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Maiko M.

Maiko M.

Joined on 07/09/08

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 13
Most Favorable Review

Religious Experience

XFX PVT96GYDSU GeForce 9600 GT XXX Alpha Dog Eddition 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
XFX PVT96GYDSU GeForce 9600 GT XXX Alpha Dog Eddition 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

Pros: Fan-F**king-Tastic. THE BEST CARD FOR THIS MONEY.

Cons: Yeah, it's big (long). So what? I had to move a hard drive. Plan ahead.

Overall Review: I was so impressed with everything about this card. Performance. I have never had lots of $$ to buy one of the leading cards and have always been behind the curve. This thing worked out of the box. Also, the packaging/included accessories & even documentation rocks. I am used to buying OEM hardware w/out screws or GPU's with literature that has lots of cool artwork, but documentation that comes down to minimal, poorly translated chinese. ie: "Please to overdlock use caution upgrade power supply. not excedeing maximun." This card comes with lots of useful well thought out docs written by an engineer/real world user. Phone them and get an intelligent tech in 1 minute. Got the warm and fuzzies. XFX is my new GPU manufacturer.

Most Critical Review

ticking timebomb?

Seagate BarraCuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Seagate BarraCuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: [if it works] it's a great deal. Seagate [used to be] the name for hard drive reliability. I bought 3 of these to set up a 1TB RAID 5 machine.

Cons: Unreliable. Says it all.

Overall Review: I haven't had a problem yet & did apply the firmware upgrades Seagate recommended. However I am not using these disks for what I had intended. Based on the volume of failures people are experiencing, I cannot have any confidence using them in my server, even with RAID. I bought them a few months ago and have been sitting on them so if any die, I'll have to get RMA from Seagate and they'll just replace them probably with the same unreliable disk. Sucks. I just have to eat it. So I just bought some Western Digital (used to be the cheapy name in my mind but maybe things have changed) drives for the server and am trying one of the Seagates on a workstation with no critical data. See what happens but no matter what, I will never use them on anything I care about. Bad on you Seagate.

OpenWrt works perfectly

TP-Link N300 Wireless Extender, Wi-Fi Router (TL-WR841N) - 2 x 5dBi High Power Antennas, Supports Access Point, WISP, Up to 300Mbps
TP-Link N300 Wireless Extender, Wi-Fi Router (TL-WR841N) - 2 x 5dBi High Power Antennas, Supports Access Point, WISP, Up to 300Mbps

Pros: The stock firmware works well, but I installed OpenWrt. Currently running the newest Chaos Calmer 15.05. Works like a charm. For $20 you cannot go wrong.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: Have 3 in my home. One as a router and two as dumb AP's. Great product.

easy install

ARCTIC Freezer 11 LP CPU Cooler for Intel, Support Multiple Sockets, HTPC Ready
ARCTIC Freezer 11 LP CPU Cooler for Intel, Support Multiple Sockets, HTPC Ready

Pros: This thing is very quiet. That's why I bought it to replace my stock cpu fan from i3

Cons: It's bigger. But you should expect that. It installed in my Gigabyte H55M-S2H. pretty close to the memory but it's okay. You will install provided plastic adapter brackets to fasten as it is bigger than you old stock fan. For some reason they provide plastic anchor "nails" to hold them in. I couldn't get them in and was even trying to shave them down. Then I realized you can just use the screws from the old stock fan you are replacing. Much nicer.

Overall Review: If you want an nice quiet fan, but this. Arctic Cooling does it again.

good deal

ASUS Laptop Intel Core i7-2670QM 4GB Memory 750GB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M 15.6" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit N53SV-DH71
ASUS Laptop Intel Core i7-2670QM 4GB Memory 750GB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M 15.6" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit N53SV-DH71

Pros: This is a all around good laptop for the price. Laptops are a funny thing in that more so than desktops you might be particular about things like layout, weight & even appearance. I liked: 1. i7 cpu. 2. nVidia GeForce (not sharing system RAM). 3. Fairly quiet keyboard. 4. Power connector in back and not on the side (as some have been lately??). 5. HDMI out. 6. Physical cover for webcam. There is more..

Cons: I like ASUS as a brand in general; generally like their product. However, their consistent weakness IMO, is documentation. For someone buying a iPod or DVD player, a nice elegant and simple manual is appreciated. But for computer systems (I don't care how slick and buzzy it is, it's still a system), and especially to geeks, a good system manual/documentation is valuable. Asus is notorious for this. Generally it's 3 pages of how to power the system on and off, written 8 times in 8 languages. Occasionally there is useful info there, but it's not very obvious. I could decode the book of revelation easier. So to access the ddr3 slots, you need to peel back the (sticky) rubber feet at the bottom to access two screws. I almost pried the thing open with a knife trying to figure it out, then I finally saw the diagram in the electronic (only) manual. Never seen this weird design before. The AC adapter is a huge brick. Much bigger than my previous laptop.

Overall Review: You don't need to but I added 4GB extra DDR3 for only $19. I had to wait until I got the system however to see what the memory configuration (back to the poor documentation) was. It has a single so-dimm: Elpida 4G DDR3 (never heard of em). I found their specs online which was good. I added the Crucial 4GB DDR3 133 (make sure you get the 1.5v not the 1.35) Item#: N82E16820148344. The numeric keyboard is fine.. I would have liked win7 Professional but it's not a huge deal (this isn't for gaming). It's a little big but you wanted that big screen didn't you? My gripes are pretty small and all that's preventing it from 5 stars.

great for price

ASUS Eee PC 1001PXD-EU17-BK Black Intel Atom N455(1.66 GHz) 10.1" WSVGA 1GB Memory 250GB HDD Netbook
ASUS Eee PC 1001PXD-EU17-BK Black Intel Atom N455(1.66 GHz) 10.1" WSVGA 1GB Memory 250GB HDD Netbook

Pros: This thing is a great netbook for the price. Asus does a good job here

Cons: 1. This unit came with a rattley keyboard. I built if for someone else but if it was for me I think it would annoy me enough that I would have to return it. It made typing noisy and feel like cr@p. Otherwise it would have been 4 stars. 2. As previous reviewer noted; you must remove all the bloatware. It's bad (not as bad as an Acer, but still bad) and really must be done. And running win7 (any version) really requires 2GB minimum to run respectably so I did upgrade that (actually had the module from a different eeepc!). There is only one RAM slot.

Overall Review: This is a newer, and thus slightly faster netbook than the 1005HA I bought over 1 year ago, but that system ran XP or linux. Windows 7 really needs 2GB RAM and this ships with 1GB. Although it's a slightly faster system, there is one less USB port and the separate mic and headphone inputs have been replaced by a single input that somehow handles both. Haven't tried it. It's a different battery and uses DDR3 so you can't use the old DDR2 modules if you have them from a different eee pc. So just factor in the memory upgrade when you purchase this. It's still a decent netbook for short money.