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FirmTek SeriTek/2eEN4 eSATA Four Bay Enclosure
A review of the FirmTek SeriTek/2eEN4 with heavy duty four drive usage
By Arthur Whalem


FirmTek is shipping the SeriTek/2eEN4 Four-Bay Hot-Swap External eSATA Serial ATA Enclosure ($499.95). This enclosure features a well built case made from brushed & anodized extruded aluminum. The enclosure is 6.25" wide, 7.25" high and 9.25" deep. It weighs 9 pounds empty. Install four 3.5" SATA hard drives into the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure and it will weigh approximately 16 pounds. The SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure has a built-in high quality server-class 150 watt universal power supply, two 60x60x10mm quiet hard drive cooling fans, plus an LED indicator and a mute-able audible alarm. The mutable alarm will sound if a fan stops spinning or spins at very low RPM or if the drive temperature reaches 55C (131 degrees Fahrenheit). The SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure is compatible with virtually every external Serial ATA host adapter on the market and it supports data transfer rates of up to 300MBytes/sec per drive. The SeriTek/2eEN4 is designed to be utilized for uncompressed high-definition digital video editing, computer animation, digital photography or any use where a hot swap four bay SATA hard drive station would be useful.

System Requirements
Macintosh, Windows or Linux computers.
Requires external shielded SATA ports.
Requires up to four external SATA 3.5" hard drives.
Backward compatible with SATA-1 to eSATA cables.

SeriTek/2eEN4 Connections
The SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure requires an SATA host adapter to be utilized with an Apple PowerMac or a PC. It can be used with an eSATA four port external host adapter like the FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 PCI card which has four external eSATA ports or it could be used with a FirmTek SeriTek/1VE4 card which has four external SATA "L type" ports on the rear of the host adapter. As the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure has eSATA "I type" connectors on the back you will need to use SATA "L type" to eSATA "I type" shielded external cables when using it with a host adapter with SATA "L type" connectors. The enclosure comes with four eSATA to eSATA cables, hard drive screws, four removable trays and two keys. If you purchase the dual core PowerMac G5 model which was released in October of 2005 the host adapters listed above will not work with it as it only has PCI Express expansion slots. FirmTek is developing a new host adapter card to support PCI Express expansion slots and it should be available soon.

Interface, Compatibility & Stability
If you purchase a single drive external enclosure you may not care much about lights or other visual feedback indicators, but when you purchase a four bay hard drive enclosure activity lights become more important. If you have a hard drive in the enclosure that is not mounted on the desktop, you can look for the drive tray with no blue activity light blinking on the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure to help you know which bay the drive might be in. If you create a RAID and one of the drives is not mounting or has a problem, the 2eEN4 power and activity tray lights can help you detect which hard drives are active. The more hard drives that you add to your system the more important power and activity lights can become. The activity light provided by the SeriTek/2eEN4 tray is dependant on the hard drive installed also supporting this feature. The Maxtor DiamandMax 10 300GB SATA model 6B300S0 and the Maxline III SATA model 7L300S0 tested with this review display activity lights when used in the SeriTek/2eEN4. A Seagate 7200.8 300GB SATA model ST3300831AS and a Western Digital 250GB SATA model WD2500JB were also tested and they displayed activity lights too. However, some older drives may not work with the activity lights on the SeriTek/2eEN4 tray. A Seagate 160GB 7200.7 model ST3160023AS was tested and it did not display the activity light. My best guess is that most new large capacity SATA hard drives will support the activity light feature, but you may want to contact the hard drive manufacturer to verify compatibility before buying new SATA hard drives for the SeriTek/2eEN4.

Having activity lights available is a nice feature. Many four bay enclosures have no activity lights at all and some other companies place activity lights at the bottom of the enclosure instead of on the drive tray which is more intuitive. In the image above the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure is shown with the activity lights on. The top light on each tray is a white power light. The light below it is a blue activity light which blinks when the hard drive is being accessed. Having lights right on the drive tray costs a little more but it adds a lot to the enclosures interface and provides a nice trouble shooting tool.

