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Friday, February 5, 2010

Living with the OCZ Agility SSD

We all know that SSDs are super fast, especially from the mountains of benchmarks performed by reviewers. What about after a several months of actual use?

I installed the OCZ Technology 120 GB Agility Series SATA II 2.5 Inch Solid State Drive (OCZSSD2-1AGT120G) in my main system about 5 months ago. Everything else in the system is speedy (quad core Intel CPU, 6GB RAM, etc), but as we all know the real enemy of speed is a bogged down install of Windows. Runnings Windows XP x64 and after many months of installing, uninstalling, updating software I have to the conclusion: this SSD is still fast.

Boot time, application load time, etc, are all still zippy (even with anti-virus running!). I recommend the OCZ Agility.

Buy: 30 GB, 60 GB, 120 GB, 250 GB

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Friday, January 22, 2010

Logitech ClearChat Comfort USB Headset


A few years ago it seemed like there was never a need to have a microphone on your computer. Now there are dozen things you can use the microphone for and have the bandwidth to support it.

The Logitech ClearChat is a set of headphones that sound great and are easy to use. They are connected by USB so you don't have to crawl around to the back of your pc and try to match up the speaker and microphone plug. Its much easier to plug them into the front of the pc or the side of the laptop when they are needed.

The microphone is noise canceling so everyone on the other end won't hear your dog chasing the cat throughout the house. The microphone swings up out of the way when you don't need it.

Priced around $30.

Buy: Logitech ClearChat Comfort USB Headset (Black)

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Linksys WRT54GL Broadband Router - Tried, True, Stable


The Linksys router has been around forever and is one of the most widely known. The WRT54GL broadband router is a popular router to control their home network. Now owned by Cisco, the router is quick to setup, simple to use, and easy to maintain and administer.

The router is a combination of an access point to provide wireless G connectivity, a four port switch to provide wired connections, and a router to provide security to your network.

This isn't the cheapest at $60, but you'll appreciate spending the extra money after seeing how easy it was to set up and start using.

Buy: Linksys by Cisco WRT54GL Wireless-G Broadband Router (Compatible with Linux)

Friday, January 15, 2010

Iomega Prestige 1TB USB External Drive - Is your data backed up?


Do you ever worry about losing all of those pictures you have stored on your computer. Or your music collection you (legally?) downloaded? If not, then this isn't for you. For everyone else, check out this simple to use affordable external drive.

There are really just two steps for using the drive. 1, plug in the power and the USB port to your computer. 2, start using it. You can manually copy things to the drive for set up automatic backups with software available with the drive.

Priced around $95, it's a pretty affordable backup solution.

Buy: Iomega Prestige 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive 34275
Iomega Prestige 1.5 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive 34474

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Roku HD Player - Simple to Stream Movies


While it seems like everything coming on the market this year is going to have Netflix access, the Roku player was the first to have it. It has since refined itself into a great little player.

The player has a nice simple interface and you can set it up and be watching movies in minutes. Many people have claimed to save money with this by being able to downgrade their Netflix subscription and cable service.

The player is also able to play Amazon On Demand movies. This is a pay per movie / TV show service with over 40,000 titles available.

Wired and wireless connections are available to connect to broadband. You can connect to any TV, new or old, that accepts inputs.

Price at $100

Buy: Roku HD Player

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Flip UltraHD Camcorder - Simple - Easy - Awesome


After using the Flip for a couple weeks now, I am hooked. This is a great little camcorder and the video quality is awesome. From the operation of the camera, to recording a video, to uploading it to the computer or online, everything is just nice and simple.

While some people people like the complicated camcorders that allow you to adjust every setting, most people want something simple and easy to use. This is it. It powers on in a couple seconds and is ready to use. It's very convenient to carry in your pocket to capture video on the fly.

With 8GB of internal storage, it captures 120 minutes of 720p HD video. Is the battery getting low? All you have to do is find a USB port and it will charge the battery.

The included FlipShare software is simple to use and makes it very easy to edit and share the video clips.

While there is a growing list of accessories for the camera, the two that I will be getting are the silicon protective case and the sealed case for underwater filming.

Priced at an affordable $149 for a HD camcorder.

Buy:Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes (Black)
Black Soft Silicone Skin Case for Flip Ultra HD Camcorder
Flip Video AWC2T Underwater Case for UltraHD and Ultra 2nd Generation camcorders (Clear)

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Samsung USB 2.0 8X DVD Writer External Drive


Doing any video editing with your netbooks and need a DVD burner? Here is your solution. Actually, this a great drive to add to your optical driveless netbook , laptop, or desktop without a dvd drive.

