As you may remember I was pretty excited to order the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M after reading a review from one of my colleagues and talking with another colleague that used one. At the time I didn’t actually have mine yet and I promised a follow up review, so here it is:
The Good
The ScanSnap S510M is an amazing piece of hardware. I’ve never seen a scanner that scans so FAST! Not only does it scan fast, it scans both sides of a page as fast as it scans one side. It’s also more compact than I imagined and since I got mine they’ve even come out with a more compact model (ScanSnap 300M) that would be suitable for travel. I’ve been able to scan even small receipts without having to use the document carrier. It’s just awesome! OK, so that’s the good part!
The Bad
I must say that while the hardware rocks, I was a little disappointed in the software implementation. This scanner includes a FULL version of Acrobat 8 Professional. Wow! I was thinking that they would take advantage of this powerful app and sadly they don’t. There is no tie between the scanner driver and Acrobat at all. The scanner driver simply creates a PDF using the built-in Mac OS X Quartz driver. While I’m OK with that, what I was hoping for was an automated way to have Acrobat then OCR the scanned PDF which would make it searchable. What I want is to be able to walk up to the scanner, stick a document on it, scan it and then walk away. If I later need that document, I want to be able to search on some words that were in the document. Out of the box it won’t do that. Instead, it scans the document, gives it a basic name and either dumps it into a folder as a scanned PDF or opens it in Acrobat and then you’d have to do all the work manually. Sure I can probably setup an Acrobat Batch Sequence, Mac OS X Automator thingy and a watched folder, but I just expected this kind automated solution out of the box.
The Bottom Line
Although the ScanSnap doesn’t do what I want out of the box, it is possible to setup with the supplied software. It’s incredibly fast and worth the money! It would be nice if they offered an option for this model to buy just the hardware for those users (like me) who already own Acrobat, but they don’t (yet). Once I have time to sit down and setup my automated workflow, I’ll be one step closer to my paperless office (hey, I can dream can’t I?). So I’m happy with my purchase!
The Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M (The M is for the Mac version) goes for $430.23 ($510 list) and includes a full version of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. It scans in color or B&W and does two sided scanning of stacks of paper. It automatically converts the scans to PDFs and it’s blazing fast!
Written by Terry White on June 18th, 2008 with no comments.
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Although Belkin doesn’t specifically label this Mini surge protector as "Travel", they do go out their way to talk about how "hotel rooms and airport terminals never seem to have enough power outlets to charge all the devices today’s traveler brings along." So that leads me to believe that they intended their "Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger" to be used by Road Warriors. I have been looking for a compact surge protector/slash power strip to keep in my computer bag for travel. We’ve all been in those hotel rooms where you’ve had to decide between having a lamp, a clock or power for your phone or laptop, due to the lack of available outlets (I also love it when the only outlet is behind the bed). This mini surge protector has an added bonus of two USB powered ports on it to charge up my USB devices (such as iPods, GPS units, phones, etc.) When I traveled to Spain, I bought a universal adapter that also had a single USB port on it, but I was disappointed in that the USB port didn’t provide enough juice to charge the iPhone.
It’s seems that that iPhone uses a little more juice than most standard USB ports provide. For example, my old Treo 650 would still get enough juice from my MacBook Pro while it was sleeping. Not so with the iPhone. I’m very happy to report that the Belkin unit DOES provide enough power through the USB port to also charge the iPhone. That means one less adapter I have to carry around.
I could never figure out why Apple didn’t design a USB port into the power adapter of its portables. Seems like a natural fit since most MacBook owners I know also either have iPods or iPhones (or both).
It’s almost perfect
It’s a little on the large side. However, that doesn’t bother me because after all there has to be room for the surge suppressing circuitry as well as the two USB ports too. What does bother me is that the AC prongs don’t retract or fold down. To Belkin’s credit they did design the prongs so that they rotate. This allows the strip to be horizontal or vertical depending on how your wall outlet is configured. The protruding prong thing is not the end of the world, but it’s one more thing to have to deal with in an already crowded bag. If I were a ratings kinda guy, this would be one of those things that would keep me from giving it a full 5 stars. I give it 4.5 stars. Hopefully the next version will be designed to fix this small little issue.
Also since this is one of those little items you might forget and leave behind in your room, don’t forget to put a label on it.
Amazon has it for $16.99.
Written by Terry White on June 9th, 2008 with no comments.