Another cool feature that I really like about the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure is that the trays used in it are backwards compatible with the FirmTek SeriTek/1EN2. The 1EN2 is my favorite dual bay hot-swap external SATA enclosure. With this capability, you can take trays directly out of the SeriTek/2eEN4 four bay enclosure and place them in the 1EN2 two bay. No drives to unscrew, just eject and reload. I created a RAID in the 2eEN4 with four Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drives and then copied data to it. Next, I ejected the four trays and placed them in two 1EN2 enclosures. The 1.1 Terabyte RAID mounted with no problems. I copied 5GB of data to the RAID and then ejected it from the 1EN2 and placed the four drive striped RAID set back in the 2eEN4 four bay enclosure. The RAID mounted without a problem and all of the data was ready to be accessed. If you are an owner of the 1EN2 and want to upgrade to more SATA drive bays this feature allows the 2eEN4 and 1EN2 to work very well together. What really amazed me while I was performing this test was that the four bay 2eEN4 is a little quieter than running two 1EN2 enclosures. The fact that FirmTek is always thinking of ways to make their products perform better while still being compatible with existing FirmTek products helps existing customers upgrade easily.

A four drive RAID mounting stability test was the next item on my list of tasks to try with the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure. With some other enclosures that I have used, four Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drives may not always mount correctly as a striped RAID set unless the power to the enclosure is switched on and off. I like using the Maxtor Maxline 300GB SATA models as they have a five year warranty and they are one of the fastest 7200 RPM hard drives that I have tested. This capability usually allows them to perform real world tasks faster. In this test, I dismounted the four drive RAID, ejected all four SATA hard drives and put the drive trays back in the enclosure in a different order. Sometimes this was done with the enclosure power off while the RAID was dismounted, other times the power to the enclosure was left on. In all cases, the test was a hot swap removal of the RAID while the computer was left on. These tests were performed 20 times. In all cases, the Maxtor RAID mounted without problems. I even pulled one of the hard drives of the four drive striped RAID set, out of the enclosure while the RAID was mounted on the desktop. The SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter and the 2eEN4 protected me from myself. The 1eVE4 host adapter placed a window on the screen saying that I had changed the SATA configuration and had removed a device improperly. Once the missing drive was reinstalled in the 2eEN4 enclosure the RAID mounted and I found no damage had been done. Don't try this with any important data. It is nice to know that the FirmTek host adapter and enclosure combination can recover from an accidental drive removal. The SeriTek/2eEN4 is built with RAID in mind. My Maxtor four drive RAID mounts perfectly with it.

Acoustics
The SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure has an internal power supply which requires a fan. It also has two 60x60x10mm drive cage fans that run when hard drives are installed in the enclosure. The fans do not turn off while the PowerMac is in sleep mode. If the enclosure is five feet away behind the PowerMac G5, I can hear a slight fan sound while the PowerMac G5 is in sleep mode. Once the PowerMac G5 is turned on its fan and power supply noise masks any fan sound produced by the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure. The two 60x60x10mm hard drive case fans have been throttled down to about half speed to keep any fan noise to a minimum. I would classify the case fans as whisper quiet.

Inserting drive trays into the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure can be a tight fit. This keeps the enclosure from vibrating when four hard drives are mounted inside and working at full speed. Some removable drive tray systems can create occasional enclosure vibration sounds when all of the hard drives are working at full capacity. The SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure did not produce any type of metallic vibration noises no matter how hard I worked all four drives. When inserting drive trays, I found that pulling slightly up on the right side of the tray would help snap it into the guides, allowing the tray to slide smoothly into the SATA backplane connection. By all standards the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure is designed to be a very quiet four bay hard drive enclosure. The only obvious sounds I hear from it while the PowerMac is running are the Maxtor hard drives accessing data inside the enclosure. A target market for this enclosure is the audio recording and HD video capture/playback industries where quiet enclosures are very desirable. The SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure definitely fits that need.



