Hewlett Packard, better known abbreviated to HP were all smiles today. They won the MacWorld Best of Show Award for their B9180 inkjet printer.
Apart from the B9180 they had pretty much every printer and scanner that they manufacture on the stand, including the HP Photosmart C5180 that caught my eye. The C5180 is an all-in-one device, offering printing, scanning and a memory card reader. It also supports ethernet, which is a nice feature in this type of printer.
Large format printers were churning out glorious colour posters. I was most impressed with the Designjet Z3100, which prints up to 44" wide media. This is a real 'fine art' printer, you need to see the quality with your own eyes to believe it.
www.hp.co.uk
Google Video, Google Maps, SketchUp - Wow!
Google made their first UK exhibition this year, with what could only be described as the 'most colourful stand' at the show.
Throughout the three days their theatre, complete with google colour, comfy cushions, showcased their complete product line-up. Google Maps got a brilliant reception from the crowd.
My favourite google application was SketchUp, which offers some superb 3D drawing features, with great integration with the google online community. You can upload you creations to share with millions. The standard version of SketchUp is free, whilst SketchUp Pro 5 costs £315 ($499). It is available for Mac or PC. The Mac version is PPC, but runs pretty good under Rosetta. A universal version will be released early next year.
This was a really 'good feel' stand and certainly was creating a lot of buzz.
Check SketchUp out here.
Toast and Popcorn with Special Mac Expo Pricing
Roxio, creators of the superb CD & DVD writing application Toast, had some special offers for this years visitors.
Popcorn 2 which is a universal app right out of the box was available for just £34.08. Whilst Toast 7 had 30% knocked of its' price, bringing it down to £48.99.
I swear by Toast, which can be updated to a universal app via a software update.
For more information, click the link.
Belkin - Record in Stereo with TuneTalk for iPod
Belkin, manufacturer of many Mac and iPod accessories, concentrated on showing some of their iPod product line at this years Mac Expo. Their TuneTalk Stereo was on the stand. This neat unit plugs into the dock connector on your iPod and gives high quality stereo recording for just £59.99.
A black version is available now, with a white version sure to follow.
Make cutouts easy with Fluid Mask @ Mac Expo
Being a steadfast Photoshop user, Fluid Mask from Vertus caught my eye today. This photoshop plug-in for Windows and Mac platforms offers to make life easier for creating cutouts in Photoshop.
The demonstration I watched showed the removal of sky from quite a complex image. It was very intuitive and easy to follow, with very good looking results.
The show offer for this product is £129 (which continues through to November 8th), after which the price tag is £149. For this price you get both Mac and PC versions, plus two licenses.
Check out Fluid Mask here.
Carry your Mac in Style with Crumpler
Crumpler UK had their full range of products at the Expo. With the "Bucktaker" review coming very soon, it was nice to see visitors being very positive about this new bag. Along with the "Sophisticator", these two top of the range offerings certainly allow you to carry a lot of gear in style.
The Glory Box is also new to the UK. This is a more compact, lightweight bag for the 13.3 MacBook. It has a removable laptop sleeve, comes in red, black/white and olive. Retailing for £85 the Glory Box seems good value.
The Double Charge was also on offer, again at £85. This is a slightly larger bag, capable of carrying a 15.4" widescreen.
Check out the full range here.
It's a Shure Thang !
I love my iPod. Next to my Apple lap friend, my iPod is the best item I have ever purchased. It allows me to listen to my favorite Maccast podcast (had to get that in somewhere!). When not listening to tech news, I really enjoy my music. Don't even ask me how much money I have spent on my speakers.
Now, here goes with some real honesty. My iPod earphones only got used a couple of times, then I bought some alternative ones. They are Shure earphones, but they soon will be. The demo I had today of the E2c earphones convinced me that I need to save up £59 to buy some. The richness and detail it added to the music was astounding. Then I listened to the E3c and E4c, wow am I going to be broke. Then the Shure guys just made my bank manager very unhappy. The E500PTH earphones had to be literally torn from my ears. I just did not want to give them back and that was after just two minuted of listening with them.
I am not one to normally abuse my editorial position, but "if you are reading this Shure, please get in touch, please send or lend me a pair of E500PTH earphones!" They really are that good. Check them out at www.shure.co.uk
Nike + iPod Feel Good Factor
Spending too much time in front of your screen? Taking a break to play for XBox 360? Nike would like you to get out and about with your Nano and start pounding the streets and shedding some pounds.
