Companions for your Notebook

Today, most PC accessories are also available in miniature versions as notebook accessories–mobile optical CD-drives, hard drives, speakers, mouse, and even printers. Here, we take a look at some of them and how mobile professionals can benefit. Most mobile devices today come with a USB or Firewire interface for ease of set up and use.

Microlab’s USB speakers 



This is a pair of ampli-speakers that hooks to your notebook’s USB port, and even draws power from there. Being flat panel, they’re quite slim and portable. Mobile professionals will find them useful for giving client demos in small groups. The speakers

have plastic stands in the rear that can be pulled out for placing them on a surface. The quality of sound from these speakers is quite good, with the frequency response ranging between 100 to 18 kHz. Being lightweight, they make an attractive notebook companion, if you’re willing to shell out Rs 2,500 for them. 

Iomega’s USB hard drive 



This is a new portable hard drive launched by Iomega, with a capacity of 20 GB. Being USB 2.0-based, it’s quite easy to install, and is also backward compatible with USB 1.1. On the performance front, the drive gave us decent transfer rates. It took between 10 to 11 mins to transfer about 609 MB of data between the Iomega drive and a 5400 rpm hard drive on our notebook. 

The moment you plug the drive into your system, the drive functions as any other regular drive. It comes with either a USB 2.0 card for your PC or a PCMCIA card for your laptop depending upon what you want to use it with. The drive can be useful if you feel the need to carry a lot of data with you. It’s a better option for notebook users than upgrading their existing hard drives, since it’s external. Its large capacity also makes it more useful than a stack of CD-Rs. Besides you needn’t fear scratches, as with CDRs and

RWs. 

The Iomega HDD also comes with a small and useful software bundle of two utilities called QuickSync and Iomega Backup. These allow you to take full and incremental backups, restore your data, as well as do other useful functions like comparing and archiving data. The drive’s also available with a FireWire interface. Its external casing is quite rugged protecting the hard drive within from minor jolts and jerks during traveling. At Rs 12,200, the drive’s a good buy for people feeling the need to carry all their data safely. One thing in our wish list though is that it should be powered through the USB port instead of a separate adapter.

Sony’s USB drives 



Two portable options from Sony are a USB floppy drive and a combo drive, both of which are quite sleek. Both are compatible with Mac or PC based notebooks. The floppy drive supports the regular 1.44” floppies, and the combo drive is a combination of CD-ReWriter and DVD drive. It supports 20x write, 8x rewrite, 24x read, and 8x DVD speeds. While the floppy drive costs Rs 3,500, the combo will set you back by Rs 30,000. You can read a complete review of the combo drive in the regular reviews section of this issue.

Logitech’s Mouseman Traveler



Though your regular mouse is quite small, here’s something smaller in case you’re running out of space in your notebook travel bag. The Mouseman traveler is an optical mouse, designed for notebook users, and is the size of a standard visiting card. It has a USB interface, and also comes with a USB to PS/2 connector just in case. There’s even a neat little leather case for carrying it and a mini-CD containing its operating software and drivers. The software though requires a restart once you install it. The mouse works fine with both Windows and Mac OS. Other features include two buttons and a scroll wheel. The price of course is also pretty hefty, at Rs 3,500. It comes with a 2-year warranty.

Anil Chopra