Cooling
In the cooling tests, the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure was first tested with four individual hard drives mounted. Two Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drives, a Seagate 300GB SATA and a Seagate 160GB were installed. Each hard drive was loaded with a disk intensive task. One 4.2GB folder of video files was copied to each hard drive and then duplicated four times simultaneously. In addition, DiskTester sequential writes and Drive Genius Integrity Check tests were used to keep the four hard drives active for 90 minutes. Hard drive temperatures were monitored using Hardware Monitor 3.1. At the end of 90 minutes the Maxtor installed in the bottom slot reported 127.4 degrees Fahrenheit, the second Maxtor one slot higher was 127.4 degrees, and the next higher Seagate 300 was 122 degrees. The next process of the cooling test was to leave the enclosure turned on with the hard drives mounted for an hour, but with no usage other than temperature monitoring. I wanted to see how well the hard drives might cool down inside the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure. After resting for an hour, the bottom Maxtor temperature was 118.4 degrees, the Maxtor above it was 120.2 degrees and the Seagate 300 was 118.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

I also studied drive temperatures using four Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drives as a striped RAID set. In this test, the RAID was constantly active for 90 minutes copying data. After 90 minutes, two Maxtor hard drives reported 127.4 degrees and two reported 122 degrees. The enclosure was then allowed to sit idle for five hours while still mounted on the desktop of a PowerMac G5. After five hours with no activity, three of the Maxtor hard drives reported 118.4 degrees and one reported 116.6 using Hardware Monitor 3.1. It appears that Maxtor and Seagate drives will probably operate between 116 and 127 degrees when utilized for an extended period of time inside the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure. Most hard drive manufacturers state that temperatures of 131 to 140 degrees are within their operating range.

If you are not using the SeriTek/2eEN4 in a four drive RAID configuration you might consider just mounting the hard drives that you need. I found running the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure with only two or three hard drives installed allows the drives to operate between 5 and 13 degrees cooler. The removal of a drive tray or two reduces heat and allows the air from the fans to circulate much better.

Backplane Mounting
The SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure features backplane SATA hard drive mounting. If you take the four hard drive trays out of the front of the enclosure and look inside you will see the backplane connectors as shown in the image below.


As you slide the SeriTek/2eEN4 hard drive trays into the enclosure, the rear of the SATA hard drive connects directly to the SATA connector on the circuit board. Openings are cut in the board for ventilation and two fans are mounted on the rear cover plate. The two 60x60x10mm fans use three pin connectors to connect them to the circuit board. As you can see in the image below the rear of the circuit board provides the eSATA connectors for the external eSATA cables to attach to. No internal SATA cables are required with the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure design.


The aluminum back cover plate attaches to the rear of the enclosure which is shown above. It provides for fan mounting and helps keep the enclosure sturdy. The use of SATA backplane mounting reduces the number of connections between the hard drives and the host adapter. The more SATA connections you have the more chances you have of slowing down the performance of your SATA hard drives. From my testing, using backplane mounting does not usually result in faster performance but it does allow for a smaller enclosure size and reduces the possibility of slower performance from poor SATA connections. Hard drive performance with an SATA setup is primarily governed by the speed of the host adapter. Some host adapters will perform marginally different with various enclosures and cables but the primary performance component of any SATA drive system is the host adapter and the hard drives used. The fact that the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure was able to reliably mount the four drive Maxtor striped RAID set without having to turn the enclosure on and off is probably due in part to its backplane design.

Sleep
The SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure was tested with the SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter for Apple Macintosh OS X 10.4.3 sleep compatibility. If hard drives were dismounted from the PowerMac G5 2.0 Dual before being placed in sleep mode, the PowerMac was able to go to sleep and wake without the RAID mounted. Disk Utility was able to mount the RAID without having to turn the enclosure off and on or reboot. Leaving the RAID mounted and placing the PowerMac in sleep mode also worked correctly. The SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure supports sleep mode very well when matched with a FirmTek host adapter.

