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William R.

William R.

Joined on 10/01/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 30
Most Favorable Review

Great Buy!

EVGA Z97 FTW (142-HR-E977-KR) LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
EVGA Z97 FTW (142-HR-E977-KR) LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Z97 chipset! Supports the latest LGA 1150 CPUs out of the box. Native Intel SATA 3 and USB 3.0 controllers. BIOS is highly configurable and easy to use. EVGA Quality! Intel i217 ethernet adapter. All the features that you would come to expect from an Intel network adapter are configurable from the driver property pages. Looks like there is native support for NIC Teaming (motherboard only has one NIC, you'd have to install a second one) and VLAN tagging although I haven't used either yet. This current promotion can't be beat: just under $150 after rebate!

Cons: None yet noted.

Overall Review: This is my fourth EVGA motherboard over the last several years and they've all worked flawlessly. Mine shipped with 1.01 BIOS; as of this writing, EVGA has 1.04 available for download from their website. Easy update while the OS is running. Also has a Marvell SATA 3 controller for two additional ports. I'm hanging my optical drives off of this one. With overnight shipping, the box was in my home city within ten hours of ordering and at my door in less than 18. Thanks Newegg and FedEx!

Most Critical Review

Don't bother

D-Link PowerLine DHP-601AV AV2 AV1000 Gigabit Starter Kit, up to 1000 Mbps
D-Link PowerLine DHP-601AV AV2 AV1000 Gigabit Starter Kit, up to 1000 Mbps

Pros: Easy "plug-and-play" installation. One touch button to encrypt traffic after you plug them in. Status LED displays connection quality. Red="Good", Amber=Better, Green=Best. That's what the manual says, really.

Cons: Doesn't perform as advertised (your experience may vary), even when they are installed on the same electrical circuit. Very Inconsistent and "stuttering" speeds. I have no concrete evidence, but it "felt" like it was operating in half-duplex. While the unit stayed paired and connected to the other one throughout, at the higher layer it frequently caused dropped TCP connections resulting in a very frustrating end user experience. Nearly unusable across circuits. Internet speed tests varied mid-test, ranging from 25-45Mbps downstream, the upstream tests never completed (??). Wired ethernet and Wi-Fi yields 56Mbps downstream, 5.5Mbps upstream. Wireless performs much better, much more consistently.

Overall Review: As with anything like this, the condition of your home wiring, wire length, and if the pair are on the same circuit or not will have a huge impact on how well these work. My home was build in the mid-90s and they don't work well at all. They may be subject to interference from noisy electrical loads (remember watching analog TV back in the day when someone turned on a hair dryer or other noisy electrical load?) I purchased these, taking a chance that they would perform better than wireless for large file transfers between PCs and reduce latency for gaming. That is not the case. I would not recommend any product from any manufacturer utilizing this technology.

Good performer, but...

MSI MEG Z590I UNIFY LGA 1200 Intel Z590 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard
MSI MEG Z590I UNIFY LGA 1200 Intel Z590 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Haven't had any stability or performance issues after replacing my last motherboard which failed. I retained all the other components from the previous build. Updated BIOS to the latest version at first boot and installed Windows 11 after using the handy SSD Secure Erase feature in BIOS. Both M.2 slots work with 10th Gen Intel CPUs, which was an important selling point for me.

Cons: I received it new in box and sealed. Included was the manual for the B560 Tomahawk Wifi/B560 Torpedo which is an entirely different series. It appears someone grabbed from the wrong stack at the factory. I was able to download the manual from the website without issue. M.2_2 is disabled when you disable either the integrated sound or Wifi (or both) in BIOS but I haven't revisited it to find the precise cause.

Overall Review: Great motherboard, I'm satisfied with the purchase and I would recommend it to others.

Worst printer I've owned since the dot matrix days

Samsung Xpress SL-C480FW Wireless Multifunction Color Laser Printer
Samsung Xpress SL-C480FW Wireless Multifunction Color Laser Printer

Pros: Low price for basic color printing if you're lucky enough to have a functioning unit.

Cons: Hardware (controls) failure after 177 pages. I only know the page count because the web interface still lets me in but the front panel won't respond. Changes by web interface aren't retained. I want to upgrade the firmware to see if it will bring it back to life but it will not receive the file. It resets itself every 10 minutes or so and attempts to reinitialize. As others indicate, the drivers are dubious. I've had issues with them since I bought the printer but could eventually could print.

Overall Review: It appears that HP has purchased the Samsung printers business unit. I'll end up scrapping this and buying a new printer. Probably an HP this time... as I had the HP before this Samsung for about ten years.

Looks good on paper

Linksys WRT1900AC Wireless AC Dual Band Router AC1900, Open Source ready, eSATA/ USB 3.0 Ports
Linksys WRT1900AC Wireless AC Dual Band Router AC1900, Open Source ready, eSATA/ USB 3.0 Ports

Pros: Fast throughput across all interfaces +1 egg Intuitive web based controls +1 egg Pretty darn good range and the automatic directional beamforming seems to work well +1 egg Separate SSIDs (optional) for 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios +1 egg USB 3.0/eSATA connections for fast and easy SMB +1 egg

Cons: Signup with centralized service required to realize all features. This shouldn't be required when managing a simple SOHO router -1 egg Devices sometimes won't connect, requires reboot weekly or so -1 egg Bought the same router for our BYOD network at work. Continually reset itself to factory defaults after 12 hours. 5GHz radio died shortly thereafter. Had to RMA. -1 egg

Overall Review: Having a WRT1900AC at home that needs to be rebooted about once a week or so and the same model at work failing after 12 hours of use... these seem dubious at best. Hopefully a future firmware update will make my home router more stable and the replacement for work will function normally. VLAN implementation is there, but it seems pretty rudimentary. I need to investigate further. I would have tried DD-WRT firmware, but this model is not currently supported.

Great purchase

CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model CMD16GX3M4A1866C9
CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model CMD16GX3M4A1866C9

Pros: These look great and perform even better. The lighting is a nice touch. Went right in my EVGA X79 Classified motherboard with no problems. Selected the XMP profile, done.

Cons: None that I am aware of.

Overall Review: I've probably bought a terabyte of memory over the last ten or twelve years from Corsair. I've never had a problem with any of their memory. It just works. I just retired my first Corsair set (the extreme low latency DDR 400, 2-2-2-5, lol) after a flawless decade or more of service. They have a customer for life.