In the last months I’ve been trying some social/self-expression Web2.0 services, such as Facebook or LinkedIn. In the last few days I decided to give Virb a try too.

Based on my personal experience, I’m finding Virb a good service to connect with friends, share interests and meet like-minded people.
I mean, I have very little free time to spend using social networks, so I use this kind of tools mostly to connect with people I know or people I’ve worked with, while I’m not particularly interested in online friendship/relationships. Sorry, I’m an old school guy – I prefer obsolete and analogic things like talking face to face or hanging out with real (made of bones and flash) friends.
Also, I’m interested in these services from a technical point of view, as they might be helpful to my job or useful for my clients, so I try to keep myself up-to-date.

So far Virb seems to offer a good platform for self-expression (listing your interests, hobbies, likes, publishing your blogs, your photos or your videos, etc.) and good tools to connect with friends.
It seems to me a more professional service than Facebook – or maybe it is simply less overcrowded than Facebook. Also Virb has a limited set of truly useful tools, while Facebook has potentially every kind of tools, but 90% of them are just a waste of time.

However, the feature that takes Virb on a whole different level is the ability to fully customize your profile design. As you may easily understand, this is a big plus for every designers, artists or professionals who wants to establish a strong presence in social networks. Or it’s simply a powerful way to express yourself through design instead of writing long profiles and listing hundreds of interests.

As soon as I could find some free time, I’d love to customize my Virb page.
I see a good potential in it, being a simple and effective way to collect my blog posts, my Flickr photos, my friends and my bio in one single place for anyone to visit.

Anyway, that’s just my personal opinion after trying it for a few days.
Has anyone else tried Virb? Like it? Hate it? Let me know your thoughts…

I needed an office printer (for documents, invoices, enveloppes, etc.), a photo printer (for photos, designs, illustrations, etc.) and also a desktop scanner, because my 1999 HP ScanJet never worked with my Macs. Ideally I wanted to get three separate hi-level products, but that didn’t fit my budget (and my desk too), so I went for an all-in-one solution.

I focused on Canon products, as I already own a Canon digital camera and because of their known compatibility with Macs. I finally decided to get a Canon PIXMA MP600 and it turned out to be a good choice.

Look
First, let’s start with saying that, like many Canon products, the MP600 has a sleek silver look with shiny black finishes. It’s not as beautiful as the black iP8500, but you won’t feel ashamed of having it on your desk or shelf.
Even if quite big, the MP600 has a compact look with no external paper loading trays.

Built-in Controls
The 2.5″ wide TFT colour display, apart from being beautiful, is very useful for an office printer, since it lets you control the printer when your PC is turned off. Then you can control all menus and functions from a very intuitive to use, iPod-like click wheel.
In general, menus are easy to use even for non-experienced users, and, for example, it is very easy to print directly from a Compact Flash card or to make simple copies of your documents.

Printing functions
Like any modern printer, the MP600 has the ability to read and print directly from memory cards (CF, SD and many other formats) and to print on CDs and DVDs (5 Maxell printable CD-Rs are provided with the printer by the way).
One thing I find particularly useful is the ability to print a thumbnails index of what is on your memory card. The MP600 automatically adapts the thumbs size basing on the paper size and the number of pictures.
For Canon digital cameras there is the possibility to print directly from the camera with the PictBridge technology. I’ve not tried this functionality so far, as I do a bit of photo-editing on my photos before printing them.

The MP600 uses ChomaLife inks (5 separate tanks, CMYK and photographic black) and the Canon FINE printing technology, which means brighter colours, smaller ink drops and more detailed prints.

Scanning functions
Well, it scans documents for office use. Period. Don’t expect spectacular scanning quality or detail. And no tray for DIA or negatives. However, as I said, it is not meant to be a professional, photo-quality scanner. It is just a good quality office scanner.
Using the provided utility (I used only the Mac version) it is pretty much impossible to get good results, but if you go straight to the driver and use it in advanced mode, you can increase quality dramatically.
From the driver you can control every parameter, resolution (up to 2400×4800 optical), colour depth (up to 48 bit) enable/disable noise reduction and other filters, adjust colours, detail and contrast.