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Like many of you, I used to take backing up for granted. That was until an unfortunate Norton Utilities mishap screwed up my hard drive beyond recovery. That was years ago and needless to say, I’ve been backing up ever since.
What if your main hard drive died right now?
What would you lose? That was the question I used to ask myself to remind me to do backups. I do backups daily now and feel pretty secure. I have multiple backups and some offsite backups too. Before we get into my backup methods, let me tell you about an interesting thing that happened just the other day:
I have a Power Mac G5 that I use on occasion. Needless to say, I don’t use it everyday. Sometimes I go days without touching it. This is the Mac that I do most of my scanning on and I needed to scan something, so I woke it from its screen saver only to see a warning message that Time Machine (Apple’s automated backup technology) hadn’t successfully completed a backup in 10 days! I then noticed that my external hard drive was no longer mounted on the desktop (which is why Time Machine hadn’t backed up). After a lot of unplugging and re-plugging and restarting, I determined that the drive had actually CRASHED! I could feel the drive making a thumping sound when I powered it back up.
This was a backup drive, so no problem right? Just buy a new backup drive and move on. Well, kinda. You see, this was an external Maxtor drive that I had been using for "Archiving" before I even started using it for Time Machine.
We all have files that we probably won’t need again, but like to hang onto just in case. That’s what was on that drive in addition to the Time Machine backups. I’m not too worried about it because I can’t remember the last time I needed any of those files. As a matter of fact, I can’t even remember what files were on that drive. People ask me all the time: "Can I use my Time Machine Backup Drive for other files?" Technically the answer is yes. Time Machine stores its backups in folders as disk images. So there is nothing stopping you from using the rest of the drive for other things. However, it’s just not smart to do. If you put other files on the drive, those files are not being backed up! I knew this and took that chance. Well guess what? It died!
What’s the point?
The point I’m trying to make here, is that Archiving and Backing Up are TWO DIFFERENT things. If your archives are important to you, then you should back them up too! The bottom line is that you can’t keep every project that you’ve ever done on your main drive. It will eventually run out of room. So if those projects are important to you to hang on to, then archive them onto other drives, BUT also back those drives up too. In my case I’m not feeling any great loss here. However, it was an important reminder to me that ALL important files need to be backed up. Hard Drives are mechanical devices that will eventually FAIL!
What about archiving to CDs and DVDs?
Admittedly I do have some files archived on to DVDs that are in a safe deposit box. Mostly these are wedding photos from friends and family weddings who I’ve long since given them their copies or prints. I don’t ever expect to need these shots again, however I just didn’t feel comfortable trashing them completely. I’m not a fan of archiving to optical media because they can become unreadable over time due to a variety of factors. Nothing changes here though. If you’re going to use optical media for archiving, then back it up too! I made multiple copies of those DVDs just in case.
How do I backup?
I thought you would never ask! Each of the computers in my house is backed up via Time Machine to either an external hard drive or my Time Capsule. I have a file server (running Mac OS X Server) that has my most critical documents on it (photos, movies, financial stuff, etc.). It’s backed up each night using SuperDuper which clones to an external Firewire hard drive. I rotate the external hard drive backups of the server to a safe deposit box at the bank so that If my house burns down I can still recover from my offsite backup. One of my most important files is my Quicken data file. So it’s backed up in several places. After each use it automatically backs up to the server AND to my .Mac account. So at any given time I have no less than 5 current copies of that file in different locations (one on the iMac that it resides on, one on the server, one on the server’s backup, one on the iMac’s Time Machine backup and one on .Mac). I can not ever afford to lose this file!
My main computer is my MacBook Pro. Since it’s a laptop and I travel with it, I’m not always on my home network to do Time Machine back ups to my Time Capsule. Therefore I travel with an OWC Mercury On-the-Go 500GB external hard drive. Before each trip I do a Time Machine backup to the Time Capsule AND a SuperDuper! backup to the OWC drive which provides me with a bootable clone. This way if my MacBook Pro died right before a presentation I could simply boot another computer from my drive and keep right on going.
Time Machine is Great, why do I still use SuperDuper! then?
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard’s Time Machine is great! Accidentally trashed a file two days ago? No problem, fire up Time Machine and within about a minute or two you’ve got your file back. However, if the whole drive crashes, you can’t boot from your Time Machine backup. You’ll have to put in the new drive and do a complete restore from scratch. This could take hours! If I crash on the go, I need to be back up and running within minutes. That’s why I carry an external bootable backup with me!
