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Review by Giovanni Bertani:

Great tool. What a scanner should be. This is another world from the speed and software efficiency you have in the average scanner and All In One Printers. So I am happy to have both a AIO device and this great tool for document management.

My use:

Now all the invoices and in general, all my printed documents are converted into searchable pdf into an easy to access archive.

I can recover from a fax or a printed document and edit it in word or excel tables or iWork and save a lot of time retyping

Business cards are archived in a short time and included in my address book and so also on my iPhone.

PLUS

A single, easy to use, application manages the very fast scanning and efficient OCR conversion of printed documents outputting directly in searchable PDF, Word, Excel, email attachment, address book and VCF contacts. Also business card OCR is quiet effective and the limit is due to strange character and graphics and you can find on some more creative cards.

Compared to what you find in the AIO devices and average scanners, paper handling is superior and errors are avoided. In the case of skipped pages (Happens rarely) a sensor warns you and show you which page is missing.

CONS

Only shortcoming is that Acrobat Pro is included in version 8.0 and not the last 9.0 but I suppose that this will change soon.

Review by Bryan Hunt:

I’ve scanned approximately 15,000 pages with this scanner and it couldn’t have been easier. I did get the occasional “paper jam” when the sheet feeder picked up the next page as it was feeding the current page. Clearing a jam is trivial: pop the cover open, remove the pages, snap the cover back, continue scanning. Considering I was feeding in papers from 15 – 20 years ago, I expected the pages to occasionally stick together. This scanner is worth every penny.

Review by C. Goldblatt:

I’m going to keep this simple. For 20.00 you can hook up your late model MAC (MacBook in my case) to your flatscreen. You do not need to get mini-dvi to dvi to HDMI as most of the forums recommend. Get this and I personally got the 10ft HDMI cable and set up the television as a dual monitor setup. Very Cool. If you have surround sound I would recommend getting the Toslink to optical mini-adapter as it is super easy to hook up your mac to surround sound also. It actually sounds better than cable and DVD’s in my opinion. BTW, this item is plug and play. I did not have to set up anything software wise.

Review by Sphinx:

I am using this with a white 13 inch Macbook. Product works flawlessly, I get full 1080p resolution on my monitor. The build quality is decent.

I received a white version, as pictured.

Review by winningham.2:

Just a quick chat about my initial impression of the WD My Book for Mac 1TB USB2 edition, but first, a word on my current environment. I have an early 2009 iMac with 4GB RAM running Mac OS X 10.6.x and plan on using this drive exclusively for TimeMachine backups.

My first impression was actually pretty negative in that I was surprised at how low-rent the case is for the My Book. Compared to the aluminum skinned previous WD external USB/FW400 drive I have, this My Book represents the worst in Chinese manufacturing. Also contributing to my woes, is the included wall-wort being the typical “too big to fit any normal powerstrip” size. Again, all my previous external drives had external powerbricks with regular wall plugs making extremely convenient to plug into a powerstrip or UPS.

With the overall aesthetics out of the way, I was happy to see a USB2 cable included for the single USB ported device and it seems to live up to the USB bandwidth rating one would expect. Yes, it would be nice if Apple had some type of eSATA connection for the iMacs and one must give up the first born child to afford a FW800 enclosure right now (about 40% more as I write this). But with all that being said, USB2 does fine for archival purposes and should be thought of as such.

A note regarding the sound, this is not an especially loud drive but its far from silent. Somebody made a comment about it sounding like mice trying to gnaw their way out of the crappy case their stuck in and I would agree with that. But again, its not all that bad and especially for TimeMachine purposes.

Finally, I am convinced that one could skip installing the WDsmartware software that comes with the drive. Outside of the encryption part, there doesn’t seem to be anything here better than what TimeMachine delivers in OS X 10.5 or 10.6 and I have chosen to uninstall the software (of course it now want to fill my logs with launchd warnings but I’ll take care of that soon enough). I think the only reason one would want this bloat is if they want to mirror files on the local drive with this external drive because one may carry this drive from machine X to machine Y and have the files ‘restored’ to a similar directory on machine Y? I don’t know but that’s my only guess.

