New and Noteworthy: MacFixIt Editor on Mac Night Owl Live; Iomega offers Mac-centric RAID drive; more

MacFixIt Editor on Mac Night Owl Live MacFixIt Editor Ben Wilson will appear on this week's Mac Night Owl to discuss Mac Pro, MacBook issues and more with host Gene Steinberg. Also on the show will be CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White to discuss the new CrossOver Windows API environment that allows Windows apps to run under Mac OS X. You can tune into the broadcast Thursday night from 6:00 to 8:00 PM Pacific, 9:00 to 11:00 PM Eastern, at http://www.techbroadcasting.com

Iomega offers Mac-centric RAID drive Iomega has introduced the UltraMax 640GB Desktop Hard Drive in a "rugged enclosure that complements the Apple Mac Pro and PowerMac series of computers." The drive includes RAID 0 (it has two built-in drives) and a built-in USB (USB 2.0) hub. "n addition to the default mode of RAID 0, which stripes data across the UltraMax's two 7200-RPM SATA hard drives, other drive settings include 'spanned' (both hard drives are treated as a single volume), and 'simple' (each hard drive is treated as its own drive letter). For ease of use, the new Iomega UltraMax Desktop Hard Drive has a manual RAID switch, allowing the user to turn off the RAID configuration and use the drive configured as JBOD." More.

Do you know where your Mac was born? A CNET blog profiles the freeware application coconutidentityCard, which will tell you where your Apple product was built and when. "As a bonus, the software also checks the serial number of your machine against an Internet database of known stolen Mac serial numbers. Plug an iPod into a Mac running the software, and coconutidentityCard will show you where and when your device was built. Sorry iPod shuffle users: the software doesn't yet support those devices." More.

Vista not revolutionary after all InfoWorld says that with its high hardware requirement and simply nice features, XP's successor's not worth rushing into. Oliver Rist writes "I just finished previewing Vista Release Candidate 1 for the Test Center, and I suddenly realized I?m more underwhelmed than I anticipated.  [...] . If Microsoft was going to deploy loads of programming talent to figure out a specific technical issue, I wish it had done it for WinFS or the full version of the   Next Generation Secure Computing Base. Instead, I now have a much slicker-looking version of Windows XP ? along with significantly increased hardware requirements. I don?t mind the 1GB of RAM baseline so much. But the need for a 3D-accelerator in any PC that wants to run Aero sticks in my craw." More.

Previously on MacFixIt:

• MacBook (13"): Apple acknowledges sudden shutdowns in Knowledge Base article
• mac.column.ted: Make the Most of Your AirPort Network
• Apple introduces iMacs with Core 2 Duo processors; 24-inch model
• Apple moves all Mac minis to Core Duo

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