The drive burns DVD's at 8x which is the standard. Burn any faster, and you start getting errors. It's less than an inch thick and weighs less than a pound so it won't be a burden in your laptop bag. The drive is USB powered so you don't have to keep up with a power adapter. Just plug it in and you're ready to go. Nero is included if you need any DVD burning software.

Compatible with PC's and Macs. Priced at $49.99 Protective sleeves are available for the drives for around $13.



Buy: Samsung USB 2.0 8x DVD Writer External Optical Drive for Mac and PC SE-S084C/RSBN (Gloss Black)
CaseCrown Faux Suede Sleeve Case (Black) to Protect the Samsung USB 2.0 8x DVD Writer External Optical Drive for Mac and PC SE-S084C/RSBN (Gloss Black)

Monday, January 4, 2010

Acer AspireRevo AR1600 - Perfect HTPC mini XBMC


I am hearing about more and more people getting these for light desktop duty but more important as a Home Theater PC. While the processor is small and not suited for gaming for video editing, the video processor is awesome and can easily handle displaying HD video on your big screen.

The unit is the size of a dinner plate, and not a whole lot thicker either. With some heavy duty velcro, you could mount this almost anywhere. With the small size also comes small power consumption so it won't be sucking the electricity like the 500 Watt power supply on your gaming machine.

As I said before, this will work well as a light duty desktop machine. It will take up very little physical space on your desk. For surfing, checking email, or playing Farmville, this will work fine. If you want to edit video, music, or play the latest games, you will need something with a more powerful processor. The Aspire used a Nvidia Ion graphics processor and can play HD video through the HDMI port all day. From reading a lot of personal reviews, everyone is backing up the manufacturers claims that this does a great job of playing high def video.

There are the standard USB ports, but more important, a eSATA port. You can attach an external SATA drive and get fast throughput to your stored movies.

The machine comes with XP and 1GB of RAM. You will probably want to upgrade the memory with an additional 1GB (around $20). If you can't figure it out, there are many sites online with pictures showing how to do it. Many people have upgraded the OS to Vista and Windows 7 with no issues. From there, they are using Windows Media Center or Xbox Media Center ( XBMC ) to play their media.

Priced at $199, this machine is cheap for a pc and very cheap for a HTPC.

Buy: Acer AspireRevo AR1600-U910H Black/White Desktop PC (Windows XP Home)
MTB News Feed
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD5570 Videocard Review @ Tweaknews
"The Sapphire HD5570 has to be taken in context to truly see how and where this product fits in ATI's current lineup of DirectX 11 videocards. The HD5570 is targeted towards the user that wants a small form factor card to insert into a small workstation or HTPC, but doesn't want to settle for the very basic performance of the HD5450."

More information can be found here.
NVIDIA Optimus Aims To Improve Battery Life on Notebooks @ Legit Reviews
"When I first heard about the new technology from NVIDIA called OPTIMUS my thoughts went directly to the Transformers. Unfortunately this new technology won't transform your laptop into a something that it's not. What it does do however, is still a great feat. A few years ago NVIDIA released Hybrid SLI which allowed you to manually switch graphics engines. You had the choice to run either integrated graphic or a discrete graphics card. Problem was you had to manually switch, either people didn't realize that or they didn't know how to switch. It is estimated that only 1% of the computers that had the option, ever switched..."

More information can be found here.
Sapphire HD 5570 1 GB @ Bjorn3D
"For many people $200 USD is just too much for a graphics card, but they still want to be able to play games. While mid range cards don't have the performance to max out all of the latest games, they can at least play them and deliver that playability at a low price point. Today we have the latest addition to ATI's lineup, the HD 5570. This card aims to replace the aging HD 4670. Many owners of a 4670 will praise its amazing price to performance ratio. These same owneres will no doubt pick up a 5570, or maybe take a step up to the 5600 series. However if you are not able to afford a 5600 series card, or are planning a lower power PC then the 5500 series is an amazing option."

More information can be found here.
World-Exclusive: Powercolor HD 5870 PCS+ @ techPowerUp
"PowerColor's brand new HD 5870 PCS+ comes with an overclock out of the box and an amazing cooling solution that makes the card quieter than any other card in this performance segment. For a price increase of only $10-$20 over the reference design this seems like a great deal."

More information can be found here.
Thermaltake Element V Case Review @ XtremeComputing
"Thermaltake recently sent me the 301 Wing RS midi-tower case, which is at the budget end of the market, for review. Today I will be reviewing the Thermaltake Element V gaming full tower case. This case is far more up the high-end scale compared to the 301 Wing RS, and as such will demand a premium in price."

