Apple Reviews

Being a typical college student, I typically work right up to the deadline for projects.

So when it's time to print out that research paper and jolt to class, it's really annoying to be delayed five minutes to wait for endless buzzing and grinding to stop and actual printing to begin. I've finally learned to restart the printer when I sit down at my computer to work.

Another thing... When printing text at normal resolution it sometimes comes out distorted and kind of smudged. I end up using the higher quality resolution, but that takes more time and ink.

Compared to my old Epson Stylus Color, this printer is only marginally improved. I do have a number of complaints, but until somebody makes the "perfect printer," I'll just stick with the relatively superior Epson printer series.

if you are a print-fanatic like me, and like to work with graphics or photography [from the digital camera, scanners, etc], this the the MUST-HAVE printer!

the EPSON 850, i have two of them, is in use daily. from printing posters, to documents, to catalogues, to photographs and labels, etc. i do use alot of ink, but you definitely get what you pay for! i use up more than 40 ink cartridges a year, and have not had a problem with the printer! i only recommend buying the epson brand ink and paper! you get the best results this way! the price of the printer is nothing compared to the costs you will be spending for the supplies [paper/ink]!!!

this printer will not let you down when it comes to printing results. the SOFTWARE [status monitor] is great! it tells you when you are out of paper/ink or have some other problem and gives you the help faqs. the hardware itself is easy to set up, and lightweight enough to carry around to another computer if you need to [i do from home to dorm to work].

the paper tray/holder are detachable and easy to attach, although the paper tray is a bit fragile if you do hit hard against it. mine broke, but easily fixed and works fine now. i do wish the paper holder was larger, maybe hold 200 sheets of paper so i wouldnt have to refill it when i'm printing alot.

the NOISE factor is the most criticized about this printer. i understand, but you get used to it; and you can always leave the room if you are printing hundreds of sheets [like me]. the noise level is fine in a room once you close the door. it is a bit hard to fall asleep to though! be sure to set the printer on a stable surface, if the printer is on a shaky foundation, the printing may suffer!

also, it's best to just leave the printer on most of the time - shutting it off daily does no good [or harm], but the printer does have to readjust itself when it's shut on/off and also when you have not printed for awhile, maybe during an entire day or two. it's just calibrating itself for the best results - that's what you want!!! other than that it's FAST! enough!

the printer driver sometimes crashes if i load too much for it to print, for example a 50 meg PSD file or 10 meg catalogue file with tons of images. this rarely happens, and after it does a few times, you will know how much your computer printer spool can handle before it freaks out and doesn't print.

overall, the EPSON 850 will win your devotion to Epson printers and ink and paper and everything related to printing after you try it. you will be printing everything soon!

Those who gave 5 stars to this printer were right. This is (WAS) one heck of a printer that handled practically anything you wanted it to do. I had used my 850 with great results for about five years without a single day's problem. Unfortunately age has caught up with it, as it has with you and me, and even more unfortunately, I cannot replace it because Epson has discontinued it. Too bad. I have bought an Epson 1280- an excellent product--but it ravishes ink. I am told that to replace my 850 as a secondary printer the C84 will do well.

I bought a QPS back in April, I had configuration issues right away.
I followed the tech support format and emailed them. Giving them benefit of possibly being busy or email issues I emailed four times over four weeks from seperate servers. They do not respond through support.
Now the hardware failed, I repeated the email attempts with no response and have phone support three times in two weeks to give up in Cue after 45 minutes.
Now I have a very high phone Bill coming and a useless QPS device that I will eat also.
Please don't allow companies like this to thrive, which they all too commonly do in todays market.
Buy elsewhere.

MacWorld recently gave this drive a great review in their Nov. 2000 issue. But I was really worried when I saw user's comments in the MacWorld forum. It seemed like almost everybody was having problems with QPS. Especially with customer service. I bought the drive anyway and it works great on my iMac DV. I didn't need to visit QPS's web site for drivers or call tech support. I was able to make a CD-RW backup of some of my important files and to my surprise I was able to burn an audio cd that worked flawlessly in my car's cd player. I used to use a Yamaha burner at work to make audio cds, but those cds worked intermittently. I am very happy with my QPS drive. I also bought the grape colored panels to match my iMac.

When I bought my iBook this fall, I decided to get this drive so I could burn CDs from both my iMac DV SE and the new iBook DV SE. The drive has proved very reliable and it has been a cinch to setup on whatever machine that has firewire. The included case is a nice touch, making it nicely portable so my friends can borrow the drive for their occasional backup or CD Mix that they want to create.

