" Looking for a way to help your bottom line? Look no further. Xerox has already provided free network color printers to Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, non-profits, schools, and government agencies.

To qualify, your organization needs to be U.S. based. All companies or organizations must have more than one employee and must be able to use a credit card for supplies purchases. In addition, we are looking for customers with a growing need for color printing (approximately 2000-4000 pages per month).

Once you qualify, the printer is shipped to your location free of charge. After 3 years as a FreeColorPrinters participant, the printer is yours to keep without further obligation. If you decide the program isn't a good fit within your organization before this period is up, you can return the printer with no strings attached.

Xerox only asks a few things of you. A monthly print usage report is required in order to ensure everyone involved is fully benefiting from the program; creating this report can be as easy as pushing a few buttons on the printer. We ask you to produce at least as many pages per month as you specified in your original program application. A $75 fee results when you fall below your specified usage rate. A $100 fee results if you don't turn in usage reports. You are also required to purchase all ink and maintenance supplies for your free printer through the FreeColorPrinters.com website. You'll find ordering very easy and convenient.

The printer at the heart of this program is special for two reasons. One, it's a Xerox. Two, it comes with extra options adding more value to an already incredible program. These include a high capacity paper tray, a 3 year warranty, free black ink for the life of the printer and free customer support available 24 hours a day.

There it is, the fine print. As you can see, this program is a win-win proposition for everyone involved. You get a free, high-performance color printer. We believe you'll help us spread the word about this terrific new product line as soon as you start using it. ...

This reader and Apple Developer claimed the printer had to be returned at the end of 3 years (contradicting the above).

" Hi Mike-
At one time Xerox was requiring a 6000 page-per-month volume to qualify for the free printer, but now they've significantly lowered their requirements. All ADC members were recently sent an email by Apple notifying us that we were "pre-approved" for the free printer. I'm not sure what the cut-off volume is, but I was accepted after reporting a proposed monthly volume of "just" 1500 pages-per-month. Woo-hoo! Then I checked my HP 2100's pages printed stats- about 1500 pages over two years! And significantly less on my Epson 3000, around 900 13" x 17" pages. Add to this the fact that the printer apparently e-mails Xerox every month and tattles on you, and the $75 a month you pay for missing your quota, and the $350 for a four color set of consumable, and the fact that you gotta give it back after three years, well... it's not for me, but it is a really nice printer, and if you can meet the volume requirements it's a hell of a deal. And yeah, it's an ethernet Postscript printer and so is Mac compatible. They even made a Blue & White model for a while.
Cheers, Rob"

Another reader wrote:

" Hi Mike,
Here is the scoop on the free printer offer from Xerox. Normally it is targeted at businesses, not individuals. You have to estimate how many pages per month you will print, and what percentage of them will be color. If you hit a magic threshold (and I don't know what it is) they will send you a printer.

The catch that you agree to buy all ink and maintenance supplies from them for the next three years, and that you will send in monthly usage reports. (Actually, if you have a permanent internet connection the printer can do this automatically.) If your usage falls below your estimate for a month they charge you $75. If you don't send in a usage report for a month, they charge you $100. Basically, if you qualify and actually print as much as you say you will its a good deal. The printer is both Mac and PC compatible and comes with 100Mb ethernet built in.

One gotcha - the reader you quoted on today's page mentions getting the printer through ADC (Apple Developers Connection.) It seems Apple worked out a deal where all ADC members are pre-approved and automatically qualify. Non-ADC folks have to sign up for a monthly minimum that I'm guessing is quite a bit higher than the 260 pages your reader mentioned.
-Barry Klawans"

Another reader commented on the page per month rates:

" I used the same Apple/Xerox offer Mark did to get a free Xerox Phaser 850DP printer. The reason Mark was accepted although he only indicated he would print 260 pages per month is because Apple's offer guarantees acceptance, regardless of what you put down. Normally they want 2000 pages or more per month as a general rule (although they say they evaluate applications on a case-by-case basis).

The printer includes free black ink for life, but you're obligated to buy your color ink, cleaning kits, and maintenance kits directly from Xerox. Their prices, however, are comparable to (in fact better than) I've found at other dealers, so that's no big deal. The only other obligation is that you have to submit monthly usage reports to prove that you print at least your minimum number of pages per month.