Other functions
Using a USB 2.0 hi-speed connection, the MP600 can also be used as memory cards reader for CFs, SDs and other formats.
I use this function a lot, since pretty much every digital camera, including professional ones, come with slow USB 1.1 cables (if you’re lucky!). The card reader slot is on the front of the printer, in a very accessible place.

Tests
Normal office prints are very fast and fonts are printed extremely well.
Printed colours are very close to the colours on my screen, out-of-the-box with no further colour profiling needed. This is a big difference from my old Epson, whose colour matching was far from perfect.

Photo prints are of excellent quality and take a reasonable time.
At full resolution the results are really impressive. Detail is very good and you cannot see ink drops or lines on the print.
I made these tests using hi-quality glossy photo paper and 8 Megapixel RAW taken with a Canon PowerShot Pro 1 and edited with Photoshop.

On plain 10×15 cm photo paper, printing from a CF containing 4MP photos taken with a Canon IXUS 400 with no futher editing, the print quality is still very high, but, quite obviously, colour, contrast and detail are not exceptional.

Moreover, as far as I tested it, the MP600 doesn’t drink too much ink, even on photographic prints. By the way, Canon inks aren’t very expensive.

Installation and included software
Installation doesn’t take more than a 5 minutes and even a monkey could do it with no problems. The USB 2.0 cable is not provided, so you got to buy one separately.

As usual, there is a lot of (useless) included software, both for Win and Mac.
I’ve used none of the many utilities but the printer control panel and the scanner driver.

Some less good notes now
It’s not very small (about 45×35 cm), so it won’t fit every desktop. However the paper is loaded from an internal tray, like in laser printers, so it doesn’t require much space around it.

The MP600 could also print wirelessly, using a Bluetooth adapter. The bad side is that the Bluetooth doesn’t come along with the printer and is extremely expensive.

If you wish to use the printer on a LAN, then look for the MP600R. Same printer. but with built-in 10/100 Ethernet port.
There is about a 100 Euros difference between the two versions, so my advice would be, for that price, to get yourself a good print-server instead.

Overall vote
In the end, I have to say I’m very satisfied with the PIXMA MP600, and it’s worth the 190 Euros I payed for it.
It could be a really affordable and performing solution for anyone who’s looking for an office all-in-one product, but won’t disappoint those who want to print their photos and are looking for high quality prints.

If I had to give it a vote, it would be 8 out of 10.

Reference
You can read more and view technical specs on Canon’s websites:
Canon Italy
Canon UK
Canon USA

Here you can get a PDF brochure of the PIXMA MP600.

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Updated 19.01.2007:

I’ve recently tried to print on a printable CD-R and the result was simply amazing. The print process was very fast and the quality exceeded my expectations.

Another important thing to say: today Patrick emailed me to inform me that the U.S. version of MP600 ships without the CD-R tray, so it must be bought separately. The European version comes with the tray included.

This review is provided as is. It has no promotional purpose. Please do not email me questions or support requests about the hardware of software reviewed in this page. Use the comments below instead. Thank you.

Qualche giorno fa, Matteo mi ha scritto una email chiedendomi chiarimenti in merito all’ articolo citato poco fa, riportandomi alcuni problemi di funzionamento del dispositivo USB Wave 54.
Ci siamo scambiati un paio di email e pare che ora la chiavetta USB funzioni a dovere.

Per questo motivo, nell’eventualità che qualcuno di voi possa riscontrare problemi simili, Matteo ed io abbiamo deciso di pubblicare questo post, nella speranza di essere di qualche aiuto e risparmiarvi ore di ricerca su Google.

Di seguito eccovi la cronologia delle nostre email.

Ciao Nicolò,

ho recentemente acquistato un router wi-fi e in bundle c’era questa fantomatica chiavetta USB wave 54… Ho provato ad installare i driver da te segnalati, ma non succede nulla… l’utlity della Zydas non vede la chiavetta e il led di stato si spegne quasi subito una volta inserita la chiavetta… anc’io sono su Mac OS 10.3.9 Panther e sto usando un Mac Mini…
Non so, se hai qualche consiglio ti sarei davvero grato.
[...]