The only thing to be careful of is that you get media that is rated for high-speed burns. I tried to burn one of my first discs with some media that worked fine in my 2x SCSI burner on my PC, but it was only rated to 4x burns. Make sure that whatever media that you buy says 8x or more to prevent coaster creation. (This is something that I learned from my buddy who is a recording engineer and he burns about 20+ CDs a day.)

I haven't tried it on my PC (no firewire card there yet), but I would expect it to work nicely as I have a friend with this drive for his PC.

I did some research before buying new monitor for my home Dell 8100 instead of my old pre-Trinitron era CRT Dell 19", which I purchased 7 years ago. It was a decent monitor with above average characteristics, stable good workhorse, but it died. I decided to buy CRT, because LCDs have only three advantages over CRTs: they are cool, save space on the desk, and about twice more expensive :-). All other things are worse than those of CRTs: response time, multiple resolution, true color, view angle interval, etc. So, I decided to stay with CRT (my desk is large enough). I found many reviews on DP 930SB, which gave this monitor high ratings. I also found many customer reviews: the superb text and excellent pictures, but its main problem was reliability and the Mitshubishi service (people made several exchanges of refurbished monitors, which were received dead after the death of the purchased monitor during the warranty period). I am a computer professional, and I want a pretty big screen, crisp text and good quality of graphics and pictures. Good response time for games and movies are also a big plus for home PC. This monitor looked the best. I purchased it taking a risk.

When I unpacked and plugged it in, the screen remained black, and LED blinked yellow. No signal. I checked connection to PC. It was ok. I connected another monitor, and it worked. I opened the User Manual and read that "if LED on monitor is flashing and/or disappeared, call the customer service (800)632-4662". I did so, and Rep was very polite. I waited for a while, and he told me that monitor is dead, and it needs to be repaired, and that I should send it to them. I told that I have received it only today, and I wanted to return it for a refund. Rep told me that there was no such option available. He recommended me to call the seller. Ok, I called Dell (thankfully, I purchased this monitor from Dell for $289), and they immediately made a refund, and arranged at home pick up. Finally, I bought 19" Dell M993. Its characteristics are a bit worse than DP 930 (according to reviews), but it has one big advantage: it works, and it is reliable. Plus, Diamond Pro 930 looks very cheap: its front panel looks like cardboard, eight front buttons do not have labels, the perforated side plastic cover, which also looks like cardboard, is so thin that it sags a bit when lifting monitor. Monitor looks very aestetic, may be this is the reason for "Pro" in its title.

Look, Mitsubishi knows that the DP 930 is absolutely unreliable, because they put that paragraph into the User Manual (instead of improving the monitor).

My recommendation is keep away from this fantastic monitor unless of course you like Russian roulette.

This is a good overall monitor, but it's not "Professional" quality as its name might suggest.

While color reproduction is excellent, text can be a little fuzzy, especially if you switch to a higher brightness mode.

There are also two thin horizontal lines running across the screen due to monitor's internal design. I don't really notice them on a dark background, but they are visible on a white background. It's very annoying to see this on a monitor with "Pro" label...

A nice touch is the ability to adjust monitor settings via downloadable software. There is also ability to auto-adjust geometry and other settings to save you time and headache.

To sum it up, if you are into graphic design or if you mostly work with office documents, you should look elsewhere.If you want a monitor for games and movies, this model will work great for you.

I could not be happier with this monitor! I bought it for our home computer after our Sony 17" started to lose it's mind. I did some research online and came across this monitor. The reviews on this site and Zdnet were very helpful and I am sure now that I made the right choice.

After reading some of the other reviews on this site, you might be asking yourself if you really want to buy this monitor. Especially after seeing that the reviews are so extreme...1 star and 5 stars! How do they mesh?

In all honesty, they don't. The people who had problems either: 1) had VERY bad luck or 2) didn't spend the time changing the monitor's settings to get the picture the way it's supposed to be. For instance, I got very different results at different refresh rates. I am sure this will vary for each person depending on their graphics card. Right now I'm running it at 1024x768 at 90Hz and the picture I'm looking at is CRYSTAL clear...as is the text that I am typing.

For gaming I would rate the monitor as outstanding. I was replacing a Sony, so I know what a clear picture looks like. This monitor far surpasses the Sony in quality. After tweaking this monitor's settings ever so slightly, I saw things in my games (Ghost Recon and Counterstrike) and photos that I never saw before. The colors were brilliant and the picture was sharp.

