Macworld Products Beckon PC Users, Too
Expo's offerings include big Mac storage, plus Palm add-ons and software options for a choice of operating systems.Andrew Brandt, PCWorld.com
SAN FRANCISCO-- The newly redesigned iMac got the initial spotlight, but even a Macworld Expo that is smaller than in previous years is offering up some tasty new products, many of them from smaller vendors.
Storage--always an issue on the premiere multimedia development platform--is a dominant theme. Drive capacity is getting larger while the drives themselves shrink.
Storage Selection
LaCie is adding a 60GB model to its super-slim PocketDrive line of portable drives. Now available in two configurations, the new drive will set you back $750 for the IEEE 1394 model or $700 for the USB 2.0 version. If a physically larger unit isn't an issue, the M3 UltraSlim portable FireWire drive from QPS, with a capacity of 120GB, will run you only $479.
QPS also released its new external DVD+RW drive at the show. The $650 DVDBurner+RW can rewrite up to 4.38GB of data or MPEG-2 video and audio up to 1000 times, and includes MPEG-2 encoding software so you can record discs that will play in standard DVD players. A proprietary feature of the drive allows it to format blank discs as it writes to them the first time, a time-saving step.
A unique storage device announced at the show is the FireWire Keychain, a tiny, nonvolatile flash memory storage unit with a capacity of up to 1GB and a maximum burst data transfer rate of 400 mbps via an integrated IEEE 1394 port on the side. Weighing in at 2 ounces (not including keys), the device draws all the power it needs from the 1394 port. The small company making the announcement, Wichita, Kansas-based WiebeTech, plans to announce availability and pricing on its Web site on January 23.
Software Parade
At the show, Microsoft is handing out fully functional, 30-day limited demos of its Office suite for Mac OS X (which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage, the Mac version of Outlook). Meanwhile, ThinkFree representatives are touting their competing ThinkFree Office suite.
Sold as a standalone suite of applications or as a Server Edition ASP package, ThinkFree Office offers OS-agnostic word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation programs--all written in Java. Users access all the applications' functions through their Web browser of choice, and file formats are fully compatible with those of Microsoft Office applications. The suite, which costs $50 per user per year, also provides online storage of documents through the company's ThinkFree Cyberdrive.
Of particular note on the software side is FineReader 5.0 Pro from Abbyy Software House. The Pro edition is a full-featured version of an OCR software package commonly bundled with scanners. It transfers the printed word--and all layout--to a digital file with a high level of accuracy.
But the program's forte isn't limited to character recognition: The application can turn virtually any scanned document into a high-resolution PDF file, a Microsoft Word document, or an HTML document suitable for immediately posting on a Web site. It retains all the original formatting and graphics (even going so far as to match the fonts as closely as possible to the original). Fortunately this program is available for Windows users (priced at $99) as well as for the Mac OS ($129).
Unclassified but Cool
Macworld Expo products stretch beyond the Mac in more than software. This year's event also featured a Palm Pavilion.
If you enter a lot of text into a Palm device using Graffiti, or if you just need a hand free to hold a drink while writing on a computer, the Matias Half Keyboard could be what you've been looking for.
The odd little device looks like three rows of a standard keyboard that got sliced in half. Each key on the Half Keyboard represents four keys on a regular keyboard, with the alternate keys placed in mirrored reverse to their normal QWERTY position. A touch-typist accesses the keys on the 'sliced off' half of the board by holding down the space bar while hitting the desired key in its mirror-image position. The company claims you'll get used to the key positions in just a few minutes of practice. At $99 for a version with either a USB or Palm connector on the end, you may never again have to set down that slice of pizza while typing.
Finally, for a little fun, a small New York company named CyberExtruder will put your face onto the avatar of a player in your favorite first-person shooter game.
For $5, the CyberExtruder team will transform your digital picture into a 3D representation of your face, which is transplanted onto the head of in-game character "skins" from Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Half-Life Counterstrike, The Sims, or Max Payne. The company also offers free downloads of skins of famous (and infamous) people, including Denzel Washington, Albert Einstein, and even George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden (whose face is replacing more than a few digital villains on games across the country, according to CyberExtruder representatives).