Some time ago I wrote a bit about Archos and their computer peripherals, noting the pretty good Mac support. I think I have a new recommendation: Apacer. Both my new handy-drive and a memory card reader I got at the same time, are from Apacer. They both work with the Mac without the need for any extra drivers, they look pretty good, and most important: they are cheap.

Apacer is pretty known, at least over here, so you should be able to easily get ahold of their stuff. The memory card reader supports 7 different cards, and I think it looks pretty good. The handy-drive could’ve looked better in silver, but oh well.

Talking on memory cards, there is one type I have yet to see support for in any multi-format reader: XD cards. I have seen these in Olympus cameras, but the only card readers for these type of cards have been XD-only readers. Is this some kind of cruel proprietary standard? Are there any others manufacturers who rely on XD cards?

Image above taken with my IXUS 400 (aka PowerShot S400) - speaking of which, I have seen 2 more of these so far on my school, which is nice. I’ve also seen a couple digital mirror reflex cameras. But other than this, all cameras I’ve seen are crap. I mean, what surprised me at first was that there appeared to be many more digital cameras than 35mm ones. But most people seem to have “your average 3 MP camera”. Sounds good enough, but NOT A SINGLE ONE can produce grain-free images under “above normal” lighting conditions. What’s the point in having a digital camera if the image quality can’t compare to even a disposable camera? I mean, like none of these people put the images on the web or anything like that. If that was the purpose, sure enough a crappy digicam would do.

Hmm, also my Logitech MX500 seems to “go wild” at times. Can it be my colorful mousepad with Tweety on it? I though optical mice got better at textured background the newer it was - but I know my old Logitech wasn’t like this…

Keep checking back here, for this blog is here to stay. More on this tomorrow