Latest Posts in From the Lab

Review: Casio Exilim EX-FH20 digital camera

With its 20x zoom and high-speed capture mode, Casio’s Exilim EX-FH20 is built to handle action shots, especially when you can’t physically get up close to your subjects.

The Exilim EX-FH20 looks and feels like a small entry-level SLR, with its oversized lens and pop-up fill flash, and its big, beefy right-handed grip. But the camera works like a point-and-shoot. The mode dial has only five settings: Flash CS (consecutive shots with flash), High-speed CS (according to Casio, this mode will continue to shoot as long as the shutter button is pressed), Single shot, HS for high-speed movies, and HD/STD for normal-speed movies at 1280-by-720 or 640-by-480 pixel resolution, both at 30 frames per second.

When the camera is in any of the still photo modes, you can press the BS button on the back of the camera and select from one of 18 presets, which include standards such as Portrait, Sports, and High Speed Night Scene. A few of the preset modes let you have a little fun, such as Multi-motion Image, which lets you shoot multiple images of a scene and then the camera combines the pics into a single image, or Digital Panning, which combines multiple images into one picture where the subject is in focus and the background is motion-blurred.

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Review: Buffalo MiniStation Metro portable hard drive

Buffalo gave its MiniStation line of portable hard drives a makeover. Now sleek, sturdier than before and available in multiple colors, the MiniStation Metro seems to be built for the rough and tumble lifestyle that demands both style and strength. Unfortunately, the USB-only MiniStation Metro pays a price for its rugged protective qualities and new facelift—the 250GB drive we tested posted timed trials that did not impress.

The curved corners and shiny red exterior of our test unit (the MiniStation Metro is also available black or white) allows the MiniStation Metro to cut a more fetching figure than the black brick shape of previous MiniStation drives. The red exterior and more unconventional design are new to the Buffalo line of products, as the company has built a reputation on strong performance coming from simple style designs. The drive is a bit bulky, so it can fit into your pants pocket or backpack but your shirt would be in tatters if you tried to fit it into your breast pocket.

While the MiniStation Metro resembles Iomega’s eGo (), Buffalo’s commitment to providing quality shock protection ensures that the drive is tough and portable. Buffalo highlights the MiniStation Metro’s new BumperBody shock protection abilities, even going so far as to depict an artistic rendering of the technology on the side of the box. For our wear and tear tests, I tossed the hard drive around my cubicle, dropped it from heights of over six feet, and eventually threw it against a wall. The unit showed no signs of abuse aside from the occasional scratch.

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Preparing for Speedmark 6

It’s that time again. Apple has a new cat on the loose and soon the company will release new hardware to accompany it. And when that new hardware arrives, we in the Macworld Lab will need a new version of our overall performance test suite, Speedmark, to test these new Snow Leopard-driven systems. So we’re asking you, our readers, what tests and applications you’d like to see in Speedmark 6.

Speedmark is a set of tasks we run on a wide variety of systems, so the tests need to be able to work on a MacBook Air as well as a Mac Pro. We pick one Mac as our baseline, which is given a score of 100, and then compare the results of other Macs to it, a 1.5GHz Core Solo Mac Mini serves as our baseline system today. The current version of our benchmark, Speedmark 5, includes 17 real world tasks run in the finder and 12 other applications. We try and keep the same tests and applications until the next major OS release - Speedmark 5 was developed after the release of Leopard and Speedmark 6 should last until whatever animal Apple adopts for use in OS X 10.7.

Here’s a list of current tasks, all run three times with a minimum of 2GB of RAM.

Mac OS X Finder

• Startup
• Duplicate 1GB file
• Compress 2GB folder
• Uncompress 2GB file archive

Microsoft Office 2004

• Word Scroll*
• Entourage - Download E-mail*

* These two tasks require Rosetta to run on Intel-based Macs.