I would highly recommend this monitor. If you have problems with it, spend a few minutes changing settings around and I promise you won't be disappointed. Amazon, as always was fantastic with shipping and I got the thing only 4 days after ordering WITH the Free shipping. Can't beat that.

If you want these speakers for the g5. Time to move on. It is a completely different speaker jack. I'm returning them.

Wow, these things are amazing.

I got these speakers for my bedroom. I wanted to play music from my iBook. Before the cable was even connected, I was falling in love. These little things are so sleek and attractive -- like modern crystal sculptures.

Then came another pleasant surprise. These tiny things back a punch. They are more than enough to fill my large bedroom with nice, crisp sound.

I will say that the connector issue can be confusing. I thought I couldn't use these with my iBook, because iBooks don't have the special jack that's needed. But Griffin Technology's iFire has solved that problem. The iFire even allows you to use these speakers with the iPod. Lots of possibilities now.

Great buy!

I've had a G4 Quicksilver for over two years now, and have lusted after these speakers since 2001. I finally broke down and bought them. It was worth the wait! Let's get one thing straight right off: these speakers were designed for the quicksilver G4 macs, and the new iMacs. They will also work on the new Emacs and G5s. If you have the old gray g4, they will not fit the jack without an adaptor. The speaker connection is NOT the stereo mini-plug! Just look on the back of your g4 and see if there is an icon for these speakers.
Sound quality is superb for computer speakers, and respectable even by bookshelf standards. These are way better than average PC speakers. Base is clean but not huge. People use way too much base these days anyway. Where these speakers excel is in imaging mid-tones and vocals. The sound is very rich and warm, which wonderfully reproduces the human voice. Sure the price is steep, but all of Apple's products cost more and give you what you pay for. Ever notice that you see lots of Macs as set decoration in films? THese are a work of industrial art of the highest order!

A word of warning. If you have small kids at home, those lovely shiny speaker cones are an irresistable target for curious little fingers. This is true for doltish aduilts as well. Do yourself a favor and get the clear plastic covers for these. They look cool and will protect your investment from envious hands.

I have had the same problems with my scanner as others have had. Starts off by making wonderful scans. Then after a while scans become a little foggy. Try calling Nikon to have a tech assist me or info to send the scanner to be checked out was drawn out and frustrating. I cant believe that Nikon, a world leader, has such...poor customer service. I bought Nikon becasue of all the wonderful things I had heard about the company, but when it comes to support, forget it. I hate to use such harsh words, but they simply [is bad]. Here I sit with a scanner that makes foggy scans and NO ONE to assist me. $2000 for this? I've been taken, but I only get taken once. I will spread the word and hope others who are in a similar situation will do the same. It's simply not fair.

I work for a doctor that lectures around the nation. Two years ago, he decided to go digital. That meant scanning all his 35mm slides and preparing them for PowerPoint. I checked out all the flat-bed scanners with the attachments for slide scanning, and finally decided that purchasing two scanners (one flatbed and one for slides) was the best way to go. I never regret that decision. We have scanned over 6,000 slides and still plan to be doing more. Here's a hint for those needing to do a large amount of scanning - buy the automatic slide feeder and then write your own batch commands in PhotoShop to save yourself repetitive work (like rotating the slides 90 degrees, saving them etc). I have also found that the scan quality is better than some of those scanners promoted to be the top of the class.

I see where others seem to have problems with this scanner and Nikon's support. My experience has been excellent. The folks who have had "fogging" experiences probably had dust on the lens... left the door open without an attachment in the access slot. The other problems were probably from not following the user guide and moving the machine without the transport screws in place. (very explicit instructions) The automatic functions work if one sets it in software. Nikon has improved their software to be very intuitive and there is a variety of ways to make adjustments now. When they put out the new LS-4000 and 8000 scanners with new software, they made the software compatible with the LS-2000 scanner too. It's compatable with all the new computer operating systems which the other manufacturers (so I've heard from users) haven't done. I have never had any problems with this scanner but when I needed service with a different Nikon product, I did a search for service and found it right away. When I have called customer service (24/7) toll-free number and went through "voice maze" to get to the right department, was on hold for about a half minute before I got to talk to a real person. I asked my question and she asked me to hold while she found an answer. She was back on the phone with my answer in a few seconds. Other calls to their customer service had the same sort of results. I can't speak for the experiences of others but mine was excellent. When I upgraded from the LS-2000 I bought an LS-4000.

