Intellieye is just icing on the cake. Occasionally the cursor jitters, but overall the control is so much better than with a regular mouse. Also, I don't have to worry about the mouse getting off the mousepad.

The contour is excellent for this righty, but you lefties may have a problem with it; I don't know.

I was previously using the Microsoft Wheel Mouse as my primary pointing device. I read all the reviews about Microsoft's IntelliEye technology.

I finally broke down and bought the IntelliMouse with IntelliEye. I have one word for it:

INCREDIBLE!

This mouse is the perfect addition to any computer users arsenal. It's sleek, pin-point accurate, and it does work on your pant leg!

The optical eye is amazingly smooth and accurate as it glides along my desk--with no mouse pad! The contour of the mouse itself will please lefties and righties alike.

If you have the IntelliMouse or any other track-ball-based mouse and are sick of the lint, the dirt, and the grime build-up, then do not hesitate on getting this mouse. It WILL be the last mouse you buy most likely.

I used to use a traditional mouse before going optical. It would skip or not respond after a few months of normal use. With an optical mouse, I've never had these problems again, and I've had this mouse for about a year now.

I've tried this mouse on several different surfaces, and it seems to work well on almost all of them (doesn't work well on glass or mirrors). Using it on a traditional mousepad gives excellent response performance.

I don't think I will ever go back to a mechanical mouse again.

This is a great printer, but no one, including Canon carries 13"x19" card-stock paper. I bought this printer with idea that I'ld be able to print my own 13x19 colored signs (100 at a time) but alas, no paper is available.

I needed a good printer for my business to print brochures and photo postcards. I received it today and printed a couple of family pictures I took with my Canon Powershot S20 3.3 Megapixel digital camera on a piece of the Canon Photo Paper Pro 4"x6" (5 sheets are included with the printer) to test the quality. I can truly say that the picture quality using this combo was better than labwork. The colors were more vibrant without the slightest hint of pixels anywhere. My jaw dropped to the floor when I saw this beautiful photo print in less than 30 seconds. This printer, I am convinced, is the best you can buy. It does borderless printing in all sizes... Even 13x19! Prints on other papers provided good results but not as stunning as the combo used above. I printed a borderless photo on a piece of regular 8 1/2x11 paper and it looked great!

This printer is truly a marvel and the speed is unmatched with the quality of the prints that rival and surpass professional photo labs. The Canon paper costs a few cents more but is well worth it. Make sure you get Canon Photo Paper Pro and not just the Photo Paper Plus. Ink use is minimal. I printed 5 4x6" photos, 3 5x7" photos and 3 8 1/2x11" photos and the ink level did not go down. I bought mock-up ink carts off of Ebay that cost $10.95 for all 6 carts! Truly, you cannot go wrong with this printer.

I did some research and thought that for me the Canon i9100 was the best option of excellent printing quality, flexibility, and had pricing that was not out of this world. I have just printed my first few photos and I am amazed. Oh, that bit where they say it prints really fast...True. Setup was straight forward except for a paper feed problem, see below. Pictures are so clear I cannot believe that these photos came from an ink jet. Boy have things changed since my HP 500 B&W.

I have an older 2 mega-pixel Nikon Digital camera and the 4x6 images are sharp on this printer. I needed to decrease the resolution to around 250 pixels/inch to fill a 4x6 photo properly. This did not seem to impact the perceived quality much if at all. Time to get the Nikon D100!!! I know...I know, I got a Canon printer but I have a big investment in Nikon lenses already.

Drawbacks:
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I have not played with the included Canon Photo Software too much. The first picture or two that I printed with it had banding in the colors (like JPG artifacts). The canon software has photo batch options that are already set for 4x6 and other common paper sizes. This is a plus. The option to instantly print a borderless picture was neat but I will pass on this software until I can get the quality where I want it. Fiddling with the software or checking for updates may fix this problem.

Oh, one of the paper guides got misaligned. I think this might of happened when I was taking off the miles of shipping tape. I had quite of few sore words toward the printer until I finally saw the misalignment way down in the area where the paper is fed. I knew that the paper should not jam every other page.
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Shhh, can let the wife know. Now I have my eye on the Canon 9900F scanner to complement this wonderful printer.

Well back to printing. I need to work a little bit on color correction but that is all part of the fun.