Booting
One feature that all of the FirmTek SATA host adapter cards have in common including the SeriTek/1eVE4 (which was used in this review), is the ability to boot from each port on the host adapter. I am not aware of any other SATA host adapter for the Macintosh that has this feature. If you are trying to make a bootable backup of your hard drive, the FirmTek host adapter allows you to test it while the backup drive is mounted on the host adapter. Non-bootable cards do not have this capability. If your main internal drive fails, you can boot from your backup using it mounted in the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure. Next, reformat the main internal hard drive and copy the backup drive data back to the main internal boot drive. If you are going to buy an SATA host adapter make sure it is bootable. Without the ability to boot, the functionality of an SATA host adapter is limited.

RAID Definitions
Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" has the ability to create software based multiple hard drive RAID sets using Disk Utility. You can create a Mirrored RAID set (RAID Level 1), a Striped RAID set (RAID Level 0) or a Concatenated disk set (JBOD - just a bunch of disks). A Mirrored RAID set (RAID Level 1) provides redundancy by duplicating all data from one drive on another drive. The performance of a Level 1 array may be slightly better than a single drive but it is almost twice as slow as a Striped RAID set. A Striped RAID set (RAID Level 0) uses identical size hard drives. Data is written to each drive in succession, in this way data is distributed across an array of drives which provides high performance. The RAID Level 0 volume is displayed as a single large hard drive on the desktop. No redundancy is provided with a Striped RAID set. As such, the failure of a single drive in the RAID set will stop the RAID from working. The Concatenated disk set method allows you to use hard drives of various sizes to create a RAID that appears as one volume on the desktop. As no striping is used, performance is similar to when the disks are used as individual hard drives.



Tuning the Striped RAID
The
SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure is designed with HD video capture/playback users in mind. As such, many of the users of this enclosure will want the high speed that a SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure with a four drive striped RAID set (RAID Level 0) can provide. If you purchase all four identical model hard drives at the same time your hard drives should have similar performance. Using drives with different performance characteristics will typically slow the RAID performance down to the lowest common denominator. You can use DiskTester to evaluate the performance of your RAID or each individual hard drive. DiskTester tests disk performance using Mac OS 10.2.x through 10.4.  It measures the combined performance of a volume and the Mac OS X operating system. DiskTester is a Terminal application which requires using Mac OS X Terminal with a command line executable. Using the command: ./disktester run-area-test --transfer-size 131072 --iterations 3 --test-size 1024 --delta-percent 10 DriveName, puts DiskTester to work testing how the RAID or an individual drive performs when empty, 10% full 20% full and so on. You can see an example of the four drive Maxtor RAID DiskTester report below. The data shows that the performance of the RAID set when empty is over 251MB/sec. Once the drive is 50% full the transfer rate drops to a write speed of 222MB/sec. using this 1GB speed test.

Maxtor 4 Drive RAID - DiskTester 1GB Run Area Test


Why is this important?
If you are using the
SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure as a four drive striped RAID set for HD video editing you will want to know if it has the horsepower to meet the needs of your particular project. Uncompressed 10 bit RGB (4:4:4) 1080/60i video requires 237MB/sec RAID performance. In addition, 10 bit RGB (4:4:4) 1080/24psf requires 190MB/sec throughput and 10 bit YUV (4:2:2) 1080/60i video requires 158MB/sec RAID performance. If HD video editing is your target usage, then you will need to know whether your setup can handle it. From the Disktester results above, you can see that a four drive Maxtor 300GB SATA striped RAID set provides 251MB/sec transfer rates when it is empty and can provide 237MB/sec write capability for the first 330GB (30%) of space on this 1.1TB volume. As the hard drives fill, they begin to utilize the inner rings of the platters which causes hard drive transfer speeds to slow. In fact, performance will drop substantially when the drives are 90% full. If you require better performance than the results displayed above you have several options.

1. Add a fifth hard drive to the RAID. You could add a 5th drive to the striped RAID configuration using the second internal drive bay of the PowerMac G5. This method allows you to increase the speed of the RAID with very little extra cost as no additional host adapter or enclosure is required. Write performance can increase to over 300MB/sec when the RAID is empty. My tests show using a second FirmTek host adapter with the fifth hard drive can provide even better performance.

