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SCOTT S.

SCOTT S.

Joined on 07/05/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 26
Most Favorable Review

Great monitor

ASUS VE247H 24" (Actual size 23.6") Full HD 1920 x 1080 VGA DVI-D HDMI Built-in Speakers LED Backlit LCD Monitor
ASUS VE247H 24" (Actual size 23.6") Full HD 1920 x 1080 VGA DVI-D HDMI Built-in Speakers LED Backlit LCD Monitor

Pros: Great monitor, it looks