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STM Evolution

Ray Aguilera — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:56:35 -0600

Yes, messenger bags are stylish. But after several years of schlepping our MacBooks and their accoutrement around in one, we were ready for something easier to carry. Backpacks--and laptop versions in particular--certainly aren’t known for being particularly fashion-forward, but we are pleased with Evolution’s sporty good looks, as well as its full complement of pockets.

STM sells the Evolution in two sizes, built to fit 13- or 15-inch MacBooks. The outdoorsy styling strikes us as somewhere between one of those ubiquitous hydration backpacks and a trail-running shoe. It’s not necessarily our favorite look, but we have to give STM credit for breaking out of the plain-black-computer-bag mold that reminds us of conventioneers and/or The Man. There are a couple of extra straps on the bag for both compression and stabilization across your chest, but we found them to be more aesthetic than useful or necessary, and they tended to snag on things as we hauled the Evolution around.

Evolution offers some heavy-duty protection for your trusty sidekick(s).

The bag’s main compartment is divided into two sections: a padded sleeve-like cubby for your laptop and a larger section for books, file folders, and the like. There’s also a large-ish rear compartment subdivided into different-sized pockets for power adapters, business cards, pens, and other small items. On the outside are two mesh pockets meant to hold water bottles, newspapers, or umbrellas. And speaking of umbrellas, the Evolution features a rain shell that stows away in a hidden zipper compartment in the bag’s base. While it doesn’t really rain enough where we live for that to be necessary, residents of wetter climes (cough, cough, Seattle) will certainly appreciate it.

The shoulder straps are fairly well padded, and there’s a waist strap that can be stowed away, although the bag’s modest size only allows for a certain amount of extra gear anyway, making the strap somewhat superfluous. That said, the bag’s construction is durable, and it doesn’t scream “Hey! There’s a laptop in here!” which is useful for avoiding muggings on the street. There’s plenty of padding, both in the laptop section and on the panel that rests against your back, but the trade-off is that the bag itself doesn’t compress much when it’s empty.

Dinglab Multimodular Laptop Sock

Susie Ochs — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:14:35 -0500

Protection just got a little more multifunctional and a lot more cozy.

When your mom told you to “Take a sweater!” she probably didn’t mean for your laptop. But now you can bundle your ’Book in style with Dinglab’s Multimodular Laptop Sock. The Sock is, for lack of a better term, a sock--a double-layered, reversible tube of knit cotton and acrylic, 27 inches long and about 9 inches wide, closed on the bottom.

The easiest way to use it is to simply slide your laptop into the Sock (the knit material stretches to fit around any Mac notebook), then fold the excess length back down over the laptop again. This creates a pocket on the outside, which you can use to hold a mouse, your iPod cable, or even this magazine. And your notebook is easy to slide right out the top.

Makes your 'Book look downright cozy, like a piping hot, expensive metal pillow.

Dinglab also includes a thick rubber band to use with the Sock to keep your notebook from sliding out quite so easily. Your ’Book goes in the bottom of the Sock, then you put the band around the outside of the Sock and position it around the short edge of your laptop (the one that’s closest to the top of the Sock). Then fold the excess length back over your laptop, which will also cover up the rubber band. Then just ease the rubber band off the top of the laptop. Now the fold you just made is the opening of the sleeve, but it’s a stretchy opening, thanks to the rubber band. This keeps your laptop a little more secure.

Dinglab’s “free-form” design is eye-catching, and the soft, knit Sock is pleasing to the touch as well. We didn’t mind that the Sock takes a little longer to put on our ’Book than a more standard zipped or Velcro-closed laptop sleeve does. Dinglab says you can use the Sock as a scarf or a hat, giving us visions of bundling up with it when the office AC gets a little too chilly. But in practice, its 27-inch length wasn’t really enough to wrap around our neck. Wearing it as a stocking cap was cozy enough, but having the square end hanging down behind our heads made us a little self-conscious. But if you ever wanted matching outfits for you and your MacBook, now’s your chance.

Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive, Mac Edition

Ray Aguilera — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:47:00 -0500

No matter how big the hard drives in our Macs get, there’s still never enough storage. And while flash drives are handy, there are plenty of occasions when we need way more space for data--whether it’s carting around an entire issue’s worth of InDesign files or transferring our collection of ’90s alt-rock MP3s from home to our office machine.

Iomega’s eGo line offers specific versions for Mac users. Besides coming preformatted, Iomega offers backup options in the form of software for Mozy online backup, Retrospect Express, and Iomega’s QuikProtect For Mac. Retrospect and QuikProtect both required installation of Rosetta on our Snow Leopard–equipped test Macs, however, and we eventually gave up when the QuikProtect installer failed after multiple installation attempts.

Go ahead, drop it on the ground.

Where speed is concerned, we were happy with eGo’s performance. The triple interface makes the drive a bit larger than other portables (3.5 inches by 5.5 inches), but it’s a small price to pay for flexible connectivity. And at a little more than half an inch thick, the eGo is still quite portable. FireWire 800 and 400 cables are included, as well as a double-headed USB cable, which will work even with Macs that don’t supply enough current through a single port to power the drive. It’s a nice touch--and a necessary one, since the eGo lacks a port for an AC adapter. The back of the drive features an LED activity indicator, but everyone who saw it complained that the light was excessively bright. After a few hours of being distracted by it, we covered the LED with tape and were much happier.

Speedwise, the eGo performed well for a 5,400 rpm drive. Via FireWire 800, we achieved read and write speeds of 73.1 MB/s and 51.1 MB/s, with USB speeds coming in at 16 MB/s and 14.2 MB/s. And the drive is pretty rugged: The case is made of aluminum, and the drive features Iomega’s Drop Guard to protect the drive mechanism from falls of up to 51 inches. We reluctantly tested the feature, and after a couple drops from varying heights, our data survived unscathed.

