Beyond CD-RW

Fujitsu DynaMO 1300FE
Rating: *****

Forget Zip, CD-RW, tape, and all those other passé storage technologies. For speedy, mondo storage, my bets are on Fujitsu's DynaMO 1300FE, the company's FireWire-connected external drive that can store up to 1.3GB on a removable, erasable optical cartridge. (The somewhat cheaper 640FE can store up to 640MB.)

OK--perhaps I'm getting carried away. But the DynaMO lives up to its name. For twice the cost of a Zip 250 drive, you get five times the capacity and five times the throughput. For example, it costs about 7 cents to store a megabyte on a Zip 250, but only 2.5 cents on a DynaMO. (CD-RW is still the champ. Although far slower, the cost per megabyte is a mere 0.6 cents.)

You may have heard about Firewire (an Apple term), otherwise known as IEEE 1394. This new I/O port standard can theoretically move data at speeds up to 400 megabits/second--just the ticket for digital video and other massive files. Firewire is the standard interface on Apple Power Mac G4s and iMac DVs, and it's showing up on more and more PCs. Don't have a cutting-edge computer? You can join the 1394 club (and use a DynaMO) with a $129 PYRO Digital Video 1394 PCI card from ADS Technologies or the $99 OrangeLink FireWire PCI Board.

One advantage 1394 has over USB is that it's far more "plug and play." With USB, you often have to install drivers before connecting a USB device to your PC. Not so with 1394. To install the DynaMO, I literally installed the ADS card, plugged the drive into it, restarted Windows, and had a new drive available. (Windows assigns it a drive letter and treats it like any other hard disk.) In systems already equipped with 1394 ports, the drive was recognized and usable right away--no drivers to fool with in either case. The optical disc is encased in a rugged cartridge, too, which means it'll take the slings and arrows of clumsy you and me much better.

Using the drive is a dream--it's quiet, fast, and like a CD-RW, erasable. How quiet? I had to look at the drive light to see when the unit was in action. How fast? It can move data at 5 to 6MB/second (depending on the media)--not a speed demon (since modern hard drives cook at about 33MB/second), but 10 times faster than a CD-R/RW drive. Just remember throughput varies based on your OS, the disc size, your system's setup, and other factors. For example, copying a 127MB file from my PC (equipped with an ADS 1394 card) to a DynaMO drive took 3.5 minutes--not exactly blinding throughput. On the plus side, the DynaMO 1300FE and 640FE can read and write all ISO compliant 3.5 inch magneto-optical 128MB, 230MB, 540MB, and 640MB discs. The drive can also use Over-Write discs, which Fujitsu claims can boost write performance by 50 percent. (These discs can be written in one or two passes, instead of the standard three.)

At 1.3GB, you can't stuff a copy of a DVD onto a single cartridge, but it can sure hold a lot of MP3 files! I won't toss my Zip or CD-RW drives, but the tape drives and their lousy backup software are history. From now on, the DynaMO will be my backup-cum-archive device of choice. List price: $519; $349 for the DynaMO 640FE drive; 5-pack of 1.3GB cartridges, $160, 640MB cartridges, $100-$117. Fujitsu, 877/482-1990.

Four PCs, One Line, No Waiting

UGate-3000 Cable/ADSL Modem Sharing Gateway
Rating: ****

You can never have too much Internet access or too much security, especially if you're getting online via cable or DSL. It would also be nice if you and several coworkers could get online cheaply.

That's the goal of Umax's UGate-3000 Cable/DSL Modem Sharing Gateway, which lets up to four PCs share a single Internet connection and provides more than a dollop of security against hackers. Hooking up the unit--which is basically a 4 port 10/100base-T hub--is a snap, because it's connection neutral. You can use it with cable, DSL, wireless T1, and even ISDN setups. The UGate sits between your PC or Mac and your modem, connected to both with Ethernet cables. You don't need a network card from a specific vendor or special terminators. And you don't have to dedicate a PC to be a gateway to the Net--the UGate does that for you. Another plus: The unit is flash upgradable, so you can easily download patches, fireware updates, and such.

Think of the UGate as a smart hub. It has four general networking ports, a CPU, some firmware, a basic firewall, and a Web browser-run interface for controlling IP traffic and managing DHCP-services. The latter lets you assign IP addresses to PCs on the "inside" while obscuring their identity to anyone "outside" on the Internet.

As a mini-firewall, the UGate provides TCP and UDP packet filtering. This can keep a lot of unwanted, unknown, and improper Internet-originated intrusions, such as denial of service attacks, port scans, and people trying to Telnet into your site, from reaching your workstations. To test the UGate's defenses, I visited Steve Gibson's Web site and ran his ShieldsUp! test. ShieldsUp! couldn't penetrate my UGate-equipped network--all ShieldsUp! saw was the UGate's IP address; my workstations were invisible. Hackers probing your network will come away empty handed, and since they can't detect what kind of protection you're using, may be inclined to stay away.

The UGate's DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) service means you don't have to manually configure IP addresses for computers on your network--they will seek and get the address from the UGate. The NAT (Network Address Translation) support lets you use the single IP address supplied by your ISP with all the workstations attached to the UGate. Workstation IP addresses can be anything you want, but UGate's default address range of 192.x.x.x is easier to use in most situations. If you have an existing network setup you can use the addresses provided by your ISP.

All these fairly technical network and Internet configurations are managed using a standard Web browser, which communicates with the configuration menu built into the UGate-3000. The menu is pretty straightforward. Most intermediate users should be able to get their attached PCs configured (with TCP/IP network properties and IP addressing) and on the Internet in minutes.

Advanced users can configure the UGate's IP filtering for more specialized setups, such as playing Internet games. In fact, you can configure the unit to allow one workstation, which could be a Web, FTP or mail server, to have unlimited "outside the firewall" access. But you probably won't want to open a hole in your fireware and probably won't need to. Out of the box the UGate makes it easy for you to surf the Web, get e-mail, and more, all while being protected.

While the company claims the UGate-3000 can handle up to 253 users (by daisychaining more UGate hubs together), I suspect like any other firewall or proxy device in this class, the real-world limit is about 10 to 25 systems. Anything more and online performance would sag seriously. But that's a given for a unit that costs a mere $319. Overall, I'd say the UGate-3000 is an excellent value. List price: $319.99. UMAX Technologies, Inc., 510/651-4000.