Apple iPod is a total waist of money. No way is it worth more than 200 dollars. If you want a good mp3 player you can get one for less than 200. The Arthos 10gb studio jukebox holds 2x the standard capacity of the ipod 5 and costs 1/2 as much. Also the firewire is a pain in the behind its just more money you have to throw away. Get another brand that is designed for windows. The only thing i liked about it before i replaced it was the LCD with 6 lines that was hot. But that doesnt add up. Dont buy it save your money for something better.

I bought my ipod new 1 year and 1 month ago and it has simply stopped working. After days of trying everything in the knowledge base and being blown off by the 'applecare' staff I went to an authorized apple repair service who told me to just forget about it and buy a new one and save the repair expense. He also said to be sure to get a case for it and handle it very carefully because if you happen to drop it or even lay it down on a hard surface with too much gusto, kiss it goodbye. It was swell while it lasted but I can spend a lot less on a disposable product.

I knew my boyfriend loved me when he got me one of these for my birthday... it sure beats using a mini radio or CD player when I go to the gym because even though it is only 5 gigs, i have over 1200 songs to choose from to help get me pumped up and stay energized during my workout. Of course, the newest models are even flossier, but 40 gigs... that blows my mind! It's like over kill! This model suits me quite well. As my boyfriend, an Apple user for years describes the iPod in one word: "FLOSS."

I have this printer shared between Macs and Windows machines on my home network using a print server.

It's a sweet machine. Quick to warm up and fast to print. With 8 Megs of RAM, it has never given me a memory-problem. Comparable HP and QMS budget-printers that come with 2 Megs of RAM will need memory upgrades.

QMS printers in this price range have only USB ports. The Brother has both USB and parallel. It's very nice having the option available and I use both the USB and parallel ports simultaneously without a problem.

I love that Brother has made drivers for Mac OS 9 and OS X as well as Windows. It also emulates an HP printer. The emulation-mode was essential for me when I decided to share the printer using a 3rd party (cheap) print server. GIMP Print for OS X does not have Brother drivers, but it does have HP drivers that work very well.

This printer does jam occasionally. Jams are pretty easy to clear and it has a function to re-print the last page, so I seldom lose a print job.

I hate wasting paper, but it will almost always jam when I re-use paper in the paper tray. So I take my bad prints and drafts and re-use the paper in my inkjet instead.

The only reason that this printer got 4 stars instead of 5 is that the 1200 dpi print mode is only suitable for text. Graphics come out too dark at this resolution. It's odd because the 1200 dpi mode is supposed to be enhanced for such printing. The driver does not permit tweaking to make this work better.

I've been struggling to keep my Apple Laserwriter 16/600 running with linux for several years. It's been fantastic. But after my last upgrade to SuSE 8.2, I ran into several problems getting the drivers installed and configured. So, I finally decided it was time to get a new printer. I chose this printer because it is well supported under linux, prints very fast at 17 pages per minute, has a fast first print time (under 10 seconds) and unlike the HL-1440 comes with 8MB of memory for printing larger files. It's also PCL6 compatible so it will work with just about any operating system. I had this printer out of the box, plugged in, configured and printing a PDF file in less then 20 minutes. It's also dead silent when not printing.

The only problems I've noticed is that fields of solid black appear to have nearly invisible faint gray lines, and text could be printed a bit darker. But this could be due to the newness of the printer, toner saver settings, etc.

If you're looking for a great laser printer for a home linux system seriously consider this one. ...

This is a terrific printer. I needed to replace my NEC 1260, which was begining to jam all the time and the cartridges were becoming very hard to find. For less than the price of a new NEC toner cartridge, I bought this printer (another site had a short-term terrific price.)

I could not be more pleased. Easy to set up, superfast printing (my old laser was 12ppm), affordable replacement cartridges, small footprint.

Iomega's Zip 250MB USB External Drive (with included 250MB zip disk!) boasts a sleek design that doesn't disappoint performance-wise. For those of us with iMacs, it's a joy to use: just plug it into the keyboard and back-up files FAST. Excellent for transporting larger files from one place to another. (I've had no problem using 100MB discs in it.) In fact, the drive itself is quite portable. Very light but solid, and easily carried. It's also nice to see a design that complements the iMac without imitating it. Iomega Zip 250 stands--literally--on its own as a must-have system component.

I've got my Zip 250-USB running on a 1Ghz Pentium 3 with Windows ME and had no trouble getting it installed. Have not had any system locks, either. It's much faster than my old Zip 100 that ran on the parallel port, though the 250-USB reads Zip 100 disks with no problem (though slower than 250 disks). I'm using Iomega's Quik Sync back-up software and it's great to have it operating automatically in the background, without me having to remember to do it.