Review by GadgetFreek:

I was originally planning on buying an Apple Time Capsule hard drive since we have 3 macs and I try to buy only Apple-branded accessories as they work well together. But after researching it, a lot of people don’t like the Time Capsule because it dies almost always around 18 months. (right after the warranty expires) So I searched for an alternative and found the Western Digital My Book for Mac which I ended up buying. The hard drive is small, quiet, and didn’t feel cheap. As soon as I plugged it into my Mac, a pop-up window appears asking if I would like to use it as an Apple TIme Machine. I clicked okay and it backed up everything on my computer to the My Book. The first back up takes several hours, but after that, backing up is very fast via USB 2.0 and with 1 TB of space, I don’t have to worry about filling up with space soon. I mainly use this to back up my machine, but also use it to temporarily store large files to transfer from one mac to the next. Western Digital is known for reliable hard drives so in retrospect, this is probably a smarter purchase than buying a Time Capsule which was much more expensive.

It comes bundled with it’s own software, but I do not use it. Time Machine works well with this hard drive so I don’t need any other type of software. Some people complained about not being able to delete the software, but its not a big deal. Whenever you plug in the hard drive, the software icon appears on your desktop, but you can unmount it or just ignore it. Doesn’t really take up much space on the hard drive.

Review by Jujube:

I ordered this because I wanted a full media keyboard with the short key travel time of a laptop. The Kensington slim type certainly has that. No clunky keys, great action and sensitivity for fast easy typing. It’s shorter than the average keyboard, keys a little more congested than Apple’s extended keyboard, but has all of the functions and works well… except for the following:

The down sides:

1. It has no USB port for a mouse!!!!! I had to waste one of my computer ports and the mouse cord isn’t quite long enough to reach comfortably. Will now have to invest in a wireless mouse. Can’t believe that I made fun of Kensington’s Pocket Mouse for laptops with its 6′ long cord. Now I know that its real use should be for desktops using the Slim Type keyboard…

2. Requires CD or online software installation to operate. Had my keyboard been dead, I wouldn’t have been able to use it at all.

I couldn’t decide whether or not to give this 3 or 4 stars, but opted for 4 because of the great key action and smooth typing.

UPDATE: 6 months later the occasional key began sticking. A year later it happens much more frequently. Simply typing the last sentence I had to backspace to pound on the “c” and “e.” However, when all of the keys are working properly, the action is still excellent.

Review by Zachary Hackett:

I have an iBook and after having gone through a keyboard at over a hundred bucks, I decided to buy an additional USB keyboard to use when I’m working at my desk. It saves wear and tear on the iBook, plus it puts the screen a little further away and that’s good as it seems my eyes want reading glasses when the screan is in my face.

My gal pal Sara has an iMac with an Apple keyboard and the keys on the back rows are higher then the ones on the front. This would not be good for me, so I went looking and came up with this gem from Kensington. The keys are flat, feel about like the iBook keys and they are responsive as all get out. And there are these nifty controls at the top of the keyboard to control iTunes. Such a deal. I like the numeric keypad as well. I type sixty to seventy wpm without looking and my fingers have no problems with this baby and I even like the sound the keys make when you tap them down, makes me feel like I’m a cub reporter. Just call me Jimmy.

Review by Soumya Ray:

This is a small mouse that fits easily in my laptop bag. I was initially afraid that it would be difficult to move around as i was used to larger traditional mice. However, once I (quickly) got used to it, I found that its even easier and more comfortable to use than large ergonomic mice — the reason being that you can simply rest your wrist on the table and push this mouse around with your fingers. Your whole hand need not move! Very nice feel to it for me.

The only downside to the atek mouse that i bought was that after a year or so of use, its buttons became less responsive — sometimes clicks just don’t register. Could it be that this small mouse isn’t as rugged as I had hoped? I haven’t banged this mouse around and always keep it in its soft pouch in my bag, so I’m a little dissappointed that its causing problems now. I’m not sure if others who have been using this mouse for a long time have had this same problem. But despite that, I’d still quite likely that I’d buy this mouse again.

The only feature I miss (from larger mice), is a scrollwheel of some kind. If someone at Atek could stick an Apple Mighty-Mouse style micro-scroller on this mouse, I would marry them, *and* buy the mouse again for sure.

Review by jrsposter:

This is the lightest most appropriate USB mouse for a laptop. Therefore, when the first one developed a crack in the cable, I immediately replaced it with a new one. I have wound the part of the cable near the mouse with electrical tape in hopes that this will prevent the kind of breaking which my first one suffered.