The Nike + iPod stand had a real, feel good factor. With three enormous treadmills, plenty of Nike trainers, kitted out with transmitters, plus iPod Nanos with their suerb little receivers plugged in. If you are not in the know, this bargain piece of kit allows you to exercise with your iPod. You can run or exercise to specially tailored tunes and your progress is recorded in your iPod. Then when you connected your iPod, you can upload the data to a special Nike website. You can then track your progress, with some pretty nice features and graphs.
The music was pumping at the Nike stand. If you want to get fit whilst having fun, check it out whilst at the Mac Expo, or visit www.nike.com
EazyDraw - At last an alternative Illustrator
EazyDraw travelled all the way from the USA to bless Mac Expo London with their technical drawing and illustration package. Now at version 2.1, this universal application seems to offer some nice features.
From what I could make out, it sits somewhere between Freehand and Illustrator without being over-complicated. The user interface looks very clean and the feature list reads like a dream. Vecotr EPS and PDF, along with full bitmap support, plus importing of MacDraw and ClarisDraw files should come in handy.
Owner David (pictured here) was kind enough to give me a full version of the application, so check back soon for a full review.
If you can't wait for the full review, visit www.eazydraw.com
Intego - The Big Green Castle
It was nice to see Intego at Mac Expo, hard to miss the big green castle, showing their full compliment of Mac software. Their whole suite (now all universal binary) were available for hands-on, with programmer Jack Nahon on-site to answer questions.
I have used Personal Backup X4 myself and can vouch for its' user friendliness and powerful features.
No new products were actually launched at the show, but there is a new offing on the horizon. VirusBarrier for OSX Server (Euro 299, $299) and Mail Gateway (Euro 499, $499) are due mid-November and sound like they offer some very powerful filtering features. Again, expect a full review soon.
Visit Intego at www.intego.com
IRIS - OCR and Scanner Goodness
When a company like IRIS Inc. step up to the mark to offer Mac products and applications, they don't give us a half measure. On offer a Mac Expo was their well established Readiris Pro 11, IRISCard mini and IRISPen express. It is not often that one company has three products that interest me, so I found myself engrossed for quite some time.
Readiris Pro has been around for a while now and is now up to version 11. The software offers the main ability to scan and transform a printed page into a file that can be edited, archived and shared. The accuracy on the demo I had was pretty impressive. I especially liked the scanned document, which then had an area highlighted. The text that fell within that area was then copied and pasted (fully editable) into an email. It was very easy and I could see myself using that feature a lot.
IRISCard mini is, as the name suggests, a miniature scanner. It is designed to organise those pockets of business card into useful and searchable information. The software cleverly pulls the information into MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Address Book and Palm Desktop. This has the added appeal, that once the information is in Address Book it can be synced with your iPod for portability.
I would much rather have this, than all those business cards that just end up getting lost.
Last up is IRISPen express, which is a truly portable USB pen-sized scanner. It recognizes multiple languages and transforms printed type into editable text. Again integration is good and includes Word, Excel and Outlook to name just a few.
IRIS' ethos seems to be, that once something has been typed and printed, there should be no need to type it again.
I would like to really thank IRIS for opening my eyes and offering review units of all their products, so I can bring you full reviews very soon.
Take a look at their products now at: www.irislink.com
Razorlab - laser engrave your Mac
Razorlab, who I mentioned briefly in my day one Mac Expo report, deserve another mention as one of those unique companies. They offer a service that should appeal to the Mac community on two fronts.
First up, individuality. We all know how owning a Mac makes you feel special. We may be a minority (at the moment), but we are the wiser, creative types. So what more could one want, than a really individual designed Mac laptop or iPod.
Razorlab's iTattoo service laser engraves a design onto your laptop lid, or perhaps the back of your iPod. You can supply your own design, or choose from a growing library of artist images (or tattoos).
Secondly, the fact you have something unique engraved onto your gear, makes it instantly recognizable. A would be thief may well think twice before nabbing your expensive gear, which is great.
The service price range from £25 to £50 for iPods, with laptops from £75 to £200. Choosing a library image adds a VERY reasonable £10.
You can contact the guys at www.razorlab.co.uk or see the service in action at the following venues, where you can take your gear and have it done while-u-wait;
Selfridges, London - 28th to 29th October.
DesignersBlock, Tokyo - 1st to 5th November.