When I bought mine, the USB-powered version was not yet available, so mine uses an AC power adapter. The USB-powered version would be nice to have for running on my laptop.

--I've used one of these for the last two years to back up files and store photos, and I can't recall a single technical problem with it. After reading some of the problems with other electronic gear rated on Amazon, I can't believe this device has been so reliable. When discussing burnable CD's, words like "coasters" or "frisbees" often arise, and reviewers often curse software editing, but I don't think I've ever lost a photo or a data file on a Zip (although you'd better not forget your password if you protect your files). We haven't dropped ours or sat on it, like some other reviewers have done with theirs, but it has done over 20,000 bumpy miles in a Recreational Vehicle and we live in a dusty climate, and the drive has always performed flawlessly. The Zip is also as simple to use as an anvil. We bought it because it editing photos was said to be easier than with a CD, and we weren't disappointed.
--I may, however, be shifting over to a CD in a short time as my photo collection has grown (I sure won't throw away my Zip but may limit its use to photo editing). For one thing, I'm not sure how long the format will last and I'm not sure I want a bin full of files without a backup system in case this one ever does break. The discs are far bulkier than a CD, and they are getting expensive. It's also pretty tough to share files or transfer data to another computer, unless the partner has a 250 Zip.
--I rate this product highly, but it has become somewhat outdated. I would recommend it as a very decent backup system for files and some photos, or as a photo-editing device, but if you have tons of photos you may want a CD or DVD. Hope this helps.

Are you the frequent traveller who likes setting up a small stereo in your hotel room, and not relegate yourself to uncomfortable headphones???

With all the speakers out there, I would have to say that, with regards to the iPod, this pair of speakers is the best!

1. Portability

---- The speakers fold up real nicely and are VERY easy to pack in your carry-on..... I've often had trouble placing speakers in my bags, but these ones fold into a flat surface, which makes it very easy to stick into any little crevice

2. Loudness

---- Some small speakers never quite get loud enough --- while these speakers aren't like a THX sound auditorium, they do produce a pretty loud beat! You'll be putting the volume down more often then turning it up

3. Clarity

---- Like I said, this isn't the perfect clarity, but for the price, the speakers really get the job done....... Very clear and they sound great -- I highly recommend putting your iPod on VOCAL BOOSTER for great sound on this speaker set

4. iPod connection

---- Its so cool how the iPod connects to this thing.... Unless you have the 1/2nd generation iPod (which also works with this system), then the simply put your iPod into the dock and connect no other wires! it plays from there....... unless you use AA batteries, then you will have to plug the AC adapter into the speakers, which is fine, because then the iPod will charge as it sits in the dock

isn't that awesome! you can finally listen to your iPod continuously without having to worry that it'll run outta battery power

so overall, this is a device that you can't live without if you're an iPod lover

great sound, great portability, and great charging

BUY YOURS NOW!!!!

These are really great speakers for the size. Those expecting room blasting sound are looking at the wrong type of sound projection devices. Sure you'll have warped sound if you jack up the sound to max... why would anybody want to do that anyway? For your desk, your room, play or work space at reasonable sound level, these are darn incredible. Hey, I paid $149 for being an Early Adopter gadget freak! For what Amazon is charging, these are a super deal. No bigger than the size of a book, lighter than a book, you unfold it, plug it in (or use AA batteries), plop in your Rev 1 or Rev 2 iPod and you'll be amazed at the quality of sound and bass. Noting the convenience, wow and cool factor, all you iPod owners should have one!

I echo what everyone's said here. This little speaker set is great! <br /> <br /> The sound is amazing for something this size and can be turned up quite loud before distortion. <br /> <br /> The portability is second-to-none! Light, compact, and it runs on 4 AA batteries for a decent amount of time?? Fantastic! <br /> <br /> I use it ALL the time. Sure beats plugging it into my old Aiwa stereo and having it tied to one room! Now I can carry it from room to room, work, whatever! <br /> <br /> VERY happy. :)

My monitor has a manufactured date of March 2001. The red tube must be dead, because I'm getting no red in my pictures. The picture's still really sharp, but wish I had all my colors back.