Unfortunately, those selling this product have by now figured out that there is nothing else on the market which is just like this one. Therefore, the price has gone up from . to almost . I therefore recommend winding electrical tape around the first inch of the cable from the get-go so you won’t have to buy this product twice.

Review by sonero:

QuickCam Ultra Vision -Black-

I purchased this video camera a couple of moths a go and I’m extremely pleased with it. If I would have waited a bit longer I could have gotten it for under bucks. I got it for over 0 but still think that It’s totally worthed. I’m a Mac user so I couldn’t find anything that was paralleled in quality to the iSight and this one does a fantastic job for a fraction of the cost. It’s a plug-and-paly set up and very easy to figure out. The image is sharp and of excellent quality. By far one of the best Mac gadgets to have if you’re into personal video conferencing. I will be getting a 2nd one for my family Mac upstairs.

Review by Vladimir Kotal:

After using the same model at work I bought this webcam for myself to use it at home. For me, the main advantage of this webcam is the ability to use it on multiple operating systems without having to install the drivers (it conforms to USB Video Class spec) – it works fine in Solaris, Linux and Mac OS X. The resolution is more then fine for common Skype video calls. Another must have feature is the ability to automatically adjust the brightness according to light conditions in a room.

Review by Peter B. Degroot:

SUMMARY: It works reasonably well for light keyboarding chores, and the keyboard layout is about 90% mac-like, but it’s flimsily constructed and over-priced.

Pros-

Built-in trackpad obviates need for wireless mouse and surface to run it on (My main reason for buying it.)

Light, small, portable

Reasonable range

Cons-

Flimsy construction. Nowhere near the quality of an Apple wireless keyboard.

Over-priced

Interference from 802.11g networks and other 2.4 MHz devices

No indicators for when Caps Lock or Function keys are activated

Touchpad too sensitive to tapping

Contrary to some other reports, I get satisfactory performance at 12-15 feet, even with the USB receiver stuck in the back of the Mac mini and facing the wall. I put the USB receiver on an extension cable and moved it away from the Mini, but didn’t really see any improvement in performance. It still occasionally drops keystrokes or cursor movements.

The touchpad is very sensitive and interprets even a light touch as a tap which equals a mouse button click. I got a lot of inadvertent mouse clicks just setting my finger down to move the cursor around. I decreased the frequency of this problem quite a bit by trimming a screen protector for my touchscreen GPS to fit the touchpad. It reduces the sensitivity somewhat. Since the touchpad has real left and right buttons, I wish you could just turn off the tap function. The scrolling function on the touchpad works very well.

It is adequate for the limited keyboard use I need to operate my Mac Mini as a media center for my HDTV and Home Theater system, but I would hate to have to use it for extensive typing or data entry. Between the occasional dropped keystroke or cursor movements and the inadvertent taps on the touchpad, you really have to check the screen frequently to see that you are getting what you intend.

Review by drips:

I have a Mac Mini based media center and while looking for the right input device I experimented with the Apple remote, a bluetooth cell phone, Snatch for iPhone/iPod Touch, and using screen sharing with my MacBook. All worked with varying degrees of success but I decided I needed a wireless keyboard with a built in touch pad regardless of what else I might use.

I focused on the Logitech diNovo Mini and the Adesso keyboard. Although I liked the size of the DiNovo I decided to go with the Adesso due to it’s Mac compatibility and similarity in size and layout to my MacBook keyboard.

After a few hours of weird operation the Adesso worked very nicely with the Mac and I’m quite pleased. The keyboard is lightweight and is small enough to not be a tremendous eyesore in the living room. It is a bit expensive and doesn’t have a really sturdy, high quality feel, but it’s good enough.

I have found that with the keyboard on my lap and the receiver in the back of the Mini the connection was unstable with a lot of dropped keystrokes and choppy trackpad movement. I got a USB extension cable and moved the receiver higher and forward of other electronics which has improved the reliability considerably. I have tried to type as fast as I can to force it to drop a stroke but it doesn’t happen any more.

I do wish it had a redesign to make it more Mac-like and similar to an Apple keyboard. Look at some of the images and you can see the ‘Clear’ and ‘Delete’ buttons on the lowest row of keys as well as the tiny ‘Command’ key to the left of the space bar. Removing the former two buttons and expanding the Command key would be much better in my opinion. Also the ugly two-button design and scroll control on the side of the touch pad is a bit awkward but being as it doesn’t have a two-finger touchpad like the MacBook it does help sometimes. And as other reviewers have stated, switching from RF to bluetooth would be a great improvement as well.

