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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/49191
FEA TURE REVIEW Now add the best part — rather than RAID, the Touro offers simple, stable cloud backup. 3GB is included with the drive, and by upgrading you can get 250GB of storage for an extremely competitive $49 per year. Others are charging $49 for only 25GB. Bravo Hitachi! Best Computer of 2011 We love Apple's current lineup of hardware, especially the improved iMac 27-inch we awarded last year, which represents Apple's best value yet. But we are withholding awards for Apple's desktops and laptops this year, for the simple reason that while they do have Thunderbolt, a fast interface that lets you connect to a handful of expensive peripherals, they don't yet have USB 3, a fast interface that lets you connect to thousands of those options, Apple would have charged $1,000 than the Macbook 17's $2,500 price. Dell charges $1,000 than the Macbook 17. You can even bring the price down to a third of the Macbook Pro by choosing lesser specs that still include Intel 2nd Generation i-processors. Icing on the cake? Room for an extra hard drive bay, configurations with 16GB of memory (twice the merely adequate 8GB Apple maximum), the first good speakers on a laptop ever, and surprisingly good style. expensive peripherals. Until Apple offers USB 3, or there are a lot more fairly priced Thunderbolt peripherals, we're sticking to our guns on this one. Instead we are awarding the laptop that showcases the best combination of performance, reliability and value we've seen this year. The Dell XPS 17 is a state- of-the-art desktop replacement. Its components are nearly identical to Apple's. The big differences are price, flexibility, and interfaces (no Thunderbolt for two years from now, but USB 3 and eSata for ). We tested a configuration that has similar components to the Macbook 17 but adds a stunning 3D screen blu-ray a TV tuner. For Bottom line? Windows 7 isn't OS X, but it isn't bad. If you need to run Microsoft Office, Quark, and Creative Suite and a browser as quickly as possible, if you need a great high-resolution screen, and you need to spend $1,000 to $1,500 less than Apple is asking, the XPS 17 is a nice way to go. Once you're working in the applications, you won't notice the difference in the underlying OS. (Oh, and one more thing, as Steve would say. I happen to know this Dell can run Snow Leopard and Lion, with USB 3 working . . . Google will tell you how.) Sonnet astonishes again Sonnet has a new line of laptop and desktop eSata adapters that take advantage of the new 6GB/second speeds. But the truly brilliant product Sonnet offers this year is the Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter. It lets you run Expresscards from any Thunderbolt-equipped Mac. Genius. iWards, continued There are many more fantastic products to award, but we've run out of space, so check out our continuation in the Winter/ Spring issue due to hit in February 2012. Finally, Steve Way back in 1997, Apple's stock could be had for $12, and the company would have sunk without a $150 million investment from Microsoft. At that time, it was unthinkable that Apple would ever be worth more than Microsoft, yet that's a milestone Apple passed two or three years ago. This year, at press time, Apple overtook Exxon Mobil, to become the world's most valuable company as measured by both the . So why, at this particular moment, did destiny have to decree that Steve Jobs, the most exceptional business leader in two centuries, had to give up the reins not just of Apple but of life itself, when he was not even 60? Well, like the doomed Carmen sings in the opera, it's in the cards and that's that. What can we do to honor the man who made technology more beautiful than anyone ever imagined was possible? The answer isn't hard to guess. Steve would want us to buy another Mac. So let's do it — with love for the great man. and MacDirectory 103 l e s s F m o r e W a l S l t r e e t J o u r n a l o r b e s i n t o d a y a n d a n d