Here you will find information on computer hardware components and peripherals. From monitors to printers to trackballs, this section provides everything you need to know about computer hardware.
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With its four hard drive bays, two optical drive bays and four PCI Express 2.0 card slots, the Mac Pro is Apple's most configurable Mac, and the company offers a host of different upgrades and options. Macworld Lab tested a couple of different Mac Pro configure-to-order (CTO) systems and the results include our first Speedmark 5 score to top 400.
If you own an Intel-based Mac running a recent version of Mac OS X 10.5, battery backups from American Power Conversion could give you grief. As caution when purchasing an APC battery backup is vitally important.
If you have a Mac with a Combo drive (CD burner that can read but not write to DVD) or a single-layer DVD burner, buying an external optical drive is an affordable and attractive upgrade.
If you have a Mac Pro, a Power Mac G5, or a Power Mac G4 or G3 with free drive bays, you can install an additional internal hard drive instead of upgrading your main one-it's easy and takes only a few minutes.
A network-attached storage (NAS) drive is a dedicated storage device that uses its own operating system and software to provide centralized storage and file sharing over a computer network.
A portable hard drive allows you to carry a large amount of data without you, in a device that can easily fit in a bag, backpack, briefcase, or pocket. Portable hard drives are smaller and easier to tote around than typical external desktop drives. Some feature case designs that reduce impact shock.
This may seem like quite a bit of gear, but the picture to the right shows how much space everything takes up in my bag, compared to just Apple's extension cable and the FireWire cable for my DV camera.
A hard disk drive (or HDD, commonly called a hard drive) contains spinning platters with magnetic surfaces, and mechanical arms with heads that read and write data on those platters. The hard drive in your Mac is often referred to as an internal hard drive. An external hard drive is a hard drive, packaged in a case, that connects to your Mac via USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, or eSATA.
Many road warriors carry a spare laptop battery with them so they can extend their work time away from a power source (assuming their laptop uses a removable battery, of course; two of Apple's recent models do not). But while multiple batteries are useful when working, they present a challenge when charging: You can charge only one at a time inside your laptop, and if you're actually using your laptop, charging takes longer because the laptop itself grabs a good amount of the power.
G-Technology has unveiled a new line of portable external SSDs that offer improved reliability and read speeds over magnetic-based drives. Unfortunately, the steep price per gigabyte of this new technology puts the G-RAID mini2 SSD out of the reach of most consumers.
The CP2025dn was easy to set up, though it weighs nearly 53 pounds—you may need some help lifting it. The four small printer cartridges come preinstalled. You simply remove some protective tape from each cartridge before plugging in the printer.
The LaserJet M1319f will quickly produce high-quality text documents, and also offers faxing and passable scanning abilities. That's all some businesses need.
Bright, pleasing color, fast pixel response times and a flexible design make it easy to recommend the HP LP2475w. It is a feature-packed 24-inch widescreen LCD that looks great, too. This moderately priced display hits all the right buttons.
The compact Konica Minolta magicolor 1650EN, with its strong color and black text printing quality, can be ideal for low-capacity printing in a home or small business setting. Home users who may never burn through thousands of pages may well find the 1650EN appealing.
It's relatively painless to make most iPods work as storage devices (in addition to first-rate media players). But with the iPhone and iPod touch, Apple offers no direct way to do that. Memory Stick, a app from Softalk, is one of several utilities in the App Store that aims to fill that void.
The Samsung SyncMaster 245T is a 24-inch LCD with multiple inputs and a flexible design. And though washed out at default settings, a little tweaking helped the 245T score well in our on-screen tests.
There are a lot of ways you can control iTunes from the keyboard, letting you search for songs, play songs, and even create playlists. Here are some useful tips.
Verbatim's Wireless Desktop Laser Mouse is a solid, serviceable mouse. Its buttons are easily programmable and you can switch tracking speeds on-the-fly. It is particularly designed for people who prefer to use the 2.4GHz wireless spectrum with a USB receiver connected to their Mac instead of Bluetooth.
Those looking for an inexpensive 24-inch LCD display may be tempted by the ViewSonic VX2433wm's low price and impressive specifications. But the VX2433wm will suit only the easiest to please.
The Intuos4 M (for medium) model, which I tested for this review, provides a roughly 9 3/8–by–5 3/4–inch drawing area, making its proportions a nice match for today’s widescreen monitors. (The tablet comes in small, large, and extra large versions too.) The Intuos4 pen is very comfortable to hold, thanks to a soft rubber grip covering more than half of its length.
The Xerox Phaser 6280/DN is a moderately priced compact color laser printer that features automatic two-sided printing and built-in Ethernet networking. It produces sharp, clean text quickly, but it struggled to produce accurate color on photographic images and graphics.