In summation, if Adesso (or another company) could make just a few tweaks to this unit to pretty it up, make it bluetooth and possibly add two-finger control but keep the price the same, it would be a fantastic Mac input device. As it stands, it’s pretty darn good though.

Review by Jeffrey Stanley:

This is my first Mac computer. My first four computers ran Win 3.1, Windows 95, XP, and Vista (from about 1995-present). I have quite a lot of time spent on each of them. Switching from Windows to Mac is not difficult, but it can be a bit frustrating for a week or so. There are Windows features that you will miss, but they are mostly overcome by overall advantages in my opinion.

I’ve spent two weeks with this machine now. If I had written this review after one day, I would have probably stated that I regretted the switch to Mac. After getting more proficient with the machine and realizing how well it works, I would definitely recommend it to a friend.

This review is going to be a mix of my impressions of both the hardware and the Mac operating system from a new Mac user perspective.

The only difference between my machine and the one on this product page is that I ordered directly from Apple and upgraded the hard drive to 250GB (from the 160GB base option). I am using 2gb of ram and the lower-end processor.

My Mac OS impressions:

The biggest thing I missed from Windows at first was the task bar. Mac uses the “dock” to replace the task bar. The dock is kind of like the quick launch toolbar in Windows spread out across the entire bar, with large icons. Having used windows with a task bar for the past 13 years, I missed the ability to see all open programs and switch between them with the task bar. The dock has a tiny dot below the icon on running-programs, but nothing else to separate it from other program and folder icons. The dock is not nearly as useful for multitasking as the task bar.

The saving grace that rescues the Mac from awkward app-switching while multitasking is called expose. Expose is activated by either pressing a key or using a multitouch gesture (four-finger swipe). Expose uses the entire screen to display all open windows and allow you to switch between them. It’s like alt+tab on steroids. Having used the machine for a couple weeks, I miss using expose when I use my Windows machine. As much as I hated the dock at first, I have to give the advantage to the Mac for managing multiple windows while multitasking.

The controls for open-windows are quite different than in MS-Windows. In Mac, there is a resize, hide, and minimize button instead of maximize, minimize, restore, and close. To close an app on the mac you need to use a menu command or keyboard shortcut. The Mac resize button kind of works like restore/maximize, only it’s a bit more awkward. A commenter here pointed out that it resizes the window for ideal viewing without using the entire screen. I find myself resizing windows by dragging corners more than I ever did on a Windows machine. I really miss the ability to maximize, if for no other reason but to avoid distractions. The green resize button may be better on an enormous monitor, but not on a 13″ notebook. When you minimize or hide an app on the Mac, it is only available from the dock and is hidden from expose. I’ll give the window size-management advantage to Windows in this contest. The windows system is just easier and more logical in my opinion. It isn’t a deal-breaker, but I do miss the Windows “window controls.” If you are a frequent user of the F11 key while web browsing in Windows you’ll have to kiss that feature goodbye. Neither Firefox nor Safari will go full-screen.

Windows Explorer is “replaced” with an app called Finder. Finder is kind of like the start menu and an explorer window all rolled up into one. Compared with older versions of Windows, finder is adequate but Vista’s explorer is quite a bit easier and more logical to use. I prefer Vista’s preview pane to Mac’s coverflow. I miss the “up folder” button. I have found myself mostly using the view that puts files, folders and apps into a column view for easiest computer browsing, and it just isn’t as elegant as Windows Vista. The lack of a maximize button has caused frustration especially in the finder, because the finder likes to stay in a very small window unless you drag the corners.

The Safari web browser is nice and quick and has a decent security reputation. I have been switching back and forth between Safari and Firefox. Firefox has crashed a couple of times and I really like being able to use multitouch gestures with Safari, so I’m leaning toward making Safari my main web tool. Reading RSS feeds, and the bookmark toolbar are really well done in Safari. Browsers are so personal that it’s difficult to recommend one over the other, but as a Firefox user in Windows I think I have high standard and Safari has met or exceeded them.

