Newer Technology's MiniStack hard drive/hub

The diminutive Mac mini has spawned a small cottage industry of accessories to extend its capabilities. One of these is Newer Technology's combination hard drive and powered FireWire 400/USB 2.0 hub, in a stackable case that matches the mini's footprint and color scheme.

The MiniStack is available with drives from 80 GB ($140) to 500 GB ($450), as well as an empty unit ($80) into which you can install your own 3.5-inch drive. NewerTech includes Retrospect Express (Mac/PC) for backup and Mac-only utility software with the populated MiniStacks.

I don't own a Mac mini, but I recently picked up a bare 250GB drive and also needed some accessible ports for my G4 tower, so I decided to try out the MiniStack. Though it's a tight fit, installing the drive is straightforward, and I was impressed with the MiniStack's thermal management. It sports a massive aluminum heat sink that attaches to the bottom of the drive and has a variable-speed fan that responds to input from a thermistor taped to the top center of the drive. The fan spins up and down as needed, but is barely audible even at its highest speed.

You connect to both the FireWire and USB ports on your Mac or PC with the provided 16-inch cables (plenty for the mini-and others if you keep the drive close). A switch on the back selects either FireWire or USB for drive communication, and the drive automatically powers up and down with your computer.

There are three FireWire ports--two on the back and one around the corner on the adjacent side. The computer needs one of these, leaving two free. Three USB 2.0 "A" ports are available (two on the back and one on the side), in addition to a "B" port for input. A quibble: I wish the side ports were on the more accessible front instead.

The MiniStack has performed flawlessly for me, and the extra ports are frosting on the cake.--Ken Henningsen

QuickBooks 2006

Intuit's QuickBooks ($100- $400) has been the most popular small-business accounting program in the world for a couple of decades. Available in both Windows and Mac OS X flavors (a welcome new feature is the ability to move QuickBooks data between the two platforms), it comes in several versions. I tested QuickBooks Premier 2006 (Windows) and QuickBooks Pro 2006 (Mac).

More limited SimpleStart and Online versions are also available, as are much spendier Enterprise installations. (This review is necessarily very brief; for more detail check out my Web site.)

At their core, accounting programs are just relational databases that obey the rules of double-entry bookkeeping--debits, credits, and such. They free one from the "green eyeshade" tedium of making journal and ledger entries, don't make math errors, and don't let you create an unbalanced transaction. QuickBooks puts a user-friendly face on this process, letting you enter data in on-screen replicas of forms like checks, bills and invoices. (This works much like Quicken, Intuit's single-entry Windows and Mac personal finance program, which comes in a Windows-only Home and Business edition for very simple business needs.)

At the output end, QuickBooks provides a wealth of budgeting and historical reports with which to plan and track your business and do your taxes (and it can transfer data to Intuit's TurboTax).

Windows QuickBooks Premier has a newer and friendlier interface than QuickBooks Mac Pro. This includes a graphical home page for picking activities; vendor, customer and employee centers that consolidate information on these entities; and optional installations that optimize QuickBooks for several specific kinds of businesses. Ancillary capabilities in some versions--often requiring additional hardware, software and/or service purchases--include project estimating, time tracking, payroll, point-of-sale systems, credit card handling, and support for multiple simultaneous users.

Bottom line, I can't imagine putting up with the drudgery of bookkeeping today without a program like QuickBooks. But for my Mac preference, I'd pick the fancier Windows version.

However, the newest Mac version is old-shoe familiar to me, does everything I need, and lets me stay with my Mac for everything I do, so I'll probably stick with that for now. --Ken Henningsen