I bought this scanner used from a closeout warehouse distributer for just a few dollars. For what I paid, it gives excellent results. Optical Character recognition works flawlessly, the max resolution (2400dpi) is so high, I haven't even come close to using it yet (honestly, what can you do with an 50MB JPEG?), and the built in film/negative/slide adapter is helpful. However, I would not recommend this scanner to a serious (or even serious amatuer) photographer. Normal scanning requires quite a bit of play to get good color results, and I'm finding it's better to make a semi-flawed scan at high resolution and fix it in Photoshop, than to manipulate the settings on the scanner. The biggest disappointment (like some other reviewers have said) is the negative scanning. While it works, I can't seem to get either tones or colors right--scans appear washed out and "soft" no matter what the settings. However, this is a nice function to play with and the results can again be improved with PS. Other complaints are noisy operation (I use Epson scanners at my school's lab that are whisper silent compared to the Microtek) and the bundled Scanwizard software, which is clunky and quite slow. While it hasn't crashed my OS yet, it definitely hesitates for a few seconds after nearly every operation.

Overall, a great scanner for photos, text, and everyday use, especially if you can get one at a decent price. If you want part of a digital darkroom, go with Canon, Epson, or HP. I would even recommend buying an older version from one of these manufacturers with a lower max resolution (say 1200 dpi) as the only time I can imagine using 2400 is to make wall-size blow-ups from a 4x6 photo.

I started with a visioneer scanner... it was very fast, but had poor image quality and couldn't handle my 120 film. I took it back and got the 5900. The driver came up as untested in Vindows XP but I installed anyway. True as stated elsewhere, microtek's OCR would not install but it comes with ABBYY which installed fine.
Compared to the Visioneer, this thing is super slow but the image quality is MUCH better. A 600 dpi scan from the Microtek compares to a >1200dpi from the visioneer.
The scans from my 120 film negs are outstanding even only at 600dpi.
My only complaint with it is (at least on USB 1) scans are very very slow (my 6x4.5cm negative @ 600dpi took almost 20 minutes!)

All in all, even with the slow speed, I am very happy with the quality of the scans.

-UPDATE- I downloaded the latest driver from microtek's website. it fixed all of the issues I was having with this scanner. After turning off the instant preview, I have not had a single problem with this scanner and would definitly recommend it. Only issue for others might be a 15 meg download on a modem

I am a computer Technician and it took me a full day sorting out the errors that kept the software from working, I had to get into the registry and clean out All references to the software, and after many tries, finally got the software loaded in Safe mode, and finally working. The scanner works great, better than I really expected, so far. Does great for my slides and negatives. Quite surprised at the quality afetr working on them in my Digital Image Pro 9 Photo software. I did not load any other software sent with scanner only the ScanWizard 5.

If you are considering the CTX VL700, you should know that this CRT is NOT a true "flat screen" monitor as it is claimed to be. The screen is convex! True, it is probably not as "bug-eyed" as some older CRT's, but it is definitely not flat. I'm trying to set up a dual-monitor system with my current flat-screen CRT and was hoping this model would be the perfect match. However, I find the difference between the two side-by-side monitors to be too unsettling to the eye. I'm returning the CTX VL700.

To be fair, the display is quite nice--good contrast, vivid color, sharp text and images. (That's why I'm rating it with three stars.) And the price is pretty good, too. It's just not what I wanted, and I think the manufacturer and Amazon are misleading the public into believing it is a flat-screen monitor.

Caveat emptor!

Fine basic monitor. Does a good job displaying text, graphics, pics, movies, etc. No doubt lots of higher resolution/more stylish monitors out there but at no where near the price. The law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quickly for me with a commodity like a computer monitor.

I've had a CTX VL-700 since 1998 with no problems at all, so I personally have had good experience with the brand.

receved in 48 hrs. from Amazon good product, good price

This device is actually manufactured by a company called Aten:

...

The initial drivers did have many problems, however; I was finally able to get the product to work on Windows XP. I down loaded the "make floppy" driver for XP from the manufactures website. Next, download the most recent windows 2000 driver and try and install it (yes, you have to download two separate drivers). The Windows 2000 driver will prompt you for a file it can not locate, point to your floppy drive (location of XP driver) and it will install the XP driver. If you check "Device Manager" you will first see a question mark prior to the install, after the install windows recognizes the device without a problem. You can even go into advaced properties and then change the Com Port number to a lower number then 5 (the default). It does seem strange that they don't have a simple fix for this, but at least I found a work around.

Iogear has always filled a market nitch of specialized computing products, so I've come to not expect a lot of support, but all the products generally work and are of good bulid quality (they don't fall apart).