I absolutely hate the iPhoto app. Iphoto does not allow you to organize and browse your photos in folders. It imports your pictures and sorts them itself based on time/date stamps on the photos. This works fine for personal vacation snapshots but it completely mixed up the rest of my images. Folders that were neatly organized for work projects, and fun web clippings, and adult stuff were all shuffled into one big mess after I imported my image collection. I ended up just deleting all of them and not using iphoto at all. Right now I’m just using Finder to browse my photos and the preview app to view them. Light editing work isn’t possible in the preview app and I still haven’t decided what to use for a basic photo editor yet. Vista’s photo app is junk but it’s still superior to iPhoto if you like to keep your photos organized using your own folder system. I know people who love iphoto. It comes down to whether you want the ability to organize your collection yourself. If you have a big mess of photos, you’ll love iphoto’s ability to organize them via event and face recognition.

Edited to add: you can organize your photos into “albums” after you import them into iPhoto, but be prepared to spend a lot of time reorganizing everything. Even after you organize into albums, the main library screen gives you views of your entire collection (perhaps things you don’t want everyone to see).

I have not used Garage Band or iMovie yet. I’ll update later when I get a chance.

Edited to add: I played with garage band a bit and it’s pretty powerful. It allows you to import and export AAC and MP3 tracks and record sound in multiple tracks. Very easy to use. The only other audio app i’ve ever used is audacity and I much prefer Garage Band. I haven’t used any of the music lessons it offers yet but plan to soon.

I played with iMovie for a few minutes and it seems pretty nice and very intuitive. I actually don’t mind Windows Movie Maker, which is included with Vista. I would not consider it a big step up from Win Movie Maker, but it’s a nice app.

The mail, calendar, and address book apps are basic but work very very well. The address app will import common file types easily. It will sync with yahoo out of the box. Address book will only sync with Google contacts if you own an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Everyone has an opinion about iTunes. I’m a big fan of it. It’s exactly like the windows version only it runs a bit faster without the bugs. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, the Windows-iTunes bug with time/date being wrong after the computer sleeps is not an issue on the Mac.

Time machine is the Mac’s backup app. It is amazing and very simple. I’m using an external drive plugged into my Apple Airport wireless router, as a backup disk. My wireless disk showed up on my desktop instantly once I plugged it into the router. Time machine noticed the external drive right away and went to work backing up my files (after asking permission of course). Now my machine automatically backs up any changes every hour as long as I’m in range of my wireless access point. Time machine is a big load off my mind. If I ever have a drive failure or my computer is destroyed I have an exact backup of everything without remembering to backup my files. Vista will backup according to a set schedule, but it lacks the ability to easily look through backups for specific files. Time machine is wonderful and make wireless backup effortless.

The Mac disk utility is almost as good as the one in Vista and it’s easier to use. It’s far superior to the one in XP. I used it to format my external wireless drive because the Mac router couldn’t read NTFS formating (although the computer can read NTFS drives via USB for some reason).

The graphics control software is a joy to use. When I plug in my external monitor it immediately extends my desktop to the new monitor. Adjusting everything from resolution to rotation couldn’t be any easier.

Boot camp is a utility that allows you to create a partition and install Windows as a secondary boot system (you need to own or buy a legal single-disk 32bit copy of either Windows XP or Windows Vista). When you start up the boot camp utility, it gives you a choice between using either 5 or 32 GB of space for the Windows partition. I learned the hard way that Windows XP SP3 won’t fit into 5GB. You need to give it at least the 32 GB (which left me with almost exactly 200GB on my “250″ GB drive). Installing Windows using the Boot Camp utility is very very easy. Once you get Windows loaded, your OSX install disk makes quick work of installing drivers for all of your laptop’s hardware. It’s too bad that Nvidia and HP aren’t as good at putting together easy Windows driver packages as Apple. In order to boot into Windows, you simply press the “option” key during bootup and it allows you to choose which OS to run. Windows XP absolutely screams on this hardware.

The hardware:

The hardware is where this computer really shines.

The biggest advantage is stability. My last computer purchase was a vista machine. To say that I had stability and hardware compatibility issues with my HP Vista desktop is an understatement. The main reason I turned to mac for this purchase was the fact that the hardware, drivers, and software are made for each other. This machine has ran flawlessly for the past two weeks. I did have two crashes of the Firefox browser while watching Flash video, but only the browser went down rather than the entire system.