More information can be found here.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5570 1GB CrossFire Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
"The ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card that was launched last week brought full DirectX 11 support, ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology and ATI Stream technology support for ~$49. That is a hard combination to beat for the price, but the Radeon HD 5450 graphics card wasn't that great in gaming and some have said that it is too weak in compute performance. The ATI Radeon HD 5570 that was introduced today has four times the compute performance on paper and we were able to see nearly a two times performance difference in real world game testing. Not a bad increase for just an extra $30, but gamers will be hard pressed to go with anything less than a Radeon HD 5670 as it does much better across the board when it comes to gaming..."

More information can be found here.
Monday, February 8, 2010
LiteOn Strong-Page MLC SSD LA-32M1S @ Benchmark Reviews
"Hopefully one day soon Solid State Drives will be standard equipment for new computer systems, but first SSDs must become available as an optional upgrade item for build-it-yourself orders. Plextor/LiteOn hopes to bring this service to tier-one OEMs, and computers from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Sony could soon offer lightning-fast SSD performance. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the LiteOn 32GB 'Strong-Page' SSD, model LA-32M1S, built on the Marvell 88SS8014-BHP2 Da-Vinci controller."

More information can be found here.
QNAP NMP-1000 Network Media Player @ techPowerUp
"The NMP-1000 is not only a simple media player to hook up to your TV. The small unit includes a BitTorrent client, NAS, uPnP & DNLA functionality along with playback of ShoutCast, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and Apple Trailers. In fact the list of functionality is so diverse, it does justify the 399 US Dollar price tag and still manages to put a smile on our faces."

More information can be found here.
How To Reverse Engineer A Motherboard BIOS
"Since being let go by Novell last year where he worked on the RadeonHD Linux graphics driver and X.Org support within SuSE Linux, Luc Verhaegen has continued work on his VIA Unichrome DDX driver as well as other X.Org code and he has also become involved with the CoreBoot project that aims to create a free software BIOS for most chipsets and motherboards on the market. Luc has worked on support for flashing the BIOS on ATI graphics cards, native VGA text mode support, and other work to help the CoreBoot project. Today at FOSDEM in Brussels, Luc Verhaegen is about to give a talk on reverse engineering a motherboard BIOS."

More information can be found here.
Antec Nine Hundred Two Ultimate Gaming Case Review @ Legit Reviews
"The Antec Nine Hundred Two case is the perfect case for builders who are just getting started or those of us who have been building machines for years. Antec makes the case incredibly versatile by allowing the user to practically customize the location for each storage device. Fan locations and controls are ideal and can be easily reached. All the fans are essentially quiet on their slowest settings, but this is more than enough to keep your rig cool. For hard-core enthusiasts, you can still crank the fans sacrificing noise comfort for airflow. Working with the Antec Nine Hundred Two was very easy..."

More information can be found here.
MSI N240GT-MD512 OC/D5 @ Bjorn3D
"As the worlds patiently awaits NVIDIA Fermi which is aimed to challenge the ATI Radeon HD 5870, the graphics giant is not sitting idling. In fact, NVIDIA has been busying updating their existing lineup. NVIDIA has revamped the entire graphics line up to the 200 series."

More information can be found here.
Samsung PN58B850 58 inch Plasma TV Review @ Tweaknews
"No longer will you have to worry about ghosting artifacts and you can watch any action movie or sports game and feel like you are really there. Although LCD models may try to mimic the fluid playback a plasma TV brings to the table, they can't hold a candle to plasma technology even today."

More information can be found here.
EVGA Geforce GTX275 CO-OP Video Card @ Benchmark Reviews
"NVIDIA and ATI dominate the market for gaming-oriented video cards. But neither company sells video cards directly to the consumer; rather, they produce "reference designs" that are manufactured by a number of "partners". Most partners simply produce the reference design and slap an identifying sticker on the card's cooler; although some might replace the reference design cooler with a quieter or more powerful solution, with few exceptions there's little to distinguish one partner's version of a specific card from another partner's version of the same card. EVGA breaks out of this rut with their EVGA GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition, model 012-P3-1178-TR, which combines NVIDIA GTS250 and GTX275 GPUs on the same card, and Benchmark Reviews takes it around the block to see what it's got."

More information can be found here.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Sapphire HD 5670 1 GB @ Bjorn3D
"Many people out there simply do not have $200 laying around to go out and buy a new graphics card. You may be someone who fits into this category, and are looking for some performance and features while still retaining the lower price point. Today we have the Sapphire HD 5670 which falls into this category. Sapphire understands that many users just want to have higher performance without paying a huge price, so they have opted to include an aftermarket cooler with thier take on the 5670. This means that you will not only have a cool running card, but you'll also be able to easily overclock to the max."

More information can be found here.
Microsoft Explorer Wireless Rechargeable Mouse Review @ Tweaknews
"After using Microsoft's new Explorer mouse for over a week, I'm very impressed by both the functionality of the BlueTrack Technology and the overall design and feel of the mouse. Careful shopping can get you one of these units for around $40 or so, and while cheaper mice are available, I would consider this an excellent value and would have no reservations in recommending this product."