I've owned over 20 different monitors, mostly Sony or Apple Trinatrons. I needed a second monitor for one of my workstations, so I decided to take a chance on the 753DF - I figured it couldn't be too great for the price, but I could use it to store tool pallets to keep the Sony clear for image editing. Imagine my surprise to find that it is truly an excellent monitor! Bright and clear, with loads of image and color adjustment controls. Looking at it side by side with the two year old Trinatron, it is much brighter, with better contrast than he Sony, though perhaps not quite as sharp, due to a larger appearing dot size. Anyway, it is a great deal for the price, and when I saw how good it was, I bought two more of them!

This is a fabulous monitor w/great color and dot pitch(0.20). I bought this monitor last month and has been running great. This is amazing monitor with affordable price. Comes with its own Software for custon setting the color, lumens etc. I certainly recommend this monitor if you are looking for one!

I have owned the 1240 for a little over a week, so far it's fed 2000 plus pages without a single jam. The Xerox P8 it replaces required a constant babysitter and was a complete nightmare to feed paper that had already been through it.

Setup out of the box is straight forward, driver install likewise. Noise level low, speed through parallel port almost as advertised. Print quality is excellent for text. Graphics I've not really used it for. It may even last more than 6 months :-) If you are thinking of a P8 for anything other than light home use (or need to print both sides of the paper) please try and get the extra $100 together for either this one or an NEC870, it will save you money in anger management classes later.

The Brother HL-1240 is one of a kind in that it is easy to set up, easy to install drivers and easy to operate. I took it right out of the box, installed the toner and drum easily, hooked it up to my USB port, followed the easy to understand instructions on installing drivers, and then started printing. I also use a Canon Multifunction printer for color and other applications which is connected to a parallel port. So, in effect, I have two printers operating with my HP computer without any special accessories or switches. I just select the printer I want every time I print and I am good to go. The print quality is excellent and the toner cartridges are reasonably priced. Cartridges that can print 6,000 copies are less than $80 and are highly recommended over the alternate less than $50 cartridge that only prints 3,000 copies. I use this printer for a 24-page newsletter that I print on a quarterly basis and found it excellent in clarity and print quality for my required masters. The best part of this printer is the price. If I was the editor of one of those consumer or computer magazines, I would declare the Brother HL-1240 a "best buy."

I have been using my Brother laser printer for about two and a half years, and I am very very pleased with its performance. I currently have three different printers on my desk (yes, a large desk with no space left), and the HL-1240 is the work-horse of the bunch. Almost all printed material gets sent to the HL-1240 because of its speed, quality print, and economy.

Speed - Surprisingly, the printer is advertised at 12 pages per minute, and it actually does print 12 full pages every minute. Unlike many bubble jet printers whose rated speed is rarely what they actually pump-out, this laser printer never slows down.

Quality print - No lines across graphics like with bubble jets, no smudges of ink, just nice crisp print every time, always.

Economy - Aside from the purchase price being very reasonable, I have yet to change the toner! I have no idea how many sheets it has printed, but compared to the costs of bubble jet cartridges, the printer has already paid for itself in ink savings alone.

Design - Having the paper tray on the bottom has two big and important advantages. First, the footprint size is smaller (for those of us with crowded desks), and secondly, it keeps the heat of the machine away from your desk top. In the past I had a laser with a top-side paper tray, and when the day arrived to move the printer to a new location, I found that the heat from the printer had totally ruined the wood's surface directly under where the printer had been sitting. Bottom paper trays are an important feature to look for.

Dependability - I did have a piece of paper jam once, but it was my fault for feeding it in wrong. Removing jammed paper is fast and easy with the back and front of the printer having covers which pop open for access.

No bad points! All good!

As it makes little sense for the 100mb to be the original Zip you put on a new system anymore, most people who buy this product will probably be upgrading from an old parallel version. To be sure, it is an improvement on that device. It's noticeably faster. But it's smart for only a couple of very specific kinds of user.

The first is the "Backup Bandit". If you only use your zip drive for routine, automated backup of files that fit easily onto a single 100mb disk, it's unlikely you need much more than this device.

The second is the "I've-had-a-Zip-for-years Geek". If you have a huge library of Zip 100 disks already amassed, and the average file size is above 10mb, then there's an argument to be made for staying with this product. Notice that I'm talking here about a library of truly BIG files, typically graphics. If all you have is a massive library of text documents, you shouldn't fear switching over to the Zip 250 at all.

In my opinion, anyone else should go for the USB version of the Zip 250, and add on a FireWire adapter when it becomes available.

Why?