More travel tips
If your job involves doing presentations on the go, then you have even more to worry about if something dies. If you have to deliver a slide presentation, convert your slides to Adobe PDF and put the PDF file on a thumb drive. You won’t have all the fancy animations, but you’ll be able to present from any computer in the building running a copy of the Free Adobe Reader. If you’re demoing other software, put a copy of your demo files, the necessary fonts, the installer for the software and the serial number on a thumb drive. This way, all you would need is a colleague’s computer to continue the show. Don’t forget about online store either. You could use something like your .Mac iDisk or Adobe’s Acrobat Share (a FREE service) to store backups of your critical files so that they can be pulled down from any computer with an internet connection.
I hope that you never become victim of a hard drive crash! Just remember: "there are two kinds of computer users: those who have lost data and those who are about to." The more we go digital, the more you stand to lose (cherished photos, purchased music, movies, etc.) Backup! Also be sure to check out Scott Kelby’s blog on his use of the Drobo for backups.
Written by Terry White on May 27th, 2008 with no comments.
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When it comes to gadgets I’m always looking for the smallest gear I can find that has the most impact or features. However, when it comes to speakers, usually smaller means sacrificing sound quality, bass and volume. Is it too much to ask to have a speaker system that’s small enough to fit in my laptop bag, yet loud enough or clear enough to enjoy from across the room? JBL doesn’t think so.
I was doing a seminar one day and one of my colleagues had the JBL On Tour Speaker System. I couldn’t believe how small it was, yet it was delivering enough sound for a room of about 100 people to enjoy. So I made a mental note and said to myself, the next time I need to take some speakers on the road with me, I’m going to have to try these out. That day came! I took the JBL On Tour Speaker System with me to California last week. I drove it with an iPod nano and the sound was better than I expected. It was certainly loud enough and clear enough. However, I’m a fan of bass and the bass just wasn’t as good as I would have hoped. Don’t get me wrong, very few if any small speakers have enough bass to satisfy me, so there wasn’t a whole lot of disappointment here. Other than that, this speaker system more than fit the bill for what I was looking for.
How small is small?
When you’re not using the speaker, it folds down to about half the size. VERY COMPACT to say the least. Although it’s not battery powered, the supplied power adapter is small enough that it fits into the sleeve with the speaker. Although I used it with an iPod, there is no iPod dock connector. So no iPod charging or line out audio. I simply connected the supplied cable to the headphone jack of the iPod nano. If you’re looking for an iPod only speaker, then you should probably look elsewhere. I got this speaker because it would not only work with an iPod, but also with my laptop.
It also works on batteries. I didn’t try it yet, but the On Tour works with 4 AAA batteries and is rated to play for 24 hours on a fresh set.
Dimensions Width: 7" (175mm) x Depth: 3.5" (88mm) x Height: 1.4" (35mm)
Weight 12 oz (350g)
The Bottom Line
If you need a SMALL travel speaker system for your presentations and personal enjoyment, you can’t go wrong with the JBL On Tour Speaker System. Amazon has it for $53.62.
Written by terrywhite on April 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Entertainment and Entertainment and Gadgets and Peripherals.
After my laptop debacle last weekend I started really thinking about having a backup WITH ME when I travel. Sure I backup religiously when I’m at home and now even automatically with Time Machine and Time Capsule. However, if something were to go wrong on the road I would be kinda screwed. So I decided that I should have a bootable backup with me. I was already carrying a mini G-RAID which houses all my demo files. It’s a very fast drive being a RAID and all, but it’s kind of bulky and not large enough to house a complete bootable backup AND my demo files. So I wanted something with more capacity and the timing was perfect!
Introducing the NEW OWC On-The-Go 500GB External Drive
I’ve always been a fan of OWC’s On-The-Go drives and have used them for years. They just started shipping the 500GB 5400rpm version. So I got one. This drive connects via Firewire 800/400 or USB 2.0. They provide a neat little carrying case, all the cables as well as a power supply if needed. I usually run on Firewire 800 bus powered, so I have a stack of these power supplies collecting dust. I partitioned the drive into two partitions. One to equal the size of my main boot drive and the rest for my demo and other misc. files. I used SuperDuper! to do the clone last night and all is well. Granted, this drive is only 5400 rpms (as opposed to 7200 rpms) and it’s not a RAID, however, it’s smaller in physical size and should still work out just fine for my needs. Oh and yes, I did label the drive too 
The OWC 500GB On-The-Go drive goes for $360.
Written by terrywhite on April 21st, 2008 with no comments.
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