OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FireWire 800/400 USB2 Combo Solutions at OtherWorldComputing.com

Link: OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FireWire 800/400 USB2 Combo.

Just set up one of these very nice drives with my Powerbook. It was worth posting about. I was looking for an attractive drive to sit on my desk, with FW800 for speed and large capacity but QUIET. The Elite AL is all of these. As you can see from the pic, it really complements the aluminum G5 or Powerbook G4s. The whole case is aluminum and is comes with a stand for vertical use. There's a blue LED behind the front grill to indicate power-on.

You can check elsewhere for actual performance tests, but booting from this drive vs. the internal Powerbook drive puts a little more zip in the 'book's step. Nothing spectacular, but the FW800 connection surely isn't slowing anything down.

The drive is pretty much silent and very quiet reading and writing--hardly more audible than the same activities on the Powerbook internal drive. The only noisy operation relatively speaking, is when the drive spins up or spins down--there's a little clunk.

Overall I'm very pleased with this external drive. Gripes? The case seems to have a little play in it--when you pick it or wiggle it, the various aluminum parts have a little rattle-room. Since I never do this, I don't mind, but I will see if some screws can be tightened somewhere.