2. You could use a 6-8 drive RAID using two host adapters and two
SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosures for supporting up to eight drives. You can see the barefeats article using this configuration with their review of the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure. In this setup, an eight drive Maxtor RAID is able to reach 470MB/sec. performance levels when empty and stays above 237MB/sec even when the RAID is 90% full.

3. You could partition each of the four (or five) Maxtor hard drives into two partitions. Then use only the upper partition of each drive to create a 558GB (or 5 drives would be 695GB) RAID. This configuration creates a RAID that does not slow down as much when it is 90% full. In the example below, only four drives are used. First, Disk Utility is used to partition each drive into two partitions of 139.74GB each.



Next, ONLY the top partition of each drive is used to create a 558.4GB four drive striped RAID set. Disk Utility is then used to create the striped RAID as shown below.



This creates a 558.4GB RAID using only one partition from each hard drive. When DiskTester performs the same 1GB test with this RAID the results are substantially improved as the RAID becomes full. You can see the results in the image below.

Maxtor 4 Drive Partition RAID - DiskTester 1GB Run Area Test


As you can see while the RAID is now 558.4GB instead of 1.1TB, it is much faster as it gets full. A five drive RAID would be 20% faster. If you have the control to only use the first 50% of the 1.1TB RAID you will get similar performance results as using this partition method. However, if you need to be sure the entire disk meets your designated MB/sec requirements the partition method may be helpful.

PowerMac G5 2.0 GHz Dual RAID Test
In this test a PowerMac G5 2.0GHz Dual was used with the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure and a SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter in slot 4. A four drive Maxtor 300GB striped RAID set was created in the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure using Disk Utility RAID functions. DiskTester 1GB read and write tests were performed using a run area test so that this article could display how the 1.1 TB formatted RAID performs empty, 10% full, 20% full and so on. The same test was also done using the same hard drives in two SeriTek/1EN2 dual bay enclosures. A SeriTek/1VE4 host adapter was used to test slot 3. It is identical to the 1eVE4 except it has SATA-1 connectors. Both host adapters are using the same SeriTek1VE4_512 firmware. These tests were performed with a 131072k (1GB) file size and the results are measured in MB per second readings. Three iterations of the DiskTester results were averaged and recorded below.

Maxtor 4 Drive RAID -
DiskTester 1GB Run Area Test
1eVE4 Slot 4 1eVE4 Slot 3 1EN2 Slot 4 1EN2 Slot 3
Area Full write read write read write read write read
empty 251.6 252.7 252.2 249.3 252 249.1 253.4 244.8
10% 252.8 240.1 252.2 235.8 252.1 235.7 252.3 234.2
20% 250.1 231.2 250.4 228.1 250.6 229.3 249.8 228.5
30% 243.8 225.3 244.2 222.7 243.8 224.9 243.6 223.4
40% 231.2 213.5 230.5 212.8 230.9 212.5 231 211.1
50% 222.7 208 223.1 206.5 223.4 207.6 223.5 205.4
60% 207.2 195.4 207.3 194.5 208 195.1 207.5 193.7
70% 200.5 185.7 199.9 185.8 199.9 186.7 198.7 186.1
80% 182 168.5 181.1 169.8 181.5 168.8 181.8 168
90% 159.8 149.7 159.4 149.1 159.9 149.7 159.4 149.2
Results are shown in MB per second. A SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter was used with a PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0 on slot 4. A SeriTek/1VE4 host adapter was used for slot 3 tests.

As you can see in the chart above, the SeriTek/2eEN4 four bay enclosure and the 1EN2 dual bay enclosure have very similar performance characteristics. The performance difference between using the SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter in slot 4 or the SeriTek/1VE4 host adapter in slot 3 are small but measurable. If your goal for HD video editing is a 237 MB/sec. write speed, then a four drive Maxtor 300GB SATA RAID may meet those needs provided that you start using the RAID when it is empty. If you have a SeriTek/1EN2 enclosure you could use it with a SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure to create a six drive striped hot swap RAID set. Since the FirmTek SeriTek/1EN2 and SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosures have similar performance characteristics, any RAID built with a combination of these enclosures and identical SATA hard drives should work very well. If you need even more power you might use two SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosures to create an eight drive hot swap RAID setup which can approach 470MB/sec write speeds.

