“Green is good! Dead batteries are no good!”

I recently had a faulty MacBook Pro battery replaced by FastMac and thought I would share my experience with you all. Was it good or was it bad? First let me explain the situation. On October 1st, 2008 I ordered a brand new replacement battery for my 15” MacBook Pro, one of the FastMac TruePower batteries. The batteries claim to have 68% more capacity than the “other” brand of Apple batteries. You can find out if it’s true by looking at a couple reviews here and here. For the short time that I used the battery it seemed to perform well. I cannot comment on the longevity of the battery though, as mine became inoperable after a few weeks of use. Why did my battery suddenly die? I made the mistake of taking the battery out of my MacBook Pro when the charge on the battery was at 36%. I left the battery sitting on my desk for about 2 weeks without charging it, causing the charge to slowly deplete. After that, the battery would no longer charge. Whoops.

On October 14th I contacted FastMac about my situation, explaining what had happened and that the battery was completely dead. I received a reply within the hour! They asked for the serial number, cycle count, charge capacity, some other general information from the System Profiler, and my order number. I received a follow up email within 20 minutes (or less) of sending my reply. The customer service rep told me that I had a couple options as they were out of stock of this particular model of battery. He told me I could either send the battery in and they would exchange it free of charge when the new shipment arrived, or if I was in a hurry they could ship me an Apple branded battery if I put down a $100 deposit that would be refunded when they received the old battery. I opted to send the old battery in and wait. Luckily the new shipment arrived before my package reached FastMac! It was immediate turnaround, I got my new battery in 3 days after sending my dead one in.

FastMac’s customer service is great: they are very fast, super nice, and easy to talk to. They listen to your problems and try to help you resolve them to the best of their abilities. I was really happy with the exchange and would recommend FastMac to anyone thinking about purchasing from them. Their products are great, I get 4 and a half – 5 hours of battery life on this new battery. On top of all that, they are also very reasonably priced.

Edit – 08/06/2009 – Rating changed from 4.5 stars to 3.5. Read here to find out why. http://www.knoxware.org/fastmac-battery-saga-pt-2/

FastMac Service gets a rating of 4.5 stars.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

You might have seen some iBooks, Macbooks, Powerbooks, etc. with the Apple logo on the lid colored, maybe it was colored the old school rainbow color, maybe it was a solid color like graysail’s iBook.(seen here) Sometimes, you’ll see the rainbow. It will look dull and not very professional. Other times, you might see one that looks really really top notch. This review is about those top notch colored Apple logo’s you might see. If the ones you have seen look top notch, they are probably made by iColours. I am going to review the rainbow iColours inserts.

I recently purchased an insert from www.icolours.ca just for a review. I had seen these inserts about a year ago. I never gave it much thought. I thought they were very interesting and they looked really nice. I never really had much of a desire to actually color the logo on my iBook. I did try a Knox Ware logo once, and a skull. But I decided against it the day I put them in. It just didn’t feel right, in a sense. I wanted to keep the cleanliness of the iBook, I thought a skull looked out of place, it felt almost taboo.

After taking out the skull and the logo. I stumbled upon these films, I was amazed at how clean they looked. Since it has been a year or more, I had a change of heart and decided to try one of these iColour films out. I headed over to www.icolours.ca to check out their current products. They have a few more selections than the last time I went. I decided to go with the old school rainbow. You just cannot go wrong with the rainbow Apple logo. The film cost $3.99 USD with free shipping. You really cannot beat free shipping. After waiting 2 days, the insert arrived! I was very surprised at how fast the shipment was. The package was a plain white envelope with the iColours logo.

I blurred out our addresses so neither one of us receive any weirdo’s on our doorsteps.

I pulled out the contents, wrapped around the insert was a little thank you note, very nice touch, it also kept the insert from being bent in the mail, the paper used was card stock type paper, so it’s a little thicker than regular paper.

The package flipped over.

This is where I got excited. I seen how nice the colors were. They are the correct shades. Which to me is great, because I have seen some other inserts by other companies that looked a little off. The color is dead on with the iColours.

Here is the insert out of the paper “cover”.

Held up to the light.

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I was really excited to put this into my iBook, when I held the insert up to the light I was amazed at out crystal clear the colors were. I proceeded to take the lid off of the iBook, the lids are held together with 4 hex screws, very simple to get the screws out. If you have never taken the top cover off on an iBook before, you will want to do it with precaution. The top half clips onto the LCD bezel on the front, basically it’s clipped all around. You have to bend up on the cover to get it to pop off, you can also use a small flathead, but be VERY CAREFUL!, you could slip and stab your LCD. That would be bad. There is also a manual on icolours.ca, you can pick your model of laptop and read the guide, www.ifixit.com also has some very good guides on how to take apart your laptop.

Screwdriver in.

Screws out.

Lid is now partially off.

With the lid now off of the iBook, I centered the insert onto the inside of the lid, over the Apple logo.

Once it was in place, I held it up to the window to see what the lid would look like with light passing through it, mind you, the colors are not correct because of the light intensity and poor lighting in my room.

Once I made sure everything was in place, I secured the insert down with clear tape. I then clipped the housing back onto my LCD and screwed the iBook lid back together. The remaining pictures are of the final outcome.

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Close up.

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In the dark.