However, the printer will automatically email reports to Xerox if you configure it to do so and it's being used on a network. Likewise, the printer can be configured to email you when it runs low on ink, or runs out of paper.

This is a workgroup-class printer. It's quite large (although I'm told it's not by office printer standards). The print quality so far has been quite impressive, as has been the speed.

I'm very happy with it.
-- Eric "Sheppy" Shepherd Owner "

Although the page lists up to 700MHz versions, the downloadable 750CX PDF file lists a maximum of 550Mhz. (Perhaps it's not been updated.) They also have a PDF file of their PowerPC RoadMap. Note the 'map' shows 700MHz as the end of the 750CX line, to be followed by a "next generation" CPU.

" The Sound Blaster LIVE! will be shipping by MacWorld January.

The card has the capability to do 5.1 audio from DVD players. The problem is that the DVD-ROM drives do not support the output of the 5.1 signal to the drive. We can easily support this if Apple switches the drives so that they have an AC3 out & they have a driver from the drive manufacturer to turn on the port so the data is streamed. you could then plug in DTT 2500 or DTT 3500 speakers and get real Dolby 5.1 surround sound. This is something we do intend to have in the future. It would be a matter of a free driver update from our web site when it is implemented.

[And from another thread from Creative in the forums here regarding the past news post suggestion you not buy a PC SBlive card:]

You need to get the SB LIVE! Macintosh Edition for the unit to work properly. We were telling people to get the PC version before the 5.1 version came out. This acrd will not work properly. You need the card in the Macintosh Edition to make this work right. Driver downloads will be posted along with patches & updtaes for free. All Creative downloads are always free.

You can watch the URL below for additional updates:
http://americas.creative.com/mac
Brian "

Update: For reports on the Mac SBlive card, see the article listed at the bottom of our Mac Audio page.

" I just wanted to inform the users of Flash 4 & 5, that I have fixed the corruption problems mentioned here in other posts. It is my hope to get this fix into the Radeon PCI driver release so you can obtain it. Failing that it will be available in the next universal release. The date of that release is unknown to me at this time, sorry.

This problem affects PCI Rage 128, AGP Rage 128, AGP Rage 128 Pro, Rage Mobility (Pismo) and of course both AGP and PCI Radeon products.
Bruce Parke"

Note: A reader with a Nexus 128 noted the ATI Radeon 1.0 driver update solved his Flash 5 problems in this recent article. However other ATI card owners (incl. the Radeon) have still reported problems with Flash.

The other problem for mac owners is these updates are available for Windows only, so like the IDE Plextor drives, you'd need access to a PC to flash the drive with the new firmware.

• Ricoh 9060 Firmware v1.06

• Ricoh 9120 Firmware v1.20

These links are not on the USA Ricoh site that I could find (I wasted 1/2 hour trying to find firmware updates there). The Ricoh 9120 DVD/CDRW drive is rated very highly on the PC as far as performance, faster than any Plextor drive with the same 12/10/32x rating for instance. (IDE or SCSI Plextor 12/10/32 drives trailed the Ricoh 9120 drive in literally every test I read, from random access to actual CDR/CDRW write speeds).

• Formac G3/400 in Beige G3 (rated 9)
• Metabox G3/500 in Powerwave (rated 7)
• Metabox G4/400 in 7300/200 (rated 8)
• Newer Tech G3/300 in 9500/200 (rated 7)
• Newer Tech G3/500 in 9600/300 (rated 9)
• Powerlogix Bluechip PB CPU upgrade (G3/466) in PB G3 wallstreet2 (rated 9)
  [Noted he had to put the original HD back in for the rom flash to work, but didn't note what brand/size of drive had the problem. Not all Bluechip owners had this issue with replacement hard drives, but one other Bluechip owner with a Toshiba 18GB drive did as noted here and in the database some time back.)
• Powerlogix G3/366 in 8600/250 (rated 8)
• Sonnet G3/366 in 8500/120 (rated 9)
• Sonnet G3/240-266 in 6100/AV (rated 10)
• Sonnet G3/500 in 9500/132 (rated 3)
  (had to return card)
• Sonnet G3/250 in 6400/180 (rated 8)
• XLR8 G3/500 ZIF in Beige G3 (rated 9)
• XLR8 CarrierZIF in 8600/250 (rated 10)
• XLR8 CarrierZIF in 8600/200 (rated 9)
  
  
• B&W G3/350 OC report

You can find these full reports by searching the database selecting the indicated Mac model and upgrade card brand/type. If you've upgraded the CPU on your Mac, please post an entry in the database. Search the database of over 4,800 entries from most every upgradable Mac model *before* you buy. (Searchable by mac model/upgrade brand)

You can find these full reports by searching by drive type, interface, mac model, etc. (the latest reports are shown first in searches).
If you've added a IDE, SCSI, Firewire or USB hard drive, CDRW, tape drive, etc. make sure you add a report to the database.

