Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Thursday, August 11, 2005

A (cheap) scanner for photos and film negatives -- Comment()
I'm thinking about getting a scanner for photos and film negatives. Then I could rely solely on iPhoto for organizing my pictures. My current choices are

Epson Perfection 2580
Canon CanoScan 5200F
Canon CanoScan 8400F

This is approximately from the cheapest to more expensive. The scan quality should be reasonable in about 4 megapixel resolution, and the software should work well on Mac OS X. Are there other good choices?

The new iBook - Yes! Yes! Yes! -- Comment()
Yesterday I got the new iBook G4 which I ordered last week. Started to use it - without any problems (no, none, nil). Transferring about 25 GB of data from the old iBook took a bit over one hour and was automatically done by the helper application. All passwords, wlan settings (WPA etc.) and documents transferred without problems.

I was suprised that the system really is fast compared to the old 600 MHz iBook. The speed of 1.33 GHz explains a bit, but in the end the G4 processor is overall quite a bit faster the the G3. In fact, the new iBook feels faster than the 1 GHz PowerBook G4 at work (both have 1 GB of main memory). Not bad!

The new scrolling trackpad works excellently. And the speed of iPhoto in Life '05 is impressive compared to the old version I was using. One thing I did not realize was that the new iBook has a slot-loading dvd/cd drive. Just like the PowerBook.

Yesterday I also downloaded two new tools for testing: Butler and SideNote. I have been using QuickSilver and CopyPaste, but now I'm testing whether these new tools could replace the old ones.