Macally is a well-established Macintosh peripheral manufacturer that many of us long-time Mac users remember as one of the better sources for mice and keyboards. Since its early days, Macally has expanded beyond the basics, and now provides a wide range of products, including hard drive enclosures.

I was recently looking for a triple interface external drive enclosure, because I wanted to build an external storage module that would both work with my wife’s iMac and serve as an emergency boot drive. I also wanted it to work with my Mac Pro, as well as the rest of our collection of computers, because we frequently reconfigure and recycle stuff. The Macally PHR-S100SUA external drive enclosure does everything I was looking for, at a very attractive price. It’s a good choice if you’re thinking about building your own external hard drive.

Recently, my wife told me that she needs more storage space for her iMac. I could have just installed a larger internal hard drive, but for some reason, the thought of having her iMac torn apart didn’t appeal to her. I tried to reassure her (“No, really, I will be able to put your iMac back together again. By the way, have you seen my hammer?”), but she wasn’t going for it.

So, I hatched a new plan: Build an external hard drive. External hard drives are simple to make, and in this case, it allowed me to repurpose a hard drive from one of our desktop Macs, which we upgraded last year.

Mary now has an external hard drive sitting next to her iMac, connected by FireWire. She decided to use the external drive primarily as a Time Machine backup volume, which gives her both peace of mind and a bit more room for all her projects.

Have you seen my hammer?

Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is now available from Microsoft. The first major update to the 2008 Office for Mac products addresses security, reliability, and performance for all of the applications included in Office.

Service Pack 1 also corrects many small bugs and annoyances that have been reported to Microsoft since the release of Office 2008 for Mac. Chief among them is better compatibility between Excel 2008 and previous versions of Excel for Windows.

Microsoft’s Mac Business unit also provided a peek at the Office for Mac road map. I’m (somewhat) pleased to report that Visual Basic for Applications will reappear in future versions of Office. I’m pleased that Microsoft realized the error of its ways, and is bringing this important cross-platform tool back to the Mac, but disappointed that it will only apply to future versions (paid upgrades), and not Office 2008 itself.

The Adobe Photoshop Express Team has fixed the bug that caused a short delay in releasing the latest version of Photoshop Express. The update is now available for downloading.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Apple has agreed to pay the cost of replacing the power adapter used in some PowerBooks and iBooks. A class action lawsuit filed in the federal court in San Jose claimed that the adapter "dangerously frays, sparks, and prematurely fails to work."

U.S. District Court Judge James Ware has granted initial approval of the settlement, with a final review and probable approval scheduled for early September of this year.

The San Jose Mercury News reports that Apple has agreed to settle a dispute in Canada over the expected battery life of early generation iPods. Apple already settled a class action lawsuit brought in the U.S. over the same issue.

As in the U.S. settlement, Apple has agreed to offer credit at its online store for first- and second-generation iPods whose battery life has fallen to less than five hours of use between charges, and for third-generation iPods whose battery life has fallen to less than four hours of use between charges

Final court approval of the settlement is not scheduled until mid June.

If you were thinking about springing for an iPhone this weekend, you may be out of luck. Both the Apple U.S. and the Apple UK online stores show the 8 GB and 16 GB iPhones as 'Currently Unavailable.’

Of course, this could just be a temporary glitch in stock, but I believe it’s more evidence of a soon-to-be-announced new version of the iPhone at the upcoming Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference.

What do you think? Stop by the Apple Rumors folder in the Focus on Macs forum and let us know.

A Fox news station in New York reports an interesting case of a stolen Mac, and how the clever victim was able to identify the perps.

Two would-be thieves are cooling their heels in jail today, after stealing a Westchester, New York woman’s Mac. After the theft, a friend of the victim told her that she appeared to be online, indicating that whoever had stolen her Mac was currently using it and connected to the Internet.

Using the 'Back to My Mac' program, part of Apple’s .Mac suite of online services, the woman was able to remotely log in to her stolen Mac and activate the built-in iSight video camera. In a matter of minutes, she was able to snap pictures of two people using her stolen Mac. She turned the photos over to the local police department, which was able to match them against mug shots of known ne’er-do-wells. The thieves are now guests of the state, no doubt wondering how a seemingly foolproof plan could have gone so wrong.

Parallels has released a new version of Parallels Desktop, its popular virtualization software. Version 3.0 has been updated to build 5600. This latest build adds support for Windows XP Service Pack 3, as well as better support for Vista and Service Pack 1.

Boot Camp support has been updated to handle the latest Microsoft service packs. Parallels Desktop also now fully supports the MacBook Air.

The upgrade is free for registered Parallels Desktop 3.0 users.

Don't you hate bugs? Software bugs, that is. The other kind can be downright beneficial, but I think it’s safe to say that developers hate the software kind.

The Adobe Photoshop Express Team uncovered a bug in the software just before going live, which is actually one of the better times to discover a bug. There will be a slight delay in launching the latest beta version of Photoshop Express, while the team looks into and debugs the bug. Well, that’s what betas are for, to find all the little gremlins hiding in the software code.

There isn’t a definite date and time for the release at the moment, but Adobe hopes to have the new version available soon.