Matteo

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Ciao Matteo,

premetto che non so molto di più sulla chiavetta USB Wave 54 rispetto a quanto scritto sul mio sito.

Dunque, io faccio così: inserisco la chiavetta a computer spento, lo accendo, quando Mac OS è pronto, apro Preferenze del Sistema, utility della chiavetta e seleziono la base wifi a cui connetterlo e faccio click sul bottone Connetti (”Connect this site…”).
Tutto qua.
A volte bisogna ripetere la procedura di connessione alla base o aspettare un po’ di tempo, e non sempre la banda wifi è ottimale, però in linea di massima ha sempre funzionato in questo modo.

Spero ti sia utile,
ciao

Nicolò

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Ciao Nicolò,

ti posso dire (tenendo incrociate le dita) che la chiavetta USB digicom stia funzionando a dovere con i driver Zydas… ho fatto come hai detto, collegando la chiavetta a Mac spento… ogni tanto fa faticarsi a connettersi ma poi la navigazione è stabile.,.. per essere completi, sto usando Mac OS Panther 10.3.9 su un Mac Mini e i nuovi driver Zydas (che adesso si trovano sul sito di Atheros) nella versione 4.5.7.0. Ti ringrazio per il tuo blog, che mi è stato davvero utile e mi ha fatto risparmiare tempo e soprattutto denaro per acquistare una chiavetta wi-fi dedicata a Mac OS (che poi ce ne sono poche…)
[...]

Buon lavoro

Matteo

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Updated 19.01.2007:

In seguito alla segnalazione di Lara, posto di seguito l’ultima release dei driver, che risolve alcuni problemi di compatibilità:
ZDA211MacUSB_install_4_5_7_0.dmg.zip (1.7 MB ZIP).

L’unica soluzione proposta da Apple è l’acquisto di una scheda Airport, che è sicuramente il miglior hardware disponibile, ma è anche abbastanza cara.
E se il nostro Mac è vecchiotto o è un computer casalingo, per cui non ci va di spendere più di 20-30 Euro??

Beh, questo era precisamente il mio caso, avendo un iBook G3 che uso a casa (in genere requisito dalla mia fidanzata, motivo per cui ho dovuto comprarmi un MacBook PRO… ).
Vista la mia difficoltà a trovare una soluzione valida a basso costo, spero che questo post possa essere di aiuto anche a qualcuno di voi.

Ho fatto numerose ricerche su Internet, ma quasi tutti gli adattori Wifi USB non hanno i driver per Mac OS X.
Poi ho trovato, l’USB Wave 54 della Digicom, adattore Wifi USB 2.0 a 54 Mbps, che supporta i protocolli IEEE 802.11g e IEEE802.11b.
Il produttore dichiara ed include nella confezione solo i driver per Windows e Linux, ma su Internet si trovano anche i driver per Mac OS X.
Costa più o meno 24 Euro ed è reperibile in qualsiasi centro commerciale, tipo Media World e Marco Polo Expert.

Su questo sito potete trovare una guida step-by-step su come installare i driver su Mac.
Qui, invece, trovate il download dei driver veri e propri.

Purtroppo entrambi i siti hanno chiuso i battenti, per cui di seguito potete scaricare il file del driver direttamente:
ZD1211MacUSB_install_3_1_0_0.dmg.zip (~1.5 MB)

Dunque, non vi nascondo che qualche problemino ci sia, soprattutto allo startup, dovendo ogni tanto attivare manualmente la connessione all’Hot Spot.
La velocità di connessione è buona e la ricezione anche, specie se rapportate al costo del dispositivo.

I miei test sono stati eseguiti su un iBook G3 700 Mhz del 2002, 256 MB RAM, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther (che potete vedere nella foto, felicemente connesso ad Internet in modalità Wifi).

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Updated 19.01.2007:

Vi consiglio di leggere l’aggiornamento di questo articolo qui.