I have connected an external monitor, camera, ipod, USB drive, and router to this machine. All of the drivers were already installed and everything has “just worked.” The hardware is a joy to use when it just works. It is difficult to put into words how happy I am with the lack of effort in using this machine.

The speed isn’t blazing-fast but it runs very well, even with many many apps and windows running. My Vista desktop has similar specs, but my new Mac feels slightly faster.

One outstanding productivity feature of this machine is the touch pad. I honestly prefer it to using a mouse for office and browsing tasks. I can’t say enough good things about the multitouch gestures. Two finger scrolling, two finger right-click, three finger forward and back in Safari, and four finger expose make this machine feel like like it is part of you. Having the entire surface of the touchpad as the button is brilliant, especially for drag and drop operations. The large size of the touchpad makes it very precise.

The keyboard is really nice. At first I thought the keys were a bit soft and the travel was too shallow, but I quickly got used to it and now prefer it to my more “clicky” desktop keyboard. I don’t know how I lived this long without a backlit keyboard. The backlight is more useful than I thought it would be.

The display is beautiful. It has good color, a wide viewing angle, and is plenty bright for indoor environments. I would prefer that the screen wasn’t glass, but the reflections aren’t as bad as I feared. If there is a bright light source behind you, you’ll need to angle the screen to reduce the glare but it’s workable.

The DVD drive is a DVD drive. It feels slow and makes a lot of noise. I’ve never owned an optical drive that I considered fast and quiet, and this one isn’t any exception. It works well, but isn’t anything special.

The battery life is incredible. The seven hour battery life is not an exaggeration if you are using the computer for light browsing and office apps. Expect about 4-5 hours if you’re using it for heavy web browsing and a bit of media. Listening to music with the display off would easily last over the advertised 7 hours. Streaming high definition video on netflix using wireless will knock it down to at or below three hours. I haven’t watched DVD movies on battery power but I expect it to barely get you through a single two hour film with a bit left over.

The size and weight are ideal for portability. 4.5lbs doesn’t exactly feel light until you compare it to similarly spec’d machines that weigh a full pound (20%) more. I wouldn’t want a larger machine if I had to lug it around much.

The speakers are quite good for a small light machine. Don’t expect much bass, but the sound is very clear with good mids and highs. The speakers are plenty loud for listening to podcasts or music in a semi-quiet medium sized room or office. I won’t need to pack external speakers for use in my hotel room when I travel, like my last laptop.

The “magsafe” power adapter is more than just a gimmick, and more than just a way to avoid tripping and breaking your machine. The “power brick” itself is a lot smaller than my last dell laptop. It’s exactly the same size as the USB wall adapters that used to be included with ipods. The cord is 6ft long and the brick includes fold-out wings to wrap the cord around. It is very well thought-out for travel. With the cord wrapped up and the plug folded into the body, the power brick only takes up about 2.5″ x 3″ x 1″ in your bag. When you are using it at home or at the office there is an included 6ft extension cord for the power brick so you aren’t as tethered to your desk.

The computer runs very cool compared to most laptops. Also, there are no vents where super-heated air blows out. While I’m sure it uses a fan, I’ve never audibly actually heard it run or felt a stream of warm air from it. I think it may vent through ports and the keyboard but it runs cool enough that you don’t notice it. Edited to add: it does get rather warm when watching high resolution video, but stays quite cool when web browsing or using normal office apps. Even when very warm, the fan is still quiet (the only way to actually hear the fan is to hold it near your ear).

The only drawback to the hardware compared to Windows machines is the fact that there is no option to hibernate when closing the lid. It sleeps when you close the lid but it still is using a small amount of power. If you’re only going to be away for a couple hours this isn’t an issue, but you must completely shut down when on battery power if you’re going to be away much longer.

This machine is a lot more expensive than similarly spec’d Windows machines but I feel that it’s worth the money. I’m a very satisfied Mac switcher.

Review by Nate:

Well I must say I am very happy i did not buy apple’s first iteration of the 13″ aluminum macbook last year b/c they really got it right the second time around upgrading it to a macbook pro! Its nice to have that “pro” stamp on a 13″ now! Apple has listened to their customers adding almost everything we have asked for and more, and managed to reduce the price! Thanks Apple!

