Moshi Firewire 800 to 400 Adapter

Purchased the one pictured on the right from the manufacturer Moshi on Amazon, not based on any real input other than it seemed to be the middle price – the primary logic being the cheap ones would be junk, and the expensive ones would be overpriced.

Product is no fuss – plugged it into the 800 port, plugged the 400 cable into the other end, drive instantly mounted and was used without incident or detectable performance differences.  You do need to make sure all the 400 devices are at the end of the Firewire chain, otherwise the 800 devices will be throttled down to the 400 speed.  But, I only have 400 devices now, so no need to worry about this yet.

Way cheaper than replacing the devices, and since I didn’t realize the missing 400 port on the new device it would have created some hassles to drag the data around anyway.  Besides, those drives will probably last for a few more years anyway, why waste them?

This was definitely a good $15 purchase.

I used the old one for more than 4 years. The MBP 17 inch is a premium product, and priced that way, but when you consider the long life compared to other manufacturer products it is not overpriced. The machine ran reliably for 4 years with hardly any crashes (none hardware wise). I didn’t encounter the spinning beach ball of death until I started running larger Java programs, and it ran cool unless I was on a Adobe Flash site. Frankly, if it had more RAM and if I replaced the keyboard (the keyboard had some noticeably worn out keys) I could have squeezed another year out of it I imagine.

It will take more time to provide a detailed comparison. The initial impressions are:

Not real crazy about the screen. I know this is a better screen any way you measure it, and the lighting is absolutely completely even from end to end with a larger viewing angle. But, it seems to have a blue-ish cast to it compared to the 17 inch which could completely be my brain after staring at the other one for four years.

Keyboard is louder. Im used to the more chicklet style keys from my desktop keyboard, but typing on this is much louder. There seems to be a drum type resonance from the case construction. Feel of the keys is positive and not stiff.

Miss the mouse button. Or, hate the giant track pad. The press on the track pad requires a lot of pressure, and doesn’t allow the glancing click that the large mouse button on the old laptop had. I see that there are a whole lot of multi-finger gestures, and everyone says I’ll get used to it. Don’t like it so far. The click and drag gesture is especially awkward for me.

Better Case. Runs cooler, stiffer construction, lighter. The “billet” approach is clearly superior to any other laptop I’ve had my hands on.  The 17 inch case actually warped a bit over time due to some weak points in the case.  There was a noticeable bend where the CD slot was.

Super Battery Life. Runs for hours on a charge. No wonder I was the only one carrying around a power supply to meetings lately.

Seems Snappier. I would hope so – two generation of chips later and more RAM.

Fits on a Plane Easier. The old one was great for my aging eyes and for a more desktop experience on the road. Really challenging to use on an airplane though.

Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Thunderbolt) Review & Rating | PCMag.com.

No big deal of course, outside that decision point of replacing a battery and wondering if the laptop is going to last much longer or if you would be better served by replacing the computer and getting a new battery in the process.  A laptop battery is not really a cheap purchase, especially for an older laptop.  And, especially for a larger laptop (the 17 inch version is a much larger battery than the 15 inch version).  $139 for a new battery – ouch!

Failed Mac Book Pro Battery

Anyway, seemed worth it.  While older, the computer still has plenty of breath, storage space, and runs fine with the dozen or so apps I have running all the time.  My guess is that I’ll remain happy with performance until an operating system upgrade.  So, purchased new battery, left the old one on the desk thinking it was a spare I could get another two hours on for a long flight or something.

Yesterday, I noticed some books weren’t sitting flat on my desk.  They were sitting on the battery, and the chemistry in the battery was expanding to the point it split the case open.  Yikes!  I gave that little square of toxic sludge to a colleague for him to play with.

On a day like any other, I flip open my sleeping Mac Book Pro and find myself waiting for the unlock dialog.  And waiting.  And waiting.  And it eventually dawns on me that the laptop is not busy looking for attached hardware but it is busy deciding to never present the log in dialog to me.  I can tell its is still running – it makes the proper beeps as I press keys and I can hear the fans and drive whirring away if I press my ear to the case.  But, I can’t see what it’s doing (or not doing).

