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News
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review]
- I want to give you all a heads
up on a very exciting review. I saw a new product at Staples
manufactured by Maxtor. It is a high speed, external, very large
hard drive, and the best part is that it is bundled with “One
Touch” backup software by Retrospect.
Maxtor was
gracious enough to send me their
5000DV a 120 GB drive that supports USB 1.1, 2.0 and
FireWire. I’ve been using the drive for about 2 weeks now and
it’s working really well. Please read next month’s product
review for more information about this new product
Net Watch
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review] Domain
Names, those little things people scramble to get to help make
them unique from all the other Web Sites. There was a day when
things were pretty simple. There was one authority and they kept a
big database of all the names and who they belonged to. Network
Solutions was the only “Registrar.” The only problem with this
arrangement is that being the only registrar they monopolized the
pricing. Today the picture is very different. There are several
top level Registrars and many of them have reseller arrangements
that allow for anyone to manage domain names for their clients.
The good news is that the prices have come from $35 per year to as
low as $14.95 per year. The bad news is that some of these
registrars favor the reseller over the registrant.
Ok so what do I mean by that last
statement. Here is how a typical transaction used to take place.
If you wanted a domain name you would go to Network Solutions pay
the $35 fee and “register” your name. There were three contacts
for every domain: Administrator, the “owner” of the domain;
Technical contact, the person responsible for making technical
changes to the domain like host name changes, etc; and the Billing
contact, this is where to send the yearly bill. In most cases you
would be the Administrative contact and billing contact and your
web host would be the technical contact. You being the
administrative contact, have total control over the domain. This
scenario favors you the registrant. Many registrars still follow
this rule, however there are some that don’t.
Recently I was helping a client
move about 20+ domains from his old web provider to a new
registrar. This should not be a difficult thing to accomplish.
Well it has been two months trying and we are still not done. The
reason, he was registered with BulkRegister.com through one of
their resellers and they favor the reseller over the registrant.
Even though he was the Administrative contact, the reseller had to
approve all requests! In a practical sense his domains were being
held hostage by the reseller. I finally had to make calls to
BulkRegister.com and have them place an automatic approval flag on
his records in order to bypass the reseller’s involvement. We will
find out this week if this solves the problem.
Truthfully, these problems have
more to do with the character of the person that is handling your
Web Site than the place your domain is registered. If the reseller
had simply approved the notices, things would have gone smoothly
the first time. It really gets dangerous when you “trust” the
person to register your domain and you are not listed as the
administrative contact. There are times when out of convenience
and timing that we register a domain for a client using our own
contact info, but once the site is up and paid for, we modify the
admin contact to that of the site owner. It really is a matter of
trust and track record.
We currently use our web host as
the registrar for all our domains and are in the process of
creating an easy interface for our clients to access and change
their registration information and to administer their domains. If
you are curious as to what is going on with your domain, point
your browser here
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois and type
in your domain name without the www. The results should display
who manages or who is listed as the contacts for the domain.
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Product Review
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review]
Apple iBook Product Review Part 2
Last month we looked at the iBook
from the hardware perspective. Now let’s look at it from a
software perspective. Just to recap, the iBook is a really nice
notebook for a reasonable price. It’s lightweight, compact, and
has great battery life.
 As
for software, the center of the Apple platform is their “Digital
Hub” series of software. It is comprised of: iTunes for your
digital music, iPhoto for your digital photos, iMovie for your DV
(Digital Video) movie editing and production, and iDVD for
creating your very own DVD movie disks. iDVD is only available on
models configured with a SuperDrive, which is not available on any
of their iBook models. Also included with the iBook was
AppleWorks, their basic office suite.
I’ve run several basic projects
through their “digital hub” and everything seems to work pretty
well. My favorite application is definitely iMovie. I had the
pleasure of compiling a 20 minute movie for a client. The iBook
worked seamlessly. I was able to import the video, insert
transitions, create titles and ultimately export a finished movie.
There were two down sides: One, a 20 gig hard drive is just not
large enough for editing Digital Video, and two, IT TAKES FOREVER
to render a movie. It took over 2 hours to render a 20 minute
movie.
My next favorite application was
iPhoto. It worked just fine with my Olympus C-700 digital camera.
Once the photos are imported, you can perform simple editing and
touch-up functions, order prints on-line and even have a photo
album sent to you of all your photos. While Windows XP has some
support for photo importing and printing, it’s nothing like what
Apple has provided with iPhoto.
As for the other applications…
They were ok but I was not overly impressed with any of them. My
least favorite of all was iTunes. I thought that I’d really like
iTunes as I have a huge collection of almost 400 CDs that I want
to convert to digital files. iTunes was slow to convert CDs to MP3
files, about ˝ as fast as my eMachines desktop, and does not
really organize things very well. I like Windows Media Player much
better.
The most disappointing thing that
I’ve noticed is that everything seems much slower on the iBook
compared to similar functions on a PC. It is a neat little
computer and for someone who is not familiar with Windows XP or
invested in Microsoft Technologies, it would be great. Apple did a
good job at providing a well rounded solution for the end user.
But if you need applications beyond those that come with it, STOP.
Everything costs much more when you buy for the Macintosh platform
and local support is really non-existent in most markets. My final
opinion is that the Apple is still a niche computer perfect for
those that insist on being different and have money to burn.
Today’s PCs running Windows XP are less expensive, faster and just
as easy to use.
P.S. I no longer have the iBook computer. I showed it to someone
who really fell in love with it and offered to take it off my
hands. To replace it I purchased a PowerBook G4 DVI with a 15.2”
Mega-wide display. I was hoping that the major upgrade in
hardware, and price, would resolve some of the speed issues that I
found in the iBook. Unfortunately things are about the same. It is
a bit faster, and the screen is much better than the 12” display
on the iBook. It also did not come with AppleWorks and therefore
is useless for basic computer functions unless you go out and buy
an Apple compatible office application suite.
Please send any questions about, or
ideas for product reviews to
Staff@dogriverdesign.com.
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