More information can be found here.
Travel Stix - Pet Care and Travel for Dogs USB Flash Drive Review @ Legit Reviews
"Today we are going to look at the Travel Stix Dog Care & Travel Flash drive made by Solex Enterprises LLC specifically for those that travel with their dogs. This drive contains important forms and is for owners who are leaving their pet with a kennel or having their pet travel with them. As you can see the flash drive itself is about the same size as a credit card, which means that it is rather thin and could easily fit in your wallet or purse..."

More information can be found here.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Kingston MobileLite G2 USB Card Reader Review @ Legit Reviews
"The Kingston MobileLite G2 card reader makes for a nice travel companion for those using one of the variety of cards it supports. If you are compact flash card user, you are out of luck here but that's hardly surprising given the reader is near the same size as a compact flash card. I don't have any real complaints about the reader or the accompanying SDHC card. There was the minor issue with the amount of play with the retractable cover on the card end of the device but this was minimal and at no point was I concerned that it may break or become stuck. For reassurance, Kingston offers a 2-year warranty on the G2 reader and a lifetime warranty on the SDHC card..."

More information can be found here.
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme & CNPS10X Flex @ Bjorn3D
"Zalman. The first thing that comes to mind for most people when they hear that name is 'CPU heatsinks'. Since 1999, Zalman has been providing great products designed to keep PC components cool, especially CPUs. The Zalman CNPS10X Extreme and CNPS10X Flex continue the Zalman tradition of providing great cooling components for CPUs. While the Flex allows you the flexibility to choose your fan setup, the Extreme provides a controllable PWM fan for immediate installation."

More information can be found here.
AZZA Solano 1000R Full-Tower Computer Case @ Benchmark Reviews
"AZZA have taken a few steps away from what is considered conventional with the Solano 1000R (model: CSAZ-1000R) and gave it an extreme bright red interior. The AZZA Solano also boasts "maximum thermal management with fans installed everywhere" to keep your high end hardware cool. In sum, a total of two 230mm fans, two 140mm fans and one 120mm fan work in harmony to provide you maximum airflow. This full tower case supports E-ATX, ATX, and Micro ATX motherboards and the thumb screw design allows for easy installation of seven PCI expansion cards. A plethora of drive bays, including up to ten 5.25" and eight 3.5" bays, allow you to grow your system over time. All the bays have a thumb screw design for easy assembly as well. Are you looking for a new case? Join Benchmark Reviews as we examine the Solano 1000R ATX full-tower ATX case."

More information can be found here.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Intel Clarkdale Linux Graphics Performance
"Last week we delivered our first Linux benchmarks of Intel's Core i3 Clarkdale processor with a variety of computational tests through the Phoronix Test Suite. While the Core i3 packs a nice performance punch, that is not all it has to offer. Also found on the Clarkdale (and mobile Arrandale) processors is an integrated 45nm graphics processor that is supposed to offer a decent level of performance in comparison to earlier Intel IGPs normally found on the motherboard's Chipset. In this article are these first Intel benchmarks for the Clarkdale graphics processor as we see how its open-source Intel driver stack compares to that of AMD with their open-source Radeon stack up through the Radeon R700 series."

More information can be found here.
Installing Windows XP Pro on Asus eee PCInstalling Windows XP Pro on Asus eee PC - 12/26/2007new!
Although shipped from the factory with only Linux KDE by Xandros, Asus eee PC is fully capable of running Windows XP on the included, small, Solid State Drive.
CoolMax Green Power 1200 Watt Power SupplyCoolMax Green Power 1200 Watt Power Supply - 12/04/2007
CoolMax CUQ-1200B power-supply is one of the few power-supply boxes capable of putting out hi-wattage required by the most high-end systems. As the name suggests it has total maximum output of 1200 watts. Not a lot of computer systems may require so much power as this but for a high-end system with dual-socket setup and dual-graphic cards this amount of power output would certainly be right on margin.
Asus eee-PC Ultra Mobile PCAsus eee-PC Ultra Mobile PC - 11/20/2007
This is probably the first time UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) design from Intel has received a product that is well received by the intended market, people looking for affordable PC just for the road. Unlike the earlier UMPC models that tried to put the power and capability of a smaller laptop into the size of a hand-held, Asus eee-PC packs strictly essential parts and reduces both price as well as weight to meet the market demand for price and portability.
GeForce 8500GT PCIe Card Super ReviewGeForce 8500GT PCIe Card Super Review - 10/10/2007
This review compares five GeForce 8500GT PCI-e cards with 256MB DDR2 128bit, made by Asus, eVGA, Gigabyte, Leadtek and XFX!

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