CHANGES FROM LAST YEAR

- 0 less

- 13″ aluminum macbooks became macbook pros

- 2.53Ghz up from 2.4GHz dual core

- 4GB RAM up from 2GB

- led display has 60% greater color gamut than previous model

- new advanced built-in battery that lasts up to 7 hours vs 4hrs

- FireWire is back (after all the complaints of first model)

- SD card slot (replaces express card slot)

- new models now come with iLife ’09

- separate digital audio input is gone

- new model uses the same integrated mic and headphone port as the iPhone

PROS

- finally a price cut with a performance upgrade! i knew apple could do it. i was tired of paying for aesthetics and not performance.

- new Snow Leopard Operating System comes pre-installed! Same great ease of use with much faster performance!

- much better lcd screen! inline with the pro models…still glossy and still some glare but much nicer!

- backlight keyboard on all 13″ models now! ( i really enjoy this as it can be controlled from low to high)

- battery life is significantly better than last year.( i get about 6 hours w/ regular use not the 7hrs that is reported)

- the computer is designed beautifully truly a head turner.

- iLife 09 suite is superb for pictures, movies, and music. Good software really does sell hardware.

- SD card slot accepts SDHC, which goes up to 32GB and works like a charm. (can boot from SD card as well)

CONS

- aluminum outer casing does dent easily if dropped. (buy a soft case for it!)

- power cord is short and does not reach as many places as I would like…must sit very close to power outlet.

- battery can’t be removed easily

- SD card sticks about half way out of slot. eye sore.

- blu-ray option would have been nice but understandable given licensing fees. (many blurays are offering digital copies which help)

Taking into consideration all the great improvements over last year with a nice price cut I can now truly recommend this near perfect Macbook Pro!

Review by Macerella:

I recently had an opportunity to take Bokeh, Alien Skin Software’s latest product, out for a spin. Most photographers are quite familiar with the term “bokeh”. But, those who are not, here’s a quick definition. Per Wikipedia, the term “bokeh” is derived from a Japanese word for blurring, and it means is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lense using a shallow depth of field.

Alien Skin’s Bokeh plug-in simulates a bokeh effect to make the subject of your photo really pop. Instead of using your camera lens to create the effect, you can simply dial in the effect using Bokeh and Photoshop CS3/CS4 (or other compatible software). Take a look at these examples on the Alien Skin website, and you will get excited as to the possibilities with this software, as I did!

The first thing you need to note is that this software is a plug-in to Photoshop CS3 or higher. Bokeh also runs on other graphic software, including Photoshop Elements, Adobe Fireworks, and Corel Paint Shop Pro, as listed on the Alien Skin’s website. But, there is no Aperture nor Lightroom plug-in available for Bokeh from Alien Skin Software, at least not as of this writing. As a Photoshop CS3 user, the remainder of my review is based on using the Bokeh plug-in with Photoshop CS3 on the Mac.

Installation was a breeze on my Mac. I just downloaded the zipped file, unzipped it to find the DMG file, and inside the DMG file was the install application, which I clicked on to automatically installed Bokeh.

I then opened Photoshop CS3, and behold, it was there under the Filters Menu, like all good plug-ins. I then proceeded to open a photo and select Bokeh from the Filters Menu.

When I first opened the interface, my photo was blurry! I quickly realized that I needed a little bit of instruction first, so I headed to Alien Skin’s website, where they offer several short tutorials on how to use the tool. But, before I talk about that,I wanted to show you the various presets available.

Bokeh comes with 11 preset categories available. If you open each category, you will see a slew of presets, which appear for every preset category. Essentially, the preset names are the Bokeh lens effects that Alien Skin is simulating. If you know these lenses, you will immediately feel comfortable. If you do not know these lenses, fear not. Play around and use the presets as starting points only.

Like all Photoshop plug-in presets, you can then move the various sliders available in the other Bokeh and Vignette tabs to tweak the effect to your liking. You can also create your own user defined presets, if you find settings that work well for you, as well as create your own preset categories. You cannot modify the factory presets.

Now, on to the tutorials online. The tutorials taught me various options in keeping areas of the photo sharp, while blurring other areas. Essentially, you have three options, two of which are built into the Bokeh plug-in. Bokeh offers a radial and a planar option that allows you to select the area that should stay in focus. The third option is to make selections in Photoshop prior to running Bokeh. Select the subject using Photoshop selection tools, smooth out the edges per the tutorial, and finally apply the Bokeh effect.

Here is how to determine which option will work for your photo.