Pages ’08

• Search/Replace

iTunes

• Convert AAC files to MP3 from Hard Drive

iMovie HD

• Export to QuickTime for Email
• Apply Aged video effect

iPhoto

• Import 100 photos from hard driver

Camino

• Multiple Page Loading Test

Unreal Tournament 2004

• Antalus Botmatch at 1024x768 Max Settings with sound and graphics enabled—Average Frames Per Second

Cinema 4DXL 10.5

• Render

Compressor 3

• Convert DV file to MPEG2 for DVD

Adobe Photoshop CS3

• 14 Actions

Handbrake 0.9.1

• Encode one chapter from DVD to H.264.

We’ll definitely be updating all applications to their latest version, and we have a number of new tests in mind, but we’d like to hear from you. Here’s your chance to help shape the results that Macworld Labs will be reporting for the next year or so.

We’re looking for time-able, repeatable tests that can be used across a wide range of systems. So take a few moments to think about the tasks you do often that you’d like to see included in Speedmark. Please post your suggestions in the comments.

Review: FastMac External Slimline USB 2.0 BD-R 4X Optical Drive

The External Slimline USB 2.0 BD-R 4X Optical Drive from FastMac is an external disc burner capable of writing to high-capacity Blu-ray media as well as to most types of DVD and CD discs. It is far from the fastest Blu-ray burner we’ve tested, but it was one of the few that completed each task without creating unusable coasters out of expensive blank discs.

This compact drive, which sports an attractive matte black case, attaches to your Mac via USB 2.0 and required no external power when connected to our Mac Pro for testing.

The drive can burn 25GB single-layer Blu-ray (BD-R) discs at speeds up to 4x as well as 50GB BD-R DL discs at speeds up to 2X. Most of the drives we’ve looked at can burn both types of Blu-ray media at 8X speeds. Burning data to Blu-ray discs is supported by OS X’s Finder, or through a third-party application like Roxio Toast. You can burn high-definition Blu-ray discs to watch on your home theatre component Blu-ray player with the latest version of Apple’s Compressor (), part of the Final Cut Studio, or with Toast Titanium via Roxio’s $20 High Def/Blu-ray authoring plug-in. And while there is software available that allows you to watch Blu-ray movies on your Windows PC (or on your Intel Mac if you’re running Apple’s Boot Camp or other PC emulation software), these HD discs are not currently viewable on your Mac. Aside from Blu-ray media, the BD-R 4X can burn all flavors of DVD, +/-, RW, DL, as well as CDs and CD-R discs.

In our timed tests, we found the FastMac to be slow at most burning tasks, taking nearly twice as long to burn and verify a DVD-R in the Finder than our fastest overall performer, the Buffalo MediaStation () with its USB 2.0 connection. It took the FastMac nearly 30 minutes to burn a DVD+R DL disk using Toast 10 Titanium, a task that the Buffalo drive completed in 17 minutes. On the positive side, two other drives we tested could not complete that test at all using USB and Toast. The FastMac’s timed results were more competitive when copying data from burned discs back to the internal hard drive.

Using Apple’s Compressor application to prepare and burn a high-definition movie file to a Blu-ray Disc took 16 minutes on the FastMac, as opposed to a little less than 14 minutes on the Buffalo drive. Copying 8GB of data from a Blu-ray Disc to the internal hard drive of our test system, took about a minute longer on the FastMac than the Buffalo: 8 minutes and 48 seconds, compared with 7 minutes and 55 seconds, using comparable USB connections.

Macworld’s buying advice

Though it won’t set any speed records, the FastMac External Slimline USB 2.0 BD-R 4X Optical Drive is a dependable performer, completing each test we ran. Bus-powered and compact, this portable burner should appeal to mobile users looking to burn the occasional high-capacity Blu-ray Disc as well as those wanting a second optical drive for duplicating CDs and DVDs.

[James Galbraith is Macworld’s lab director.]