Turns out the video stopped working, which requires shipping the machine to Apple for replacement and creates the dilemma of what to do without a machine for a few days and what happens to my data while the machine is in someone else’s hands.  Let’s break down the problem:

1. What if the drive is replaced/lost/damaged during this process? I’m not worried about this.  I use the OS X Time Machine feature for backups, which copies changed files hourly so the most I lost is what happened in the past 60 minutes.  I generate a lot of files through Email and word processing, but not so much I’d lose too much since most of that is actually on a server and I wasn’t in a real active period while this happened.
2. What if someone else looks at my data? Another area I’m not worried about.  I use encrypted disk images that are mounted while I’m logged into the system.  If I’m not logged in, plus use a separate mount command with different passwords, my data is just a big lump of bits.  I have several images I use for different categories of work, and I mount them and dismount them depending on what I am doing.  I prefer this over the File Vault encryption of the whole hard drive, since I don’t want to waste time or cycles encrypting things like scratch files and iTunes.
3. What do I do while my machine is in the shop? Aah, here’s a problem.  Fortunately, our IT department keeps a few machines available for just such an emergency.  So they gave me a spare Mac Book.

Problem: the Mac Book has no Firewire port, so no way to connect by backup drive.   So, they changed it for a Mac Book Pro (although I really liked the 13 inch form of the Mac Book).

Problem 2: The Mac Book Pro spare had a 120 G drive, mine had a 160 G drive.  And yes, I filled it passed 120 G.  So, I needed to do some trimming.

As discussed in an earlier post, booting up OS X in “Firewire Mode” helps tremendously.  You can boot up in this mode without seeing the video, and it allows you to see and copy the drive image as needed over Firewire.  From the spare I started copying off data that didn’t need to go to the spare machine.  iTunes files (30G, bah) were copied to an external USB drive.  Photos as well.  A few other random personal things and I got the total size down to the point where I could transfer to the loaner with 5G or so left over.

The spare machine was now a functional copy of my machine, and my machine was shipped off to Apple Care with a promise of 7 business days to be returned.  It actually came back in 5.

I made sure to be careful about what I was creating on the spare machine, so copying over work that was done on the space was easy, and done with a USB thumb drive.  These are the world’s most useful things to keep around in the 2G or more variety; much easier than figuring out how to do it machine to machine or to a server.

A mass of cables.

The little weekend project last week was in the pile of electronics we now call a “TV”.  Tivo has replaced the need for the VCR.  iPod has replaced the need for the jukebox.  The new TV has aboiut 5 signal inputs, so running everything to the receiver first seemed silly.  It seemed like time to recable everything after removing the now obsolete components.  And, those HDMI cables replace about 5 other cables in the wiring scheme (3 video, 2 audio) so I thought I’d give them a try.

HDMI cables were a big waste of time.  While the concept is good, the problem is the HDMI interface also includes some kind of digital handshaking between the components connected in an effort to prevent copying of content illegally.  While I have no need to copy illegally (plus, it’s illegal), I ran into some kind of problem with this digital rights management handshaking which shut down Tivo.  There are no tools on either the TV or the Tivo box to monitor or control the HDMI channels – if the handshaking fails it disables them.

In the end I dumped the HDMI cables and used the component video and stero audio.  The picture and sound are just as good so it isn’t worth trying to debug the digital channel.

I’ve outpaced what I can back up on my original Accodata 160 G external Firewire drive, and went looking for a replacement.  I didn’t have a specific brand or model I was looking for since the Accodata drive, which I had never heard of, has given good, reliable performance for more than 4 years.  The only thing I cared about was Firewire and at least 500G storage.  I have done enough side-by-side use between the Firewire drive and a USB 2 drive to know that I’m not going to waste any time on a USB drive for important things.

WD MyBook 1 TB (on the left)

Western Digital has a series of drives called “My Book” in various sizes and interface options. They are all in a similar case, roughly the height of a paperback book in different widths depending on the drive capacity.  Best Buy had one on sale of interest, which I purchased on the web for in-store pickup.  It ended up being a minor debacle due to the product code on the web site not matching the product code of the product on the shelf.  And, of course the one I purchased wasn’t in stock.  So, the quick calculation showed that it wasn’t worth my time to come back or go to another store and I purchased a larger capacity drive with the same interfaces.  This is a 1TB My Book with Firewire 400, eSATA, and USB 2.0 interfaces.

There is not much to tell about installation.  You plug the drive in, and the operating system sees it and makes it available.  The only thing I did for preparation is to reformat the drive to use OS X native formatting.  The cross-platform FAT-32 formatting the drive comes with was not of interest since I’ll only ever plug the drive into my main iMac.  It’s use will be for backup – currently using the Apple Backup utility but migrating to Time Machine when I get some time to set that up.

