MaximumPC 2004 11

Concord Solid-State DV Camera

A crappy cameraphone—without the phone

O

ooh, it’s a good idea—a digital video recorder that uses

itty-bitty flash memory for storage instead of bulky

tapes! D’oh, it’s a bad idea—the images look like crap!

Actually, the Solid-State DV Camera is a good idea gone bad.

We initially squealed with delight when we unpacked this lil’

bugger, which is only slightly larger than a Winston hard-pack. It

feels and controls just like many other mini DV cameras we’ve

used. On one side is a fairly sharp foldout LCD screen measuring

1.25-inches wide and an inch high that can be rotated on two

axes for simultaneous viewing and shooting. On the other side is

a wheel for selecting a function (recording, playback, etc.). The

battery lies discreetly flush with the side of the camera, and the

SD card fits into a covered slot on the bottom. Sounds great,

right? Lights, camera, action!

Cut! What comes out of the camera hardly resembles what goes

into it. Video clips are internally compressed to DivX files at a maximum

resolution of 320x240 at 17 frames per second, resulting in files sizes of

about 6MB per minute. But the quality—or lack thereof—is equivalent

to cameraphone video clips. That’s just sad. All our video clips came out

hazy, dark, and desaturated in color, particularly around the corners.

Even clips taken outdoors in bright daylight had a twilight cast remi-

niscent of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 shadowy classic Nosferatu. This effect

is great for German expressionists, but terrible for everyone else. Even

worse, moving images constantly warp and ripple as the camera moves.

Snapshots from the 2-megapixel CCD don’t fare any better.

Regardless of lighting conditions or camera settings, every moment

we attempted to capture was blurry, washed out,

blown out, studded with reddish-purple artifacts, or

otherwise hopelessly mangled.

Rather than improve the imaging hardware,

Concord elected to throw in a voice recorder and

rudimentary MP3 player that sound fine—if you can

live without WMA playback and if you can tolerate an

awkward control scheme.

Although better than 1987’s $100 tape cassette-based Pixelvision

camera, we’re convinced

that Concord’s DV2020 is

going to disappoint everyone

except the occasional art

student who wants to pro-

duce mysterious, tortured

videography for his or her

student film festival.

—LOGAN DECKER

It’s a great concept.

MATINEES

EDITED FOR TELEVISION

No amount of tweaking the settings produced

decent video.

$230, http://www.concord-camera.com

MA XIMUMPC VERDICT 3

The small size of

the DV2020 gets

oohs and aahs.

Unfortunately, the

video output gets

only guffaws.

Reviews

88 MA XIMUMPC NOVEMBER 2004

Arco EZBackup

Drive backups don’t get much easier

than this

T

he Arco EZBackup isn’t a RAID 1 array, nor is it

a backup drive. Instead, it’s a quasi blend of the two that

is both effective and unique. The EZBackup is strictly BYOD, and

is made for IDE storage devices. It contains two removable drawers

labeled “source” and “backup;” you install your primary hard drive in the

source drawer and a backup drive of equal size in the second drawer.

The entire apparatus is then plugged into a single power connector and

a single IDE cable, and mounted in two adjacent 5.25-inch drive bays. It

should be noted that the apparatus includes its own cooling fan, as well

as a lock that allows you to keep the cage securely shut. There’s also

a security setting that allows you to lock the drives in such a way as to

prevent the PC from booting.

Once the EZBackup is up and running, you use your primary drive

like you always have. We found ourselves particularly impressed by

the included software, which lets you create a mirror image on the

second drive. This image is a 100 percent copy, meaning it’s completely

bootable in case the primary drive fails. Once the primary drive is mir-

rored, you simply create a backup schedule. The backup can be an

entire image of the drive, new or modified files only, or specified folders

and files. The software is extremely easy to use, and we experienced

zero hassles in testing. Scheduled backups took place right on time,

and after we copied the entire contents of our main disk to the second

disk, we swapped the two drives and the system booted as if it were

the primary drive.

The backup program can be operated either from within Windows

or by manually pushing buttons on the unit’s faceplate. The initial

backup of our 250GB primary drive took about 10 hours from within

Windows, but you can opt for a faster mode that reduces a complete

backup to about four hours—you just can’t use your computer when

in this mode. With the initial backup out of the way, subsequent incre-

mental backups were quick and painless.

All in all, we really like

this drive system, but it’s hard

for us to justify the cost when

we compare the EZBackup

with a standard RAID 1 array,

which is basically free and

capable of accomplishing

similar objectives.

—JOSH NOREM

Guarantees 100 percent uptime, intuitive software.

DRIVE SWAPPING

WIFE SWAPPING

Pricey, and the initial backup took forever.

$600, http://www.arcoide.com

MA XIMUMPC VERDICT 8

Once you install your own

hard drives, this honkin’

two-drive cage slides into

two 5.25-inch bays and

lets you lock your system

with the turn of a key.

3.^75

“

2.5“