Brian Chen

The "i" in iPod imbues Apple's popular music player with a sense of personalization. But why keep your tunes to yourself when you can share the joy wirelessly? Creative designed the Xdock Wireless Music System for iPod so you and your family members can listen to your iPod from any speakers in your house--so long as they're connected to the Xdock Wireless itself or an X-Fi Wireless Receiver.

Easy setup

As Macworld Lab has detailed in our reports on camcorder testing, we've encountered compatibility problems with a number of tapeless camcorders. Canon's Vixia HF10, a high-definition camcorder that uses a 16GB internal flash drive and an SD card for storage, is one of the few tapeless camcorder that we've found that works seamlessly with the Mac. In our testing, the HF10 shot impressive, brilliant video, up to par with its similar MiniDV counterpart, Canon's Vixia HV30 (). The HF10 has a few minor flaws, but it's a fine choice for Mac users eager to leave MiniDV tape behind.

The HF10 is sleek and sexy, but it feels a bit clumsy to hold. The camcorder is shaped like a cannon barrel, and you need to use your middle finger to control the zoom tab, making it difficult to maintain a firm, steady grip on the camcorder. You access the HF10's menu using the four-directional joystick, which is located next to the LCD screen; the flaw to this design is that it's conducive to camera shake. The HF10's control panel is extremely intuitive to use; you should be able to figure out how to use this camcorder minutes after powering it up, without reading the user manual.

Brother's MFC-7840W is a multifunction device with a monochrome laser printer, copier, scanner, fax machine, and wired and wireless networking. Budget-conscious users will especially appreciate the MFC-7840W's inexpensive cost per print (approximately US$0.03 per page). Capable of printing very good quality text and business graphics at reasonably fast rates, the MFC-7840W is a fine choice for offices that work in a black-and-white world.

Setup is a snap. After powering up the machine and installing the toner cartridge, you have three connection options: Ethernet, USB 2.0, or 802.11b/g wireless. The USB connection is plug and play, and when we connected the printer via Ethernet, the MFC-7840W automatically appeared on our Mac as a Bonjour printer. The trickiest connection was the wireless, which required setting up IP printing. After some time flipping through the user manual, we figured it out and wireless printing worked smoothly.

It's old news that Apple is lagging when it comes to making the Mac platform friendly with tapeless camcorders. Currently, only a few tapeless camcorders out there are truly Mac-compatible, and Sony's high definition HDR-SR11 Handycam happens to be one of them.

Easy to use, craftily designed, and packed with features, the HDR-SR11 is a strong contender in the tapeless HD camcorder market-especially because it currently doesn't have much competition. This camcorder shoots and stores high-definition video and still images on a 60GB hard drive or Memory Stick Duo or Pro Duo card. Most importantly, you can import your video seamlessly into iMovie '08 or Final Cut Pro. On top of that, the camcorder's video looks stunning, on par with that of Canon's Vixia HV30, our top product in the Mini DV camcorder category. There's still work to be done, but we can only hope more manufacturers work with Apple the way Sony did to get their camcorders working properly with the Mac.