The drive is fast – transfers are very quick – and 1TB is the most amazing amount of space anyone will ever need (until about 3 or 4 years from now, the standard disclaimer for any drive purchase).  The drive also has a very sexy LED display on the front that shows you the relative amount of space used (fills up like a thermometer), and the display does a lot of dancing and chasing when there is data transfers in progress.

My only complaint is that there seems to be some unknown dependency of actions to recognize the drive.  The drive is not recognized on power up/down sometimes.  There seems to be a specific sequence of power up drive – wait for ready light – power up computer to get the drive recognized.  And, the drive does not seem to enter power-down-state when turning off the computer.  However, I should upgrade OS X from Tiger to Leopard to determine if this is a drive issue or the OS.

The iMac recently purchased came with the normal Apple 1-button mouse. While the 1-button thing is an adjustment in itself, the size of the Apple mouse is tiny. We purchased the Apple wireless (Bluetooth) mouse with the unit, but this is the same size as the corded one. I’m not quite sure the perfect way to use the Apple mouse – I spend a lot of time pushing it with just my fingertips – but it’s been a little less than satisfactory. It does track wonderfully, however.

To make the adjustment easier we plugged in a Microsoft “Wireless Optical Mouse Blue”, which is a non-Bluetooth wireless mouse that requires a little “base station” plugged into a USB port. This mouse fits in your hand a little better, although its too small and its tracking on the Mac was spotty. So, we’ve been looking around for a better mouse.

CompUSA had on sale the new Logitech “Laser” mouse. This is a similar to the Microsoft product – non-Bluetooth RF connection to a USB connected base. However, there are a couple of interesting features. First, it has rechargable batteries built in which it charges from the base station (works like a Palm Pilot dock), so no scrambling for AAA alkalines in the middle of the night. Two, it is a physically larger unit that fits better in your hand, although a right-hander’s hand only (asymetical shape to it). Three, it has about 8 buttons on it – scroll wheel including side to side, 4 way button on the side of the scroll wheel (like a ring outside it), three buttons under your thumb, then the normal 2 buttons under your fingers. Finally, the optical technology is laser based and not the normal red/blue LED found in other optical tracking devices.

The laser technology is definately a step up from the normal optical technology. The tracking is dead on – never a skip or a lag. The tracking also works whether the surface is reflective or not. The documentation states that it is tracking “20 times” higher resolution than normal optical technology, which allows for finer, more accurate tracking. The laser seems to be outside visible light, so one down side is no cool glow from the mouse.

The number of buttons on the mouse would obviously make Apple nuts. The mouse comes with a control panel which allows sensitivity adjustments as well as changing the action for the various buttons. The pre-set configuration normally has them for scrolling, zooming, “forward” and “back” in a web page, and to step through applications like an alt-tab keystroke. Don’t see a need to change them now, although gaming would obviously change that desire.  (Follow up – multiple buttons are an absolute need for Halo)

The installation was easy. The only unusual part is the need to charge the device prior to using it. Took about an hour. There is a tiny wall wart (real tiny, doesn’t block other outlets) which plugs into the base, plus the USB connection. Worked immediately without the software install.

LEDs on the top (3) tell you the charge status on the batteries. The mouse seems to conserve power pretty quickly with no motion.

The Good: Tracking and usage is amazing. No sponginess like some cordless mice, and it tracks the same whether I have it on the mouse pad or the desk. This desk is a semi-gloss wood finish which normally causes some tracking annoyances with the other optical mice.

The Bad: None.

The Annoyances: None.

So far, only used it a few hours, but its an impressive device if you can get it for the same price I did.

Overall: Function A+, Value B+

This site (and some others here) are powered by the wonderful WordPress “blog” content management tools.  The site is currently powered by Red Hat-Apache-PHP-MySQL (the “LAMP” approach), and WordPress is an obvious selection with this framework.  I’ve tried a bunch, and even use Blogger and some other things, but I want to spend less time coding and more time typing.

As I’m learning PHP, this also seems like a nice way to get into it, since the Theme and Plug In approach allow a high degree of tinkering or taking advantage of others’ tinkers.

I have multiple installations set up on this server.  This is achieved by defining multiple MySQL databases and directories before the WordPress install script is run.  The only down side is the multiple theme instances you need to define as they are in a subdirectory to the installation, but over time I think I can probably work with this.