Rangefinder Magazine

December 2000

Digital Photography: New Peripherals Speed Things Up
by John Rettie


Mac OS X
Last month I mentioned that I’d purchased a beta copy of Mac OS X but that I was nervous about installing it alongside the regular OS 9 operating system and all the important files and programs I need each day. Finally, I added a second hard drive and copied everything over from the main drive so I had an identical copy of everything as a backup. I also made this a bootable disk so that I could use it if the main drive got messed up while testing OS X.
It took several minutes to load the new OS X operating system and, as suggested by Apple, I loaded it onto the main drive on top of OS 9 so I could access all the so-called classic programs and my files. Everything worked smoothly and I was impressed at how easily it was to enter all the Internet and e-mail settings. I was immediately able to download my e-mail on Apple’s new e-mail program.

All the old programs and files are automatically placed in a separate folder called OS 9. Once you access one of these files from within OS X, it loads the old operating system and the programs in a window. Everything seemed to work fine, or at least it did with Photoshop and Microsoft Word, which are the critical programs I use regularly.
The look and feel of OS X is radically different from the Classic Mac operating system. When you open files and programs, colorful icons appear in a dock along the bottom of the screen. The size of this dock can be altered but nevertheless its appearance is slightly obtrusive. There are some fancy graphics and animation that happens when one puts a program into sleep mode.

Obviously, it is impossible to see how much better programs will work under the new operating system, as none of them have been optimized for OS X at this time. Apple promises that once the production version is launched next spring that most popular programs will be available as optimized versions for OS X.
Once I had finished playing with the beta copy for a few days, I switched the main hard disk back to OS 9 and much to my relief everything seemed to be fine.

My advice is that unless you really like to mess around with beta software you should wait until the new operating system is fully functional in 2001. I am hoping that OS X will prove to be a stable operating system that will allow multiprocessing and other neat features that will move computing forward in ease of use and functionality. Based on the beta, I think there is hope that OS X will prove to be a worthwhile system upgrade but I am not raising my expectations too high.


QPS FireWire CD-RW Drive
For the past couple of years I have happily relied on a Sony Spressa CD-R disc writer connected via a SCSI port on the back of my Mac. It operated at a 2X speed, which meant it took around 35 minutes to burn a CD-R. As I was only burning CD-Rs a few times a year, it was no big deal. Lately though, especially since I purchased my digital cameras, I am burning more CD-Rs and speed has become more of an issue.

The new Mac G4 I recently purchased does not have a SCSI port so I felt it was time to try a newer and faster CD-R. I have been reading some not very positive experiences from people using USB CD-R burners. It appears that the transfer speed of USB is not really sufficiently fast for transferring data efficiently to the faster CD-R burners.
FireWire offers a much faster data transfer speed so it seemed obvious that this was a better solution. However, there seems to have been some issues with reliability of early CD-R writers using FireWire. A few months ago it almost looked as though I was going to be better off sticking with my old CD-R and its SCSI connection.

However, I have been trying out a QPS Que!Fire CD-RW Drive for a couple of weeks and I am very pleased with its reliability. I plugged it into one of the FireWire ports on the back of the computer and after loading the included light version of Toast 4.1, the drive was immediately recognized and I was ready to burn my first CD-R at 12X speed. About five minutes after hitting the start button I had a CD-R containing 630MB of digital images. So far I have burned three CDs and have had no problems.

As its name suggests, this drive can also write to rewritable CD-RW discs, although I have had no reason to try burning one yet. To be honest I am not all that keen on CD-RW discs, as they are not as robust as CD-Rs and are also not fully compatible with all CD-ROM drives. As it is easy to find blank CD-R discs for less than 50cents each, there is not much of a cost savings using a rewritable disc.

The QPS CD-RW drive is contained in a translucent plastic box and the kit includes the necessary cables and a useful carrying bag. This means that it is easy to take the CD-R on location to use with a portable laptop as long as it has a FireWire port, which includes all new Mac laptops as well as Sony PC-based laptops.
It seems that engineers have finally worked the bugs out of FireWire connections, which means we should begin to see more variety of drives and scanners utilizing FireWire connections. This is good news as FireWire devices can be plugged and unplugged while a computer is switched on and they are supposed to be much less temperamental than SCSI devices.