I regret having to amend my previous recommendation. The adapter still works fine on my laptop in Win ME, but in Win XP on my desktop it has some problems. When I plug in the adapter, sometimes XP puts it in COM4, but sometimes COM5. Either way, it will not work unless I reboot XP with the adapter connected. I think this is an XP problem, but it certainly makes using the adapter less convenient. I have found Win XP to be about as awful as previous versions of windows ... it is true that it seldom goes blue screen ... but I still have to reboot a couple of times a day, and hardware installation is still "plug and pray". To think Bill Gates is the richest guy in the country ... maybe Marx was right after all.

I bought mine in BestBuy store and tried it on both Dell Latitude D600/win XP and Dell desktop/win 2000 with GPS device (Trimble Placer 450).
It worked better than expected since Windows XP recognized new USB hardware and showed me new COM4 port in Device Manager instantly. No need for installation CD that is btw. supplied with the cable. I could instantly get data to the HyperTerminal application.

The only thing I do not like is the price. I would go for the cheaper, but had to have the cable immediately, therefore I purchased it in the store.

First of all, this has to go in the top PC slot, because it is bulky.

Second, I couldnt get it to work with my notebook (running ME). The lights stayed red.

Most importantly, and the reason I didnt pursue trying to get it to work for too long, as a previous review said, the card interfered with my wireless connection. My wireless nic card below the usb adapter couldnt hold a signal, even without the usb card working.

So, I returned it, needless to say.

I bought this adapter to improve the data transfer rate to an external USB2 hard drive and as such it works quite well. Data transfer rate is 6 MB/s, about 10 times as fast as with USB1. Your mileage may vary.

I use the card exclusively under Linux; a recent kernel (2.4.21 or 2.5.5*) is necessary to get it to work reliably using updated EHCI drivers.

I have a Sony 2.0 G VAIO with Windows XP. Under this environment it was just a matter of plugging it in and the drivers installed themselves automatically. I did not even have to open up the driver CD that accompanied the CardBus. Very impressive if you ask me. I am backing up my files as I am typing this with no problem onto my 160 G external hard drive using the fast USB 2.0 technology.

I Really, REALLY wanted to love this mouse. I think Apple's USB optical pro mouse is perhaps the most perfect mouse I've ever used (including multi-button and scroll-wheel mice). I always thought that the only thing that would make it better was to make it wireless. So when Apple announced this bluetooth mouse I quickly purchased it.

Having owned it for about a month now, I can tell you flat out that I don't like it. It seems bigger than the optical mouse (I think this is because the pro mouse has a coating a clear plastic, because they look the same size next to each other, but it still "feels" bigger in my hand), heavier, and less responsive (Sometimes it doesn't move at an even speed with the hand - it kind of jerks).

In addition, it can take upwards of five seconds to de detected by the computer, and sometimes has an annoying habit of beining completely unresponsive after I wake up the computer from putting it to sleep. The only solution I've found is to turn off the mouse until it disconnects, and then turning it back on.

All in all I think I wasted my money on this mouse. I've been using it since I purchased it, but as of now it is going into the extra computer stuff drawer. I love Apple dearly, but this mouse isn't for me. Too bad, because I still haven't found anything useful for my bluetooth module. Perhaps I also wasted my money on the BT module as well?

This is my third attempt at a portable mouse for my PB. First was the Targus USB wireless minimouse which was tiny and worked great, but had no off switch (had to remove batts). Second came the full-sized Kensington USB wireless which had a neat compartment for the USB receiver and could be turned off, but wouldn't track on many surfaces and whose construction was very cheap (resulting in a very short lifespan). I had held off on this mouse for a while due to the price. I finally took the plunge a month ago and have no regrets! BT mouse is great! Extremely easy setup. My PB detects it usually in 2-3 seconds. It also tracks (nearly) as well as the Targus minimouse (which could handle ANY surface). Only a few hiccups on the shiny formica at B&N. The off switch is cleverly placed and protects the optics while loose in my laptop bag. Design is clean, classic Apple. One of my favorite things about this mouse is the fact that you can check on battery levels from System Preferences on your powerbook!!! The only negs I can think of are that I do miss right clicks and the wheel somewhat. Not nearly enough to go back to the others though... Strongly recommend!

I plugged in the bluetooth adapter. I put the batteries in the mouse and turned it on. Then I used it to click on things.

I'm not sure what it's like for Jaguar, but that was the installation process in its entirety under Panther. This mouse really is an incredible product, and beautifully designed. It is a bit heavy, but that's to be expected with a wireless mouse.

Although Apple recommends you turn the mouse off when it's not in use, I've found it's not worth the effort. The supplied two AA batteries lasted a full month!