Discussion
The
SeriTek/2eEN4 four bay enclosure is a strong industrial design with the capability to house up to four hard drives. It was able to hot swap the four drive Maxtor striped RAID set used in this review reliably even when the enclosure was left on. The enclosure is very quiet and provides a variety of features that users in the audio recording and HD video capture/playback industries will appreciate. When filled with four hard drives and used for an extended period of time, the hard drives can become warm but the enclosure has an alarm that will go off should the temperature ever reach 55 C. The FirmTek SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure at $499.95 is about $100 below the competition in this class of enclosure and it provides backplane mounting without the need for internal cables. The only changes that I would make to the enclosure if I were the designer would be to place a power switch on the front and provide a fan RPM switch that would allow the user to enjoy the existing quiet enclosure or flip the switch to "HI RPM" which would allow the drive bay fans to spin at their full rated RPM speed. This would allow the user to choose cool over quiet and go back to quiet again.

Pros
Supports Macintosh, Windows or Linux computers.
Mounts up to four external SATA drives.
Hot swappable with a FirmTek host adapter.
Hard drive power and activity lights on trays.
Allows data transfer to all four drives simultaneously.
Maxtor four drive RAID always mounted in these tests.
High quality 150W power supply.
Tight drive trays mountings = no rattles.
Very well constructed.
Quiet operation.
Includes eSATA connections and cables.
Supports SATA I and SATA II hard drives.
Can be used with RAID or individual drives.
Can be used with boot drives with a FirmTek SATA card.
Performs faster than FireWire 800 in most situations.
Uses the same trays as the FirmTek 1EN2 enclosure.
S
upports deep sleep.

Cons
Hard drives may operate warmer than when mounted in a PowerMac G5 but still within the hard drive manufacturers temperature specifications.
No power switch on front panel. (Only on the rear)


FirmTek SeriTek/2eEN4 gets 5 AMUGs out of 5!
The SeriTek/2eEN4 provides an awesome four bay hot swap enclosure for adding external SATA hard drives to any PowerMac with an empty PCI slot. When used with a SeriTek/1eVE4 host adapter you will have eSATA connections on both the enclosure and the host adapter, hot swap capability, the ability to boot from the enclosure and deep sleep compatibility. The SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure provides a quiet, rock solid solution for housing a RAID or mounting individual SATA hard drives. If you are tired of the loud fan noise that comes with some four bay enclosures you will definitely what to try the SeriTek/2eEN4 enclosure. You may also want to check out the article at barefeats.com which shows how the SeriTek/2eEN4 performs when used with four to eight hard drive RAID sets from various manufacturers.

FirmTek Special Offer
- (Requires AMUG Membership)
AMUG Members can save $40 on the SeriTek/2eEN4 ($499.95 retail), or $59 on the SeriTek/2eVEN4 External eSATA Bundle that includes one external 4-Bay eSATA enclosure & one 4-Port eSATA Host Adapter ($629.95 retail). Place orders at http://www.store.yahoo.com/firmtek/ and enter the code found in the AMUG members only area, into the comments section of the FirmTek order page. This promotional code will expire January 30, 2006. FirmTek will adjust the price of the SeriTek/2eEN4 from $499.95 to $459.95, or the SeriTek/2eVEN4 External eSATA Bundle from $629.95 to $570.95 when the order is processed. AMUG membership is required for these discounts to apply.

Contact Information:
FirmTek, LLC
29300 Kohoutek Way #120
Union City, CA 94587 USA
510.675.9800
sales@firmtek.com
http://www.firmtek.com

Copyright 2005
Arizona Macintosh Users Group, Inc. (AMUG). Visit AMUG at www.amug.org for news, discounts and friends. JOIN AMUG!