Macsimum News - Freshly Squeezed Reviews: iFlex only so much

Freshly Squeezed Reviews: iFlex only so much

Posted by Frank Petrie Apple ico Mar 23, 2006 at 1:49am

I bought a 20-inch aluminum display for my rig and have been very happy with it. I plan on using it as my second monitor when I finally purchase a MacBook Pro, in fact. The only bother was with my iSight camera—how to mount it.

Now, I could have went to the Apple Store up the street (yes, I have the fortune or misfortune of having an Apple store only one mile away) and purchased iSight Accessory Kit for US$29. But not only is it way overpriced (second only to Apple’s RAM prices), for the want of the magnetic mount, I’m then lumbered with a second of every other adaptor that came with the iSight. There must be another way.

Aha! iFlex may be the answer. Let’s see.

The Juice

“The iFlex is a fully shielded, high quality Firewire cable inside a carefully engineered all-metal flexible tube. It’s 18-inches long, and is specifically crafted with just the right stiffness and shape-holding rigidity to provide an easily adjustable stalk for mounting your iSight.” Oh really?

You notice immediately when you first remove it from the box, is that it is a quality piece of hardware. There seems to be a solid rigidity. Things are looking positive.

Until you try it. Then you notice immediately that the full 18” length of coil can’t support the weight of the iSight! I plugged it into one of the FW ports on the back of my display, stuck in the iSight, and watched the iFlex flex to my desktop. It was then that I noticed that in all the promo pictures that I found was that the iFlex is always coiled but never extended! (Yes, there is a shot of an iSight peering over the top of an aluminum PowerBook. But if you’ll notice, the iSight’s weight is being supported by the screen.)

The Rind

We’ve gone over that.

The Pits

Only half fulfills its promise.

The Pulp

This didn’t suit my situation at all. The real answer is for Apple to stop being so greedy and sell the iSight mounts separately so that you only purchase the one that you need for your situation. I’m willing to bet that if Apple made this move, they’d make more money than they do selling these kits.

What a pain.

Macsimum rating: 5 out of 10

Glenn Wolsey Says:

What’s your current computer rig?

Posted on March 23, 2006

Justin Says:

It’ a Jack Campbell product, what did you expect? You got fleeced, man.

Posted on March 23, 2006

Erik Mendoza Says:

Did you just say “could have went”?

Posted on March 23, 2006

Ben Says:

I bought one of these a year ago and returned it because of the same problem. The company was good about refunding my money, so I only lost out on shipping. I would say avoid this product.

Posted on March 23, 2006

k Says:

Duct tape solves all problems. Wrap some duct taps around the full 18” and you should be fine . . .

Posted on March 23, 2006

Frank Petrie Says:

What I ended up doing was coiling the thing at the bottom of my display. That’ll do but it wasn’ what I was hoping to do.

Glenn, I have a G4 1.42 DP, 1.5 GB RAM, 2x120 HD, 20” aluminum display, 10.4.5.

But by the end of 2006, I’m keeping the display and replacing everything else witha MBP. I hope.

Posted on March 23, 2006

Bill Hornbuckle Says:

I had even worse luck with using it on my Powerbook. Not only did I have the issues described, when I could get it to stand up, it was too heavy to be supported by just being plugged into the Firewire port, and would bounce enough to cause the Firewire plug to jiggle in the port. This caused an intermittent connection, which would cause a kernel panic and I would have to reboot my machine. This product caused me only headaches and was useless.

Posted on March 23, 2006

Eric Tile Says:

What, no viagra jokes yet?

Posted on March 23, 2006

macboyx Says:

I have this product and I actually really like it. It’s true that it can’t really support the weight of the iSight but it does great for 95% of what I need.

My sadness is the lack of angles obtainable with the iSight built into my iMac G5 and my MacBook Pro.

I can get the iFlex to do everything I want it to do just fine.

mbx

Posted on March 27, 2006

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