Outside the Box -- Drive Dock Roundup

Helmut Kobler — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:02:00 -0500

When you’re shopping for an external hard drive, you could go the conventional route and use a drive that comes in a sealed, tomblike enclosure, or, for more flexibility, you could consider using a drive dock, which will allow you to quickly swap raw SATA hard drives in and out, as if they were CDs or floppy disks. Not only are raw SATA drives cheaper than external models, they also can save space: Set a drive-swapping enclosure on your desk and then keep the SATA drives themselves on a shelf, like old-school VHS tapes (you can find protective drive cases online for a few bucks each). If you frequently move large amounts of data around, it’s far more efficient than a desk full of bulky, conventional drives, each with its own cables and power supply.

The Reviews

Voyager Q

NexStar

MB662US-2S

Helmut Kobler — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:47:45 -0500

The Icy Dock MB662US-2S is another dual drive enclosure, and you can get it in two flavors, depending on whether you use eSATA or FireWire 400/800 connections. Both versions also sport a USB 2.0 port. When you plug two drives into the Icy Dock, it can treat them as two independent drives or as either a RAID 0 or RAID 1 drive (you use a dip switch to set the mode). In RAID 0, the two drives act as a single big, utrafast volume—but if either drive fails, your data is toast. In RAID 1, the two drives are automatically mirrored, meaning the Icy copies your data to both drives. The instant, automatic backup is a protection against either drive biting the dust. The Icy Dock keeps drives cool thanks to a fan with selectable speeds, but the fan makes almost as much noise as the Mac Pro we tested it with.

RAID 1 adds instant backup.

<< Return to Drive Dock Roundup Landing Page

>> NexStar Dual Bay

>> Voyager Q

NexStar Dual Bay Hard Drive Dock

Helmut Kobler — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:26:34 -0500

The Vantec NexStar can connect two 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch hard drives at once. That’s very useful if you want to transfer files between two external drives. However, you’ll have to connect the NexStar using only USB 2.0 or eSATA, there’s no FireWire port. The already-slow USB pipeline gets overloaded while simultaneously reading one drive and writing to another, so be prepared to wait while the drives do their thing.

It's a toaster for your data.

With no internal fan, the NexStar is very quiet, but our drives felt downright hot after using them a while. Ejecting drives from the NexStar is also a little rough--you press a button, and the drive pops up about an inch, which is strange given that many drives aren’t designed for jolting.

<< Return to Drive Dock Roundup Landing Page

>> Voyager Q

>> MB662US-2S

Voyager Q

Helmut Kobler — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:33:00 -0500

The NewerTech Voyager Q is a basic model that’s perfect for casual users. It accepts a single 3.5-inch desktop or 2.5-inch laptop SATA drive, and features USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and 800, and eSATA ports, so you can connect it to any Mac. eSATA and FireWire 800 data transfers will be roughly 3 times faster than USB 2 and FireWire 400, which is true for all three enclosures reviewed here.

Simple, quiet, and connected.

The Voyager Q’s power button is right on the front, so it’s easy to reach. Also, the enclosure has no internal fan, so you’ll hear only a very faint whir from the drive itself. But even without a fan, our drives didn’t get too hot in this enclosure.

<< Return to Drive Dock Roundup Landing Page

>> NexStar Dual Bay

>> MB662US-2S

LaCie Rugged XL

Roberto Baldwin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:31:11 -0500

The chances of your desk being thrown off course and landing in the ocean are slim. But, if by chance your desk is tossed out to sea, and you need immediate rescue from the Coast Guard, the 1TB LaCie Rugged XL is the external hard drive you’ll want, to be more easily spotted by the helicopter (although despite what its name might imply, its ruggedness doesn’t extend to water-resistance, so your data might suffer a bit).

Or maybe the name “Rugged” conjures up images of battling bears for food with just your hard drive. While it’s a hefty piece of machinery, we wouldn’t recommend swinging it around, especially while the drive is in motion. It’s still a traditional, mechanical hard drive with an array of moving parts. You could easily end up with a nice hole in a platter, and there’s the end of your collection of Sonic Youth bootlegs.

Orange you glad we didn't say banana?

The rugged aspect of this drive seems to refer to two characteristics: its ability to dissipate heat via its aluminum case, and its rubber corners. The orange rubber does add a limited amount of shock absorption, and it looks cool in a Walkman Sport kind of way. But at 8.46 x 5.11 x 1.73 inches and weighing 2 pounds, 6 ounces, this is not a portable hard drive. You’re much more likely to leave it on your desk. And while the Mac|Life office is located in earthquake country, we doubt the added protection is needed for the average desktop Mac user. The aluminum top of the drive does get quite warm while in use, which makes us leery of setting anything on top of it. Because of its color, this is not an external hard drive to be ignored. Unless your desk is decked out in shades of Tony the Tiger, this drive will certainly catch the eye of any passersby, which may or may not be a plus.

We usually treat the software that ships with external drives with the same respect a diner treats a piece of parsley on a blue-plate special. But unlike what you get with competing drives, the software bundled with the LaCie Rugged is actually useful, allowing you to format the drive for use with your Mac and create partitions, if you choose. You could use Disk Utility for these tasks too, but setting up Rugged XL for the Mac—or a Windows machine, if that’s how you swing—is a snap.

The Rugged XL connects via USB 2.0 or eSATA port. USB may have stolen FireWire’s thunder, but we still pine for the interface.