1. The Bokeh Radial Option: For studio portraits, or outdoor portraits that have no harsh background distractions, the radial option can work well. It also works well for scenic shots where you want to put focus on a certain area. This option allows you to select a circular area that you want to keep the focus on, while the remainder of your photo will have the bokeh effect applied. The circle can be sized in many different ways. You can set an intermediate blur around the focus area that will allow for more gradual blurring.

2. The Bokeh Planar Option: For photos that have well defined horizontal or vertical boundaries between the focus area and the area you want blurred, the planar option works well. This option allows you to select two points. Point 1 defines the area where the blur starts and Point 2 defines the area where the blur ends. So, if you put a Point 1 in the center of your photo and Point 2 at the top of your photo, the entire top half of your photo will have the bokeh effect applied.

3. The Photoshop Selection Option: For everything else, your best bet is to make your selection in Photoshop, followed by the Refine Edge function in Photoshop to smooth out the selection. The actual selection is then assumed by the Bokeh software to be the area you want to keep in focus (you also have the option to reverse the selection in the Bokeh interface). If you have large distractions, you might also want to do some basic touch-ups in Photoshop first, e.g., clone out the distractions or paint over them – the nice thing is that the touch-ups do not have to be perfect, since you’re going to blur it out anyways. If you desire, you can use this option in conjunction with the Radial Option or the Planar Option (but not both).

I opened up the Bokeh interface again. I then clicked on the Bokeh tab to find the radial and planar options.

The photo that I chose had a very distracting background, and so I had to utilize the third (Photoshop selection) option to get the desired results. I was fairly pleased with the overall results, though it isn’t perfect. Specifically, I had difficulty in the hair selection. From experimentation on several other photos, I discovered that I really have to work on my selection techniques in Photoshop in order to create the desired effect. Once I can get this down, Bokeh works very well. One thing I did discover (and it is documented in the Bokeh user manual) is that you cannot use a Photoshop selection and then apply the Bokeh filter to a smart object – not a big deal – just make a copy of your smart object and rasterize it before applying the filter.

After Bokeh-tizing my photo, I made some other minor tweaks to the photo before finalizing it. Bokeh, by default, applies the changes to a new layer, which is a nice option.

In addition to blurring and vignetting, the Bokeh plug-in software also simulates Bokeh lighting effects, such as hearts, diamonds, etc. on the highlights of your photo. Try it out yourself!

Since my Photoshop skills are stronger than my photography skills, and I love the special effects, the Bokeh plug-in software fits my needs well.

Summary:

If you want that Bokeh effect on your photos and are unable to achieve them in the camera, I encourage you to try the software yourself to determine whether it will work for you. The product is solidly built, and Alien Skin offer a 30 day fully functioning software that you can download and try out. Definitely take the time to review the tutorials on Alien Skin’s website to get up and running quickly – it takes about 10 to 15 minutes. Read up on the case studies too, as these include before/after shots, plus descriptions of how they obtained the desired results. For more details, review the PDF user manual available online – this is a very good 16 page guide on the detailed functionality of Bokeh.

Pros: If you are a photographer and a Photoshop user (or have other compatible graphics software) and have photos which allow you to utilize the Radial or Planar options to make your selections, the Bokeh plug-in makes it a breeze to achieve the Bokeh effect on your photos. If you really like the special effects (hearts, diamonds, etc on highlights of the photo), you can easily simulate this effect using the Bokeh plug-in.

Cons: There is no Aperture nor Lightroom plug-in available as of this writing. I know photographers who disdain going into Photoshop, and therefore they are unlikely to ever use this tool. From reading the Alien Skin forums, I did find out that having Bokeh as a plug-in to Aperture is #1 on the wish list of their users. It remains to be seen as to whether Alien Skin Software will release an Aperture or Lightroom plug-in version. Another issue I see is that for all other photos where the Planar and Radial options are not feasible, you will still need to go through the selection process in Photoshop, to get the effect you want. Depending on the photo, it may take some practice to select and refine the selection properly in order to get the desired result.

Ease of Use: The Bokeh plug-in tool itself is easy to learn. It requires Photoshop basic knowledge and practice to obtain the desired effect.

Audience: Photographers who use Photoshop CS3+, Photoshop Elements, Adobe Fireworks, and Corel Paint Shop Pro.

Cost: A bit pricey at 9 retail.