• Quake3 (retail) 640x480 from Powerbook G3/400 2000 model using Locki's cfg
  ( For Pismo performance at normal settings, see my spring 2000 PB G3/500 firewire review games tests page.)
• Quake3 Demo (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, using both 16bit/32bit) from iMac Rage128 Pro (500Mhz 2000 model)
• GL Quake1 (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 32bit) from iMac Rage128 Pro (500Mhz 2000 model)
• Unreal (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768) from iMac Rage128 Pro (500Mhz 2000 model)
• Unreal Tournament 1024x768 from Beige G3 250MHz w/Voodoo3

Software Updates:

• iBook (FireWire) Battery Update (apple)
• Driver Demo (43MB), also available at www.macgamefiles.com (they note a 31.7MB download, not the 43MB file I'm downloading now from Macsoft.)
• Wacom T Tablet 4.5.6 (direct download link)
• Sapphire Pack 3 (Illustrator Plug-in)
• Yarc Ethernet Mac RIP for Hewlett Packard DesignJets

Apple TILs:
• Mac OS 9: Web Browser Unable to Download Unless FTP Passive Mode is Enabled
• Power Macintosh G4 (PCI Graphics): 10.2GB Hard Drive Issue
• Mac OS 9: File Sharing FAQ
• AppleShare Volumes: Disabling Automatic Log On
• Mac OS: Rebuilding Desktop File and Icon Recovery
• Mac OS 9: What Is The Servers Folder In The System Folder?
• Mac OS 8.6: Computer Pauses Every Five Minutes On DHCP Macintosh: Startup Sequence Power Mac G4: Computer Beeps Twice Common System Error Messages; What they Mean and What Might Help Resolve the Problem Power Mac G4: Computer Beeps Four or Five Times
• Power Mac G4: Computer Beeps Three Times
• Mac OS 9: Finder Sluggish When Desktop First Appears
• Macintosh: How to Reinstall Bugdom
• Mac OS 9: File Sharing Owner Password Field Shows 8 Bullets
• Personal Sharing: File Sharing Can't Be Enabled Message
• Mac OS 9: File Sharing Security
• Mac OS 8/9: Personal File Sharing User Limits
• Mac OS 9: File Sharing - Type Computer IP Address In Chooser
• Mac OS: How to Use File Sharing
• Extended Startup Time After Memory Upgrade
• Macintosh: Reducing Startup Time
• Mac OS 9: File Sharing Computer Name Filled In By Network Assistant
• iTools: Repeated Requests to Install; Cannot Log In
• Personal File Sharing: Volume Size Reporting Limitations
• iMac (Summer 2000): Wavy or Flickering Picture on the Screen
• Power Mac G4: Computer Beeps Once At Startup
• Mac OS: Adobe PageMaker Does Not Use Apple Printer Driver by Default
• Mac OS 9: Web Browser Unable to Download Unless FTP Passive Mode is Enabled
• Mac OS 9: Missing Apple Menu Items Could Be Due to Damaged Preferences

Mac News: (Note: Regurgitated press releases, etc. are not listed)

• What If Apple Never Grew? (motley fool)
• Apple In-Store Events (apple)
• Taking Control of the Control Strip (apple)
• Steve Jobs Info Site... (geocities)
• What's the difference between a Mac and a PC...user? (linux format)
• How to Set Up a Broadband Router (zdnet)
• BridgeIt! Firewire/SCSI adapter supports 7 devices, preorders taken (fwdepot)

Mac Gaming:
• Driver Demo (43MB), also available at www.macgamefiles.com (they note a 31.7MB download, not the 43MB file I'm downloading now from Macsoft.)
• Rune Ships for Mac (IMG)
• Amiga games alive for Mac (macworld UK)