Look we match! (don’t we make a cute couple )

All in all, I am very pleased with this product. The quality is superb, the price is very fair, the shipping is extremely fast. The support is amazing for people that are new to taking computers apart. A newbie shouldn’t feel overwhelmed if they are just jumping into it. I really cannot praise this product enough. It is definitely staying in my iBook for a long time. The only cons to the product are, I should have more!!! And I dont have enough mac laptops to put them in haha. Really, there are no cons. I might even see if I can get a couple Knox Ware logos done. Anyways, enjoy and go order a couple! www.icolours.ca price: $3.99 US, shipping is free.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Discuss this in the forum

Are you in the market for a nice external hard drive? One that is small, fast, and reliable without breaking the bank? Did you ever think about buying an external enclosure and purchasing the hard drive separately? It is much cheaper if you do it that way, but which one do you buy? Today we are going to look at the Vantec NexStar-3. Maybe this review will help you decide if it’s the “one” for you.

The package
First impressions of the packaging were nice. The item on the box looks very nice. The graphics, etc. look great on paper. see image
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front

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back

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Inside the package
Upon opening the packaging, I was presented with the enclosure inside of an anti-static bag. see picture
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After taking the enclosure out, I lifted the white “tray” out of the box to reveal the other contents of the package. In the bottom of the box I was greeted with a nifty case, a double sided usb cable (it has male and female connectors on one side and then regular males on the other ends), the software driver cd, and manual. see pictures
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tray out

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contents of box

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The cable

The cable, as stated above, has both a male and female connector on one end and one normal sized male connector and smaller sized connector (also male) on the other end. The reason for putting two connectors on the cable is because not everyone has a usb 2.0 interface in their computer, especially some older laptops. They will not put out enough power in one usb port to run the hard drive so there are two connectors to pull power from two usb ports. Incoperating a female connector on one end is a really good idea, not many other manufactures do this. The last enclosure I had did not have this little feature, there’s a plus for vantec. The reason for the female connector is that you can still use that usb port if you need to when the drive is plugged in. (note: if you have usb 2.0 you don’t need to use both connectors) see pictures
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cable

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The Case
The case is a very nice addition to the contents. The case is a sturdy zip style case. It has two compartments, one compartment is for the enclosure itself, the other compartment is for the usb cable. The case also boasts a wrist strap. The case zips closed, it is a very nice little case to carry the enclosure in to protect it for everyday travel. see pictures
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the case

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The Enclosure
After taking the enclosure out of the anti-static bag, I was amazed as to how nice this thing looks right out of the package. The finish is top quality, Vantec really had quality and style on their minds when designing this product. It is very stylish and light. Mine is gloss black, but the enclosure is also available in a red, blue, or grey color. see pictures
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usb 2.0 input and DC input

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front activity light

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Disassembly
Once you take the screws in the back of the unit out, you can then slide the PCB out. The PCB is what the hard drive will be going on and what holds everything else. see pictures
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the pcb “top”

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the pcb “bottom”

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Drive Installation
There is only one way the drive can go onto the PCB, notice the holes for the screws on the bottom of your drive and on the PCB. Also, Pin 1 matches only one way, so there is not a risk of accidentally putting the drive in backwards on the board and bending pins. All you have to do with the installation is take your 3.5” drive and slide it into the IDE connector, flip it all over, and screw the supplied screws into your drive, thereby securing it to the PCB. see pictures
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Drive screwed in, i only used 2 screws for review

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(Installation cont.)
Now that the drive is on the PCB, all that needs to be done now is to slide it all back into the housing. This part is very easy, there should be no trouble getting it into the housing. Once the drive is all in the housing there should be the two black screws that need to be screwed into the back of the enclosure to secure the contents. After that, it’s all done. Now, all you need to do is plug it into a computer. If the drive is brand new it will need to be partitioned and formatted to your file system of choice. After that Windows or Mac OS X or Linux will mount it without the need of drivers. The drivers contained on the disk are mainly for older non-plug and play OS’s such as Windows 9x. see images
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all in

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All plugged in
Once you have it all plugged in, you will be able to bask in the beauty of the activity led, it’s a BRIGHT! blue. It is very nice and a very nice touch to the enclosure. see pictures
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Conclusions
My final conclusions on this enclosure are very positive. I am very pleased with this unit, it is a big step up from the other cheap chinky enclosure I had before. see pictures
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cheap enclosure

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The biggest, most important thing that really sets the Vantec apart from the cheaper enclosure is the way the drive is actually secured onto the PCB. As you can see with other cheaper enclosure, the drive just slides onto the IDE connector, there is no protection against the drive slapping around inside of the enclosure and potentially resulting in damage to the drive. I would take this factor into consideration when buying an enclosure because it will really save you in the long run.

With that said, this makes the Vantec a big contender. Now ,how about this usb 2.0 jazz, is it really any faster than some of those cheaper drives? Simply put, yes, yes it is. I have seen a BIG performance increase from the Vantec over the other cheaper model. It is much faster in getting data. I did not take diagnostics, but it is seemingly faster.
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Pros: Very sleek and nice looking, usb 2.0, padded carry case, female connector on the usb cable, activity led that looks sweet, drive connects and screws into PCB, adding more durability and longer life for the hard drive.
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Cons: None, except I’d like to have seen IEEE 1394 (firewire) connector on this unit, but they do make one with firewire, so that’s not really a con.
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Final thoughts
This unit is definitely worth the money ($23.99USD). It is much more protective than the cheaper enclosures that cost the same or less. The way it’s made makes it look uber sweet and the padded case is a nice addition. I think if you’re looking for an enclosure, this would be the one I would recommend, or any of the other vantec enclosures. They are very nice and sturdy.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
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Where to buy
New Egg – More vantec enclosures – Vantec.com