Belkin USB hubs
One of the disadvantages of buying the newest Mac computers is the lack of built-in access to serial, SCSI and ADB devices, which have been used with Macs since the early days of the computer. If you’re buying a computer for the first time, that’s good news as the USB and Firewire ports that replaced those old ports are much faster and easier to set up. However, if you’ve got a lot of old devices, you need backward compatibility. Apple and other manufacturers make SCSI cards that can be fitted to the newest Macs for accessing SCSI drives and scanners. With one of these cards installed the computer acts just like any Mac of the past.

An alternative is to use an USB adapter that converts the serial, SCSI or ADB signal so that the peripherals can be plugged into the USB port on the computer. I tried out the Belkin adapters, which are available in a variety of versions to cover these different devices. Unfortunately, not all peripherals will work with these adapters, making it a hit or miss affair. For example most Epson printers will not work with the adapter.

When I installed the SCSI port adapter I was expecting to have trouble, as SCSI connections can be temperamental at the best of times. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I hooked up my old Sony CD-R writer and found that the Toast program instantly recognized the drive and was able to burn a CD-R successfully. I suspect that if the drive had been operating at a faster speed it might not have been as reliable as the transfer rate of USB is not as fast as SCSI.
The USB adapters are all shaped the same and they can be plugged into a BusStation, which allows the different adapters to be stacked on top of each other. Through internal plugs the adapters can then be connected via a four-place USB port in the base to other USB devices and the computer. For iMac users Belkin includes a selection of different colored translucent snap-on covers.


Best Buy Modem
Regular readers of this column will know that I have been a happy subscriber to cable modem Internet service from Cox Communications, my local cable TV service provider. About my only complaint has been the fact that I had to either purchase a modem from them when I signed up for $299 or rent one at $15 per month. Unlike a regular service where you can use any modem, cable ISPs are restrictive in which modem can or cannot be used. However, this is changing, as many cable operators are beginning to allow customers to use their own cable modems.

A few months ago I had the opportunity to try a 3Com cable modem but as Cox Cable did not approve it I was unable to hook it up. More recently Cox approved several cable modems for use with their service. One of these is the Best Data CMX110 cable modem, which should soon be available for retail sale in computer stores at $229. I have been trying one recently in place of the General Instrument cable modem provided by Cox.

In order to hook up a new modem I had to contact the service provider and give them the exact MAC address, which is a unique number hard-coded into each modem. Once I had read this number over the phone to a technician at the cable company he told me the new modem would be useable within an hour. Sure enough when I switched on my computers they were immediately hooked into the Internet. I did not have to change any settings in my computers or in the MacSense cable router I use to distribute the Internet access to my Ethernet network. However, one week later I lost my connection as the technician had failed to tell me that I had to change the unique DNS entry for my computer. Once I had changed that in the TCP/IP control panel everything was fine again.

In all honesty it was difficult to quantify any difference between the new modem and the old. The technician told me that the Best Data modem tended to link up more quickly with the network than the GI modem. From my point of view the biggest benefit to the new modem is that I no longer have to pay a monthly rental fee. Undoubtedly, as cable access becomes more widely available and operators allow consumers to purchase their own modems, prices will drop substantially, just as they did over the years with regular dial-up modems. I remember paying $600 for my first 300-baud modem. Now you can get a 56K modem for under $50. The same price/quality/speed trend will surely follow in cable modems. In the meantime, I have no objection to paying over $200 for a cable modem as the Internet access is so much better than with a slow dial-up modem.

Olympus E-10
It turned out that the new Olympus E-10 and E-100RS cameras I received for review last month were prototype cameras sent to me by mistake. As they were not fully operational I could not give them a fair review. Therefore the promised overview will have to wait a while. My initial reaction to the 4-megapixel Olympus E-10 camera is that it is a significant digital camera that’s worth a good look. Slowly but surely the gap between the best prosumer digital cameras and the lowest cost professional cameras is narrowing.

John Rettie is a photojournalist who resides in Santa Barbara, CA. He has been using a camera as a professional for 29 years, a computer for 19 years, and has combined his knowledge of both for the past seven years. Readers can contact him by e-mail at john@johnrettie.com or by snail-mail c/o Rangefinder.