Review: Verbatim SureFire FireWire 800/USB hard drive

Though other hard drive companies have built extensive and frequently updated product lines, Verbatim quietly has entered the fray and proved it can compete with the big boys. We reviewed Verbatim’s Professional Quad-Interface Desktop Hard Drive () nd found that though it offered unexceptional features it nonetheless provided quality speed. Similarly, Verbatim’s SureFire FireWire 800/USB is an unassuming but speedy drive that serves as the company’s entry to the burgeoning portable hard drive market. We tested the 500GB model and came away generally impressed.

The black aluminum, 5400-rotations-per-minute SureFire produced some strong times in our Speedmark tests. Its three-year limited warranty, formatting for Mac, and versatile interface makes it an attractive and inexpensive option for users looking for a portable hard drive.

The SureFire has a simple finger-print-resistant black exterior. Its dimensions are slightly wider and taller than an iPhone, so it can fit into your pants pocket or backpack. The SureFire also weighs less than half a pound, making it one of the lighter portable hard drives we’ve reviewed. Due to its light weight, the SureFire feels fragile but drop tests confirm it can handle normal wear-and-tear. I put the drive through my “Monday morning stress test” by throwing it around my cubicle for a few minutes and then dropping it from eye level. The hard drive started up as normal and looked no worse for the wear.

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Review: La Cie d2 Blu-ray Professional BD-R, BD-RE Drive

Lacie’s d2 Blu-ray Professional BD-R, BD-RE Drive is an external optical drive that can burn data to Blu-ray discs, as well as single and dual-layer DVD and CD media. The drive connects to your Mac via FireWire 400 or USB 2.0, though we had some trouble using the USB 2.0 connection with the included Toast Titanium 9 software. (We also had issues with Toast Titanium 10.) The FireWire connection gave us no trouble.

Using the company’s stackable d2 case design, this external Blu-ray drive uses Pioneer’s BDR-203 mechanism and requires external power to operate. The drive can burn 25GB single-layer Blu-ray (BD-R) discs as well as 50GB BD-R DL discs at speeds up to 8X. Burning data to Blu-ray discs is supported by OS X’s disc burner utility, or through a third-party application like Roxio Toast. You can burn high definition Blu-ray discs to watch on your home theatre component Blu-ray players by using the latest version of Apple’s Compressor (), part of the Final Cut Studio, or with Toast Titanium after downloading and installing Roxio’s $20 High Def/Blu-ray authoring plug-in. And while there is some Windows software that allows you to watch Blu-ray movies on your PC, these high definition discs are not viewable on your Mac. Aside from Blu-ray media, the drive can burn all flavors of DVD, +/-, RW, DL, as well as CDs and CD-R discs.

In our timed tests, the d2 Blu-ray Drive was a decent but comparatively slow performer, posting third-place finishes when compared to the results of four other recently tested external Blu-ray burners. LaCie isn’t the only company whose drives failed to complete burns with Toast over USB; other drives using the Pioneer BD-203 mechanism had problems as well. Hopefully, the problem will get resolved soon. But until then, FireWire 400 worked just fine with Toast and USB worked just fine with OS X’s built-in disc burning utility and Compressor.

Macworld’s buying advice

If you’re looking to add an external optical drive to your Mac, the LaCie d2 Blu-ray Professional BD-R, BD-RE Drive is worth considering, especially if you have other LaCie d2 drives on your desktop. It’s an average performer and worked flawlessly with FireWire 400. If your Mac doesn’t have FireWire, and you want to use Toast, then you’ll either want to look at another drive, like the Buffalo MediaStation () or check with LaCie to see if that bug has been addressed.

[James Galbraith is Macworld’s lab director.]

Review: CalDigit VR mini external RAID array

CalDigit’s VR Mini is one of the more uniquely designed external storage devices on the market. Its orange LCD screen gives it a distinctive look, and its configurable RAID 0, 1, and JBOD settings are quite impressive considering the device’s small size. The VR mini is designed for the “content creation industry,” a.k.a. AV pros and other creative types, and CalDigit says it can play back high definition video with ease. In our tests, the quad-interface VR mini performed exceptionally fast, making it a pricey but high-performance storage device.

The VR Mini is a silver aluminum brick that is slightly heavier and bulkier than competing external drives. While it can fit into your backpack, it’s way too big a unit to fit in your pants or shirt pocket. The design features no fan and runs fairly quietly but the aluminum exterior can grow a bit warm to the touch during use.

Instead of a using a single drive mechanism, the VR mini uses 2.5-inch drive mechanisms that are mounted in two removable modules. By simply unscrewing the back panel (no tools required), each drive module can be pulled out and replaced with ease. The orange-lit LCD screen allows you to view basic information about the drive’s status, as well as see the settings as you adjust the basic functions. The VR Mini’s RAID configuration can be viewed and edited from the screen, and useful statistics like temperature and available memory are displayed on a rotating scrolling basis. Due to the large amount of information and the small screen, it’s ambitious design is a bit difficult to navigate and can be unintuitive without an instruction manual.

The VR mini offers four types of connectivity: USB 2.0, eSATA, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800. The device is bus powered via FireWire, so external power is only needed when using the eSATA or USB connections (though FireWire can be used instead of an external power source if need be).

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Review: OWC Mercury Pro 8X Blu-ray External

Just because Apple hasn’t embraced Blu-ray doesn’t mean that we Mac users are left out in the cold. OWC, along with other companies, have decided to start offering Blu-ray burners for the Mac-using public. The company’s quad interface Mercury Pro 8X Blu-ray External drive can burn single- and dual-layer Blu-ray discs, as well as perform the standard SuperDrive capabilities like single and dual layer DVDs and CD-Rs. And though we had trouble with its USB connection, its three other connections worked flawlessly and turned in respectable speed test results.

The Mercury Pro comes in an attractive gray case with the mechanism’s face flush with the front of the case. I prefer this design to cases with flimsy external doors that pop open when the drive is ejected (hello, Buffalo), or cases with the drive recessed a bit, making it a little more clumsy to eject and insert media. You can connect the drive to your Mac via USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and if you have an eSATA card installed, you can connect that way too.

You can burn data to Blu-ray discs right from the Finder in OS X, 25GB for single layer media (BD-R) and 50GB on dual layer discs (BD-R DL). To burn your home movies onto a disc that you can watch on your living room Blu-ray player, you’ll need some extra software like Compressor () from the latest version of Final Cut Studio or Toast Titanium with its $20 HD plug-in.

Good performance

The OWC drive was a decent performer; out of the five timed tests we ran on a recent batch of Blu-ray drives, the OWC posted the fastest times in our DVD+R DL burning test using Toast Titanium 10 and was not far behind the leaders in three of our other tests. It was a bit poky in our Burn and Verify DVD-R Finder test. And while the drive performed well against the other drives in its class, the performance results from the drive’s different connections were a bit of a mystery. Burning a DVD-R took 5 minutes and 50 seconds when using FireWire 800, 7 minutes and 44 seconds when using FireWire 400, and 8 minutes and 26 seconds using eSATA—a connection generally faster than either flavor of FireWire. The only test where the Mercury Pro’s eSATA connection was faster was in our dual-layer DVD burn, which it completed about 2 minutes faster than the FireWire 800.

Even at its slowest, the OWC was considerably faster at burning single- and dual-layer DVDs than the stock optical drive in our Mac Pro. Unfortunately, we did have some problems with the USB connection using Toast Titanium. The Mercury Pro was not the only drive to create coasters, in fact three of the five drives we recently tested had problems burning DVD+R DL media using Toast. Luckily, the other three interfaces worked just fine in all of our tests.

Macworld’s buying advice

If you’re looking for a new optical drive, and one that can burn high definition Blu-ray movies as well, OWC’s Mercury Pro 8X Blu-ray Pioneer BDR-203 External drive is worth a look. Its case design doesn’t get in the way, or otherwise deface your desktop, and it turned in respectable speed test results. We did have trouble using the USB connection for burning a dual-layer DVD in Toast, but with three other connection options available, many Mac users can overlook that bug. If you do require USB and Toast, and don’t mind a clunky case design, you might consider the Buffalo MediaStation 8X Blu-ray Drive ().

[James Galbraith is Macworld’s lab director.]

Review: Buffalo Technology MediaStation 8X External Blu-ray Writer

They say that you can’t tell a book by its cover, and that is definitely true for Buffalo's MediaStation 8X External Blu-ray Writer. Its clunky black case—with the flimsy door that doesn’t match the putty-colored drive mechanism it holds—looks like a bit like a do-it-yourself job assembled from the cheapest parts at Fry’s. And, in fact, the spring came off of the little door that flips open when the tray is ejected, and after struggling with it for a few minutes, I finally decided to just leave the thing off. But despite its outward appearance, the Buffalo turned out to be one of the fastest, most stable Blu-ray drives we tested.

As its name implies, the MediaStation 8X External Blu-ray Writer can burn 25GB Blu-ray (BD-R) discs at speeds up to 8x. It can also record 50GB BD-R DL discs at 4X. Burning data BD-R/RW is supported by OS X’s disk burning capabilities, or through a third-party application like Roxio Toast. You can burn high definition Blu-ray discs to watch on your home theatre, component Blu-ray players using the latest version of Apple’s Compressor () (part of the Final Cut Studio), or with a $20 Toast Titanium plug-in. And though some Windows software allows you to watch Blu-ray movies on your PC, these high definition discs are not viewable on your Mac. Aside from Blu-ray media, the drive can burn all flavors of DVD, +/-, RW, DL, as well as CDs and CD-R discs.

You can connect the MediaStation to your Mac via USB 2.0 or if you have an eSATA card installed, the MediaStation includes a port for that too. Interestingly, despite that eSATA is supposed to be a faster connection, three different eSATA-equipped BD-R drives I tested delivered little, if any, speed benefit over USB 2.0 or FireWire connections. So, unless you have an eSATA port that you’re just itching to put to work, you’re better off sticking with the native connections on your Mac.

In terms of speed, the MediaStation took about 11 minutes to burn and verify 4.7GB to a DVD-R disc in the Finder using either USB or eSATA, a task that took the stock SuperDrive in our 3.0GHz 8-core Mac Pro 22 minutes and 43 seconds to complete. Copying that data back to the desktop took just under 5 minutes using eSATA and 16 seconds longer over USB. In both of these tests, the Buffalo’s eSATA times were the fastest we’ve seen in the five Blu-ray burners we tested. In fact, the Buffalo was the fastest in 4 out of the 5 tests we ran on this group of drives.

Macworld’s buying advice

The MediaStation 8X External Blu-ray Writer may not be the prettiest, but it gets the job done the fastest, and all via a USB connection. If you’re looking for an external optical drive that does it all, including burn high definition discs playable on your widescreen TV, the MediaStation 8X Blu-ray Writer should be on your list.

[James Galbraith is Macworld’s lab director.]

Review: ioSafe Solo external hard drive

Imagine confronting a disaster in your home. A house fire. A flood. Or even something as common as a leaky roof. When surveying the damage, you notice your external hard drive. Normally, a hard drive would be ruined by fire or water. No matter the encryption or how shock-resistant the drive, a typical hard drive is not designed to withstand that kind of abuse.

That’s where the ioSafe Solo comes in. The ioSafe Solo is the black box of storage options, providing disaster protection and peace of mind by surviving situations other drives can’t.

The ioSafe Solo’s security features for your data don’t involve encryption, but are of the physical variety. To withstand moisture, the drive is sealed in what the company calls a HydroSafe waterproof package that can handle up to 10 feet of water for three days. The ioSafe Solo also has a ceramic block that is part of the drive’s DataCast fireproof insulation. When reaching temperatures over 160 degrees Fahrenheit, the ceramic block releases water vapor to cool the unit.

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