Zip This In The Christmas Stocking
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday December 5, 1995
In computers, value for money increases dramatically year after year. TONY SARNO and JULIE ROBOTHAM look at some of the best, but still affordable, presents.
COMPUTER-related gifts must be the only Christmas presents that follow Moore's Law - the rule formulated by Intel engineer, Gordon Moore - who said that personal computer technology doubles in performance for the same price every 18 months.
This Christmas, you'll get significantly more hardware and software for the same or a little bit more money than last.
Take this year's truly outstanding present: Iomega's Zip drive. Selling like crazy in the United States and distributed here by Polaroid, the Zip drive is one of those rarest of computer products: it's affordable, at $360, and has immensely useful applications for virtually anybody who uses a PC, or Macintosh.
Plug it into a personal computer with a SCSI port or parallel port and it becomes another hard disk - the difference being that it stores data on removable $35 100Mb diskettes.
It does what tape backup drives used to do last year for hundreds of dollars more, except that it's virtually as fast as a hard disk.
You can use the Zip drive to store files that would otherwise take up space on the hard drive, use it to back up the drive, or simply to archive important records. It is also great for desktop publishers and multimedia producers who have to transport very large files. The drive is easily installed from one computer to another. Among other affordable and useful products are colour inkjet printers, which are as cheap as last year's monochrome machines.
An outstanding performer is Hewlett-Packard's DeskJet 400 ($429, plus $89 colour kit) while Canon's tiny BJC-70 ($645) is the lightest portable. If you want truly good colour and are prepared to pay more, Epson's Stylus IIs inkjet ($718) is the way to go. Depending on the paper you use, it can produce photographic-like resolution of up to 720 by 360 dpi.
If you want the advantages of laser printing, such as fast speeds and higher resolutions, Lexmark's WinWriter 200 ($699) is outstanding. Be aware that it only works with Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 PCs.
For Windows 95 users who want to get to know the operating system better, we recommend Brian Livingston's Windows 95 Secrets (IDG Books, $80).
Personal organisers are popular gifts, with Sharp claiming to have sold more than half a million in Australia. But one of their failings is that you can't read their little LCD screens in the dark. Sharp has rectified that with its new ZQ-6800 ($499), which has a backlit screen.
We have listed those favourites, encyclopaedias, elsewhere. But look out for some superb CD-ROMs from Microsoft Home. The caveat is that some only run on Windows 95 and Macintosh, not Windows 3.1.
We like World of Flight and Dogs, but our killer CD-ROM for Christmas has to be Microsoft's Music Central, a comprehensively cross-referenced guide to rock and pop music from the '50s onwards, with some earlier jazz, gospel and other mentions.
You can search according to band or performer name, song title or album title, and you don't have to know the whole title - one word is usually sufficient.
There are some great videos, including vintage Abba, the shiny blue satin flares and snood days. There are well-researched biographies of most of the performers. Even silverchair are in there.
A great game is to get Music Central to find music it thinks you will like. You select a band or artist you like and the CD comes straight back at you with some other suggestions. Due for release in mid-December at $59 in Windows 95 and Mac versions.
If you're looking for a fun present, you can't go past the Mouse House book (Penguin, $16.95) with a series of cut-out houses - ranging from the Taj Mahal to the Chartres Cathedral - into which you can park your mouse at the end of its working day.
NEXT WEEK: Computer presents for people who have everything.
© 1995 Sydney Morning Herald