Well, the Zip 250 USB with FireWire is simply the most flexible Zip out there. You can use it on literally any system that has at least USB ports, can achieve the lightning speeds of internal SCSI Zips if the computer has FireWire ports--and you don't have to sacrifice a scrap of portability. While the Zip 100 here can be fitted out with a FireWire adapter, it can't use Zip 250 disks. True, the Zip 250 is mysteriously slower than a Zip 100 if the files are something above 10mb. But you'll never notice the difference with the vast majority of files. What you will notice if you spend any time seriously archiving your work is how nice it would be to have a little bit more room on a 100mb disk. The Zip 250 solves that problem by giving you a lot more room to play in. In particular, the 250s are obviously better-suited to sharing larger multimedia files between computers, or even between platforms. Finally, the 250 simply LOOKS cooler. Those looks even translate into utility, because its trim profile really does make it a little easier to carry.

In fairness I should point out that the 100mb appears to have a substantially lower price tag. But it's not, really. You pay on average 1.5 times as much for Zip 100 disks (per megabyte of storage space) than for Zip 250s. Long term, your storage savings with a Zip 250 more than make up for the up-front difference between the two models.

With my computer's only free drive bay occupied by a CD-Rewriter, and most of its ports supporting other gadgets, this USB Zip drive seemed like a good addition to my expanding collection of software and peripherals.

Based upon my experience with this product, I highly recommend Zip drives in principle. They provide consolidation and back-up points for files scattered throughout many conventional floppy disks, facilitate the storage of large files (particularly visual) that would not make it on floppies, and liberate hard drive space.

As for this product in particular, its portability is an obvious asset. I also highly recommend it for those who don't want to disembowel their computers and literally risk getting their wires crossed. Although I can't speak for those with other systems, installation was quite easy on Windows 98. This device also works quite smoothly, accepting files from my floppy disks and hard drive rather quickly.

The ejection of Zip disks is not too much of an inconvenience; I just place a hand or finger in front of the drive when it happens (After fifteen minutes of inactivity, the drive will eject disks automatically.). And, even though my desktop system doesn't have the appropriate "iMac" look, the Zip drive still looks quite stylish!

Mine's been working flawlessly since I bought it in early 2000. I understand the newer models are bus-powered. If for some reason you can't have a power strip, that's a concern, but I do wish the AC adapter was smaller.

Gotta love the way it shoots non-Iomega zip disks half way across the room, too!

I recommend this drive for low-cost, low demand storage and backup. Now if only zips would come down in price...

PROS: I needed a cheap scanner that will let me scan old 35mm slides. At the same time, I didn't want to buy just a photo scanner which had no use after my personal project. I was very impressed with the quality and didn't need to use higher resolution then 1200 which is about 2Meg file size. I also had some old color positives and black and white negatives which I was able to convert into digital images. Great for multipurpose.

CONS: I scanned about 400+ 35mm slides and notice that the software is a little buggy.
1. Sometimes after a scan when I would go to switch to the save/view window, the window would not popup and I had to scan again.
2. After scanning multiple slides about 50 I went to save them and got a "not enough disc space error". I didn't have the option to make space, it just exited out and I lost all my work.
3. Sometimes scanning a few slides it wouldn't properly align the borders. I had to rescan or scan one by one.

I've been tremendously happy with the quality of the scans from the Perfection 2400. If all you need to do is make 640x480 scans for the www from prints you made at the local 1-hour, this is more scanner than you'll ever need.

However, scan resolution is sufficient to make brilliant 8x10 prints from 35mm negatives/slides. The included Epson software leaves a little to be desired -- it won't, for example, install on an alternative partition on your disk. Also, you will certainly have to use a photo manipulation application to tweak the levels and colour curves before you get your pictures right. But spend a little time to learn how your scanner works, and you'll have smashing pictures in a short time.

If you're adept at working image manipulation programs (Photoshop Elements 1.1 (not the new 2.0) is included with this product; but I have been happier with the freely available GIMP), you'll have professional scans at a fraction of what it used to cost not so long ago.

I wanted to scan a large number of slides, specifically some slides for my mom for her for a christmas gift. I did extensive investigation into several scanners, including a scanner that was exclusively a slide and negative film scanner. I ended up choosing this Epson model and I have been extremely happy with it. It is very easy to use. On the manual setting, you can preview the slides and then alter their brightness and contrast before scanning them. I've set the image quality merely to 1200 dpi, and the images have come out with fantastic clarity and detail, and yet the bitmap file sizes are a reasonable 5MB (and for those folks who don't have great amounts of hard drive space available, compressed jpeg files are another option).

The scanner has done a fine job of scanning regular prints as well.