[elzinat]

I'm at the expo all week doing coverage for macnn; i will be inspecting lots of peripherals of various sorts. and I probably will be writing reviews of some products. Are there any questions anybody would like me to research? any products you want reviewed?
brands, types of devices, specific models, anything you want, just ask it here



ps. (really cheesy cliche) "This is your macnn!"

[seanyepez]

Yeah. Ask Elz. He's going to spend the whole week at Macworld!

[Archangel]

Games.

Oh, and mice running in X. I'm interested in ones w/ good tracking. My MS intellimouse is dying on me and never had good tracking. Multiple buttons are good. Trackballs are not. Thanks!

[ 01-08-2002: Message edited by: Archangel ]

[rjenkinson]

if they have a griffin powermate on display, i'd be interested in hearing how well it works. it sounds either really, really cool or flat-out dumb.

-r.

[ 01-08-2002: Message edited by: rjenkinson ]

[mikithecrackhead]

]Toilets;

• are they manned? Is there an attendant?
  What type of sanitary paper is used? is it soft or generic?
  What type of newspaper/publication is displayed over the urinals? Sports, Tech?
  Are there sanitary seat covers available?
  Scent of the room, Do they use a descent air freshener?
  Does apple make the internal components on automatic flushers?
  How's the hand soap? does it work OK, Fragrance?
  How much bigger is the line for the ladies than the men's room?
  From your own personal experience; #1, or #2? you don't have to answer this, it's too personal

[ 01-08-2002: Message edited by: mikithecrackhead ]

[mikithecrackhead]

<seriously>

• new software that work with OS X. ,outside of the usual, adobe, microsoft, symantec? anything cool?
  Any one representing a PDA ? handspring, sony, palm anyone from pocket PC?
  Any ISPs outside AOL and Earthlink showing love for the mac community?
  coolest non mac product, In Your Humble Opinion?
  Have Fun
  

[3gg3]

Originally posted by mikithecrackhead:
<STRONG>]Toilets;
Do they use a descent air freshener?</STRONG>

Yup, and *ascent* sanitary paper!

[roders]

I'd like to know anything about either Nvidia or ATI's upcoming cards from Apple/ATI/Nvidia (or third party's) and would specificaly like to know if the Radeon 7000 or 8500 will fit/work in a Cube, officialy or unofficaly...
You could ask Formac about the Proformance 4, will/could it be an Nvidia or even ATI reference board (should be in my opion).
Any game performance stats for the Radeon 8500 (and wether any of it's new features will be implemneted in any games soon)
as well as game performance stats for the new iMac, you could also ask Nvidia why Apple went with DDR ram for the iMac geforce 2MX s oppossed to the theoretically slower SDRAM which the towers still have (does it really produce a performance increase with AGPX2 and the 100MHZ motherboard?) or did Apple think it just looks better stats wise?
Also what version of the MX2 is in the new iMac (i.e whats the PC equivalent, MX 400?) and what is the clock/memory speed of this grphics chip set?
Cheers!

[ 01-08-2002: Message edited by: roders ]

[alien]

Gaming devices under OS X!

Particularly iShock 2.

[Paco500]

I second the Griffin iMate. I have also read somewhere that griffin is coming out w/ an iPod accessory that makes it a universal remote. If this is true, I'd like to hear about that.

Paco

[aaanorton]

Fax Software.
Better yet, working fax software (which excludes FaxSTF).
Why does SmithMicro even bother?

[godzookie2k]

bother MS for an ETA on the intellimouse drivers!!

uhm, thanks.


Nick

Elz: Palm syncing, final version.
ETA, what it syncs with, how it works.
Specifically, will it sync with mail.app and address book?

Thx

[elzinat]

I have gathered so far (everything should be published in a report on macnn over the weekend):
all of the information on the Griffin PowerMate (and a couple other new similarly idiotic oddities from the same company)
mice in OS X (including eta and pics of the "ellusive" m$ drivers )
gaming input devices under X (including some brand new interesting devices from Belkin)
toilets

tomorrow:
PDAs
video cards

anything else? tomorrow is the last day, so this is your last chance to post your requests. everything you ever wanted to know but weren't in the right city to ask!
please try to get all questions up by noon to ensure that I have time to get them answered.
also note: my focus is on peripherals. if i run out of stuff to do, though, I will move on to the sw questions

[elzinat]

Originally posted by elzinat:
tomorrow:
PDAs
video cards

vidcardsdone
Edit: It has been confirmed that neither Palm nor Handspring is here at the expo.
&gt;shrug&lt; they suck.

[ 01-11-2002: Message edited by: elzinat ]

[rjenkinson]

have the reviews been posted yet? i can't seem to find them anywhere.

-r.

[elzinat]

with apologies, it seems nothing has been posted yet. so i'll just post all of the stuff here.
[which, incidentally, means that you're not necessarily going to get the quality and purity of information you'd expect from a reporter. cause now i'm just another guy posting the forums .]

first off, the griffin PowerMate.
as you can see in this pic, the device is actually enormous, about 2 inches across and 2 inches tall. it is just a button you can press and a knob you can turn. and it costs $60. my verdict? if you're thinking of getting it for video editing ( ), get the shuttle pro (only $30 more). if you're thinking of getting it for a desktop machine for multimedia controls, get a new keyboard with more buttons. if you're thinking of getting it for a portable, uh.... it's huge, and useless. if you're thinking of getting it for gaming... how the heck do they think to call this a gaming device? in short, what were they thinking when they made this thing?!!?
but it has a little blue LED in the base so it looks cool.

other... "interesting" new Griffin gadgets:
•they have a new USB audio interface converter (it's the thing on the left in that picture.) it has a single passthrough USB port, and a variety of standard audio ports (in and out for each), and one of those special apple pro speaker ports (it is an amp and can power the pro speakers). looks much better than the iMic.
•they have a device that plugs into the pro speaker port, and splits to the kind of plus you use for your standard home stereo speakers
•they are working on a gadget that plugs into the headphone jack on the iPod and turns it into a universal remote. it's cylindrical, about the size of the tip of a que stick, a bit shorter. it is a very early prototype, and will not be released for a number of months. they said they are also working on making similar devices for PDAs using the same techonology.


[Edit: image was too large so changed to a link]

[ 01-16-2002: Message edited by: elzinat ]

[elzinat]

Next, toilets:
not manned. no attendant. toilet paper is of the "shave your ass" variety. no publications displayed above urinals. sanitary seat covers are available in some stalls. the bathrooms smell piss-poor. (ouch that was bad ). i don't believe so. the soap is adequate. what are you talking about? there weren't even any women at the show . biggest problem: no hot water. grrrrrrrr..............

[elzinat]

on to graphics cards:
the new radeon cards will NOT be available for a cube. and sawing them down to size won't work either .
couldn't find Formac.
one company in the games area actually had some demo machines with Radeon 8500s. i tried out one running Summoner (i have it-worst game i've played in a long time, btw). and even when there were no spell effects on screen, it wasn't smooth just panning the camera. so i asked the guy what kind of hardware it was. when he told me it was a G4 533 (single proc) with a radeon 8500, i just burst out at him about how horrible Summoner is, and how pathetic the performance is, and how shamefully bad a port it is, and how even aside from the disgustingly badly written engine it's a bad game, etc. etc., and i just let it all out telling people about how bad a game it is, and discouraged many people from even trying it out, much less considering purchasing it.
incidentally, all of ATI's demos of the 8500 were running on wintel. they said that the drivers for the mac would be coming out of beta and the APIs be released to game developers at the WWDC, and that they expect they should have their demos running on the mac the same as they are currently on the PC in July. :|

(after being sent around between 2 guys at the apple booth and then 3 at the nvidia booth) i found somebody at the nvidia who could answer all of your questions . the GPU in the new iMac is techinically identical to the GPU currently shipping in the towers except for the DDR ram. there was no known reason for that change. the guy said that neither that nor the difference in bus speed would make any noticeable difference at all (until drivers were optimised to perfection and games were optimised to perfection for all of the features of the card, which of course never happens). interesting note: there is no graphics "card" in the new iMac. the GPU is on the motherboard.

[elzinat]

http://jacob.macnn.com/inputdevices/inputdevices.html

[elzinat]

happy macworld to all

[rjenkinson]

thanks... i definitely won't be picking up the griffin powermate now.

-r.