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FIREWIRE HARD DRIVES A GOOD ALTERNATIVE

If you're looking to add another hard drive to your computer, you may want to consider the newest generation of external drives that connect via the FireWire standard. Also known as the IEEE 1394 interface standard, FireWire is the new breed of high speed interface standards becoming popular on today's personal computers.

FireWire has many of the characteristics found in the USB standard but it's a lot faster. At 400Mbps, it has 30 times more bandwidth than USB, which makes it the perfect choice for high speed storage and serious video capture. USB is fine for slower peripherals such as printers but even scanners with their large amounts of data are beginning to appear with FireWire interfaces. The initial offering of FireWire external hard drives have been sparse and expensive so I've been reluctant to offer them as an alternative. However, newer models are beginning to appear and although they're still a bit more pricey than their SCSI counterparts, at least they're in a range that makes them worth considering.

FireWire offers several advantages over the older SCSI standard. As with USB, FireWire peripherals are hot pluggable which means you can plug and unplug the devices from the computer without the need for powering down, plus you don’t need to restart your computer. The computer will automatically detect their presence when connected. With SCSI, you're limited to seven devices on one SCSI port. With FireWire, you can have as many as 63 using cable lengths up to 14 feet on one port. And FireWire cables are simple to connect because unlike with SCSI, you don’t need device IDs, jumpers, DIP switches, screws, latches or terminators.

All the new Macintosh computers have built-in FireWire ports and internal adapter cards are available for the PC. Maxtor offers both FireWire external hard drives and adapter interface cards. The 1394 PCI Adapter Card ($49.95) adds two FireWire ports to your PC. A PCMCIA version ($99.95) is also available for portable computers. Two Maxtor External Storage hard drive models are identical in size and performance differing only in their capacities which come in either 40 gigabytes priced at $279.95 or 80 gigabytes priced at $399.95. Both are fully compatible with either Macintosh, or PCs running Windows 98, Me or 2000. Both drives weigh in at a little over 2.5 pounds.

Maxtor
www.maxtor.com
(800) 2MAXTOR

Firewall for the Mac

Most firewall software seems to be available only for the Windows market. However, a small company released a personal firewall product for the Mac in 1999. Originally titled DoorStop Personal Edition from Open Door Networks, it was easy to install and did everything needed to prevent unauthorized access to the Macintosh from the Internet. Recently, this product was licensed by Symantec and is now available as the Norton Personal Firewall for the Macintosh. Personal Firewall even keeps a running log of unauthorized attacks in case you want to try and trace the attempts back to the originator. But don't hold much hope of finding perpetrators since most hackers do a pretty good job of hiding. Firewalls are defensive at best. But at least your precious Macintosh data will be safe from prying eyes. $69.95.

Symantec
www.symantec.com/sabu/nis/npf_mac