Amazon.com Archives – Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

February 11, 2012

Amazon Is Still The Best Place To Buy Office 2011 For Mac

November 18, 2010 By Stephen Leave a Comment

I already called out Amazon as the “go-to” place to buy Office 2011 for Mac OS X, but when the official Office for Mac blog spilled the beans on Black Friday deals, I had to take a look. Sure enough, Amazon.com is still the cheapest place to get Office 2011.

Filed Under: Apple, Deals Tagged With: Amazon.com, Apple, Best Buy, MacMall, Microsoft, Office 2011, Office for Mac

Save $30 on Adobe Photoshop or Premiere Elements

October 18, 2010 By Stephen Leave a Comment

Adobe recently released version 9 of their consumer photo editing software, Photoshop Elements, and Amazon is offering $10 off already.

Filed Under: Apple, Deals Tagged With: Adobe, Amazon.com, iPhoto, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Premiere, Premiere Elements

Iomega’s ix4-200d: A Killer Desktop Storage Array

August 27, 2009 By Stephen 50 Comments

The Iomega ix4-200d is a sleek 4-drive SOHO RAID system that does just about everything, from NAS to Time Machine to iSCSI for a list price right around $700?

Iomega is well into its second coming as EMC’s entry-level storage division. First, they applied EMC’s compact and full-featured LifeLine home storage software to existing gear, giving birth to the Home Media Network Hard Drive, StorCenter ix2, and StorCenter Pro ix4-100. Then they wooed the small-business community with the rack-mount StorCenter ix4-200r, adding iSCSI target [...]

Filed Under: Apple, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage Tagged With: AFP, Amazon.com, Drobo, EMC, Fry's, Hyper-V, Iomega, iSCSI, ix2, ix4, ix4-200d, ix4-200r, LifeLine, Maxtor, Micro Center, NAS, NFS, Retrospect, rsync, Seagate, SMB, StorCenter, StorCenter Pro, Time Machine, USB, VMware, vSphere, Western Digital, Windows Server 2008, Xen

Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”: In Our Hands August 28!

August 24, 2009 By Stephen 36 Comments

Apple’s bizarre online store reboot this morning revealed that the next point-update for Mac OS X will be in the hands of the faithful this Friday, August 28! Many speculated on the purported September availability of the operating system upgrade, but today’s information clears the air. Although Apple’s web site clearly states that Snow Leopard [...]

Filed Under: Apple, Personal Tagged With: 10.5, 10.6, 64-bit, Amazon.com, Apple, Apple Store, ATI, EFI, Exchange 2007, Grand Central, H.264, iMac, Intel, Leopard, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mark Twomey, Microsoft Exchange, NVIDIA, OpenCL, OS X, QuickTime, Snow Leopard, Xserve

How I Get 7 Hours of MacBook Pro Battery Life

October 28, 2008 By Stephen 11 Comments

My secret to long (battery) life and happiness!

Shortly before landing in San Francisco the other day, the MacBook Pro-using guy in the seat next to me leaned over and asked, “how did you manage to use your Mac all the way across the country? Is that some special battery you have?” For a minute, I was tempted to make something up, as [...]

Filed Under: Apple, Personal, Terabyte home Tagged With: Amazon.com, Apple, batteries, battery, digital nomad, lithium-ion, MacBook Pro, recycling

Mac + TiVo? Roxio Toast 9 Titanium is $30 AR Today!

July 5, 2008 By Stephen Leave a Comment

Have a Mac and a TiVo? I was thinking of grabbing Roxio’s Toast 9 Titanium so I could use the TiVo To Go features anyway, and Amazon surprised me by putting it as a Gold Box item today. It’s $49 with a $20 rebate, with free shipping! Expired! Sweet deal! Note: Some of these links include [...]

Filed Under: Apple, Personal, Terabyte home Tagged With: Amazon.com, Apple, OS X, Roxio, TiVo, Toast 9 Titanium

Latest Content

Preview: Two Thunderbolt Video Input and Output Devices from Blackmagic Design: Intensity Shuttle and Intensity Extreme

February 10, 2012

I was thrilled to see the announcement by Blackmagic Design of two Thunderbolt versions of their respected Intensity video input/output box. But which is the better choice, the Intensity Shuttle or Intensity Extreme?

Teaching Science with Wi-Fi (Thanks, Ruckus and MetaGeek!)

February 10, 2012

As a parent, especially a techie one, you never know when a teachable moment is going to appear. Last night, I mentioned that I was testing a new Ruckus access point and enthused about how fast it was. My 12-year-old asked, “why is it so fast?” This led to a wonderful discussion about radio waves, congestion and propagation, and spectrum licensing. Yeah, I’m that kind of dad.

Review: Das Keyboard Model S for Mac (and Why I’m Sending It Back)

February 8, 2012

Make no mistake, the Das Keyboard Model S for Mac is a whole class better than the plastic junk most people use, and the snappy Cherry MX blue key switches are more rewarding than any scissor or membrane keyboard out there, but this is no IBM Model M, so buckling spring fans should look elsewhere.

EMC VFCache (aka “Project Lightning”) Is One Small Step, But an Important One

February 6, 2012

EMC VFCache (née Project Lightning) is a fairly simple offering: A server-based PCIe flash card that acts as a read cache with no integration with storage arrays or hypervisors. But EMC’s entrance into the host-based flash storage market is a powerful demonstration of the wave of disruption caused by flash-based storage and high-performance computing.

Nimbus E-Class: The First Big, Redundant, All-Flash Enterprise Array

January 31, 2012

The new Nimbus Data E-Class comes just at the right moment, with 500 TB of capacity, a fully redundant “dual active” controller architecture, massive performance (even InfiniBand), and complete feature set (once VAAI is released).

How My Blog Became Infected With MW:JS:150 Malware (And How I Fixed It)

January 26, 2012

This week, two blog readers let me know what Google Chrome was warning them of malware on my blog. I dived in and discovered that, indeed, a nasty, obfuscated JavaScript attack had made its way into my site. Although I was disappointed by the lack of clarity about how to fix it, I believe I was able to remove it last night.

Cheap, No-Contract 4G Data: Clear’s Undocumented Daily- and Weekly-Pass Plans

January 23, 2012

Although Clear clearly wants buyers to sign up for monthly service, they also have “secret” on-demand 2-hour, daily, and weekly plans. Here’s how to get online cheap!

HP’s Mighty Stumble

January 19, 2012

HP stumbled mightily in 2011, and it had nothing to do with product or people. Even sales remained strong, though the PC business is changing. HP’s mighty stumble was a crisis of confidence due to a chain of shenanigans at the very top. This culminated with the short reign of Léo Apotheker, leaving HP to reassure the market of its strategy.

Why Should Anyone Take Dell Seriously in Enterprise Storage?

January 16, 2012

For a massive IT company, Dell sure doesn’t get the kind of respect given their competitors. Time and again, I’ll hear the sneers about Dell being little more than a “box shifter” who doesn’t “get” real enterprise IT needs. After a series of acquisitions in storage and networking, Dell is trying to stake a claim as a serious competitor to HP, IBM, Oracle, and the like. But why should anyone take Dell seriously, especially in enterprise storage?