MaximumPC 2004 10

Reviews

92 MA XIMUMPC OCTOBER 2004

Keyspan USB Server

A remote USB hub for your entire network

C

an’t afford an expensive networked printer, scanner, or

network-attached storage device? Then you should check

out Keyspan’s unique approach to networking your USB

devices. The company’s USB server gives you a workable alterna-

tive to good old-fashioned sneaker net.

In a nutshell, the Keyspan lets you share USB printers, scanners, and

peripherals across your network using a single four-port Fast Ethernet

device. And although Keyspan doesn’t say the device is designed for it, we

also successfully shared a Plextor external DVD burner, DiskOnKey USB

key, and USB-powered hard drive from the device.

While the USB Server is certainly useful, operation of the device could

be improved. To access a device on the network, you have to install client

software on each PC. To scan something, you have to manually go into the

client and connect the device. While it’s connected, no other computer can

access the scanner until you disconnect it. The same goes with printers—

although a new version of the software promises to connect and disconnect

printers on demand.

The weakest link of the Keyspan, though, is its speed. It’s limited to

12Mb/s Full Speed USB. That makes for some pretty painful wait times if

you’re trying to copy large files. Keyspan says cost is the reason for the

limitation. Hitting the maximum 480Mb/s USB speed would require a bigger

processor, which would boost the USB Server’s cost.

One advantage of the USB Server is that it transmits data back to the

computer in addition to receiving data, which is what makes it compatible

with scanners and sets it apart from a Wi-Fi server. The only problem is

that you can’t be sure it will work with all your devices. Keyspan should

have included a list of printers and other USB devices that have been

certified to work with the USB Server. As it stands, it’s a crap shoot. While

our Canon USB-powered

scanner worked, a USB-

powered Pockey hard drive

did not.

The USB Server may be a

niche item, but we appreciate

its novelty. USB 2.0 support

and more robust software

would only make it a more

promising category.

—GORDON MAH UNG

Easily share your

USB printer and scanner on

your network with the Keyspan USB server.

Magix Music on CD & DVD

Slow and buggy beats conceptually innovative

M

agix’s Music on CD & DVD is one of those ideas that is so simple,

you wonder why it wasn’t put into action sooner. Seeing as

most people have their living room DVD players hooked up to

multichannel speakers, why not harness the DVD deck’s power to play

digitally compressed music?

Many new DVD players are capable of playing MP3s, but the majority

out there still can’t. To get around this, Music on CD & DVD enables you

to encode your MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, or WAV files to a standard MPEG

audio stream that any DVD can read. Special effects and Windows Media

Player -style visualizations can even be added to the DVD. (Of course, they’ll

eat up space on the disc.) With visuals and standard compression, we were

able to pack just less than four hours of music onto a disc. Magix trumpets

the ability to burn 100 hours of music onto DVD—if the files are saved as

MP3 data. Um, we could already do that with Nero.

One unique touch is that the program gives you the option of filtering

and re-encoding music for surround sound systems. With these effects in

place, songs are re-encoded at 384kbps; you have the option of lowering it

but not raising it.

While Magix gives you a ton of features and capabilities—you can

de-hiss, de-noise, and tweak other audio effects for songs—the program’s

interface is cluttered and awkward. We had to dig around to find the

features we wanted to adjust. Worse yet, even on our zero-point Athlon 64

FX-51, the encoding was painfully slow. A 2.8GHz Pentium 4B was equally

chuggy when encoding our compilations, making this operation more of an

afternoon or overnight affair, not something quickly performed on the fly.

Worst of all, however, is a nasty bug we encountered that prevented us from

successfully copying more than 40 of our test songs at a time. D’oh!

Music on CD & DVD is interesting because we haven’t seen a

commercial application

with this capability before.

Unfortunately, it has so many

rough edges that we’re forced

to knock it down a few points.

Still, if you want to create

audio DVDs, this is the only

show in town.

—GORDON MAH UNG

Lets you eliminate some sneaker net tasks like

printing and scanning.

USB 2.0

USB 1.0

Too slow to support large data transfers; doesn’t

support USB hubs.

$130, http://www.keyspan.com

MA XIMUMPCVERDICT 7

Burns your music to DVDs that can be played on

any DVD deck.

VINYL

CASSETTE

$40, http://www.magix.com

MA XIMUMPCVERDICT 5

Magix Music allows you to transfer hours of music onto

DVD and play it in your living room DVD deck.

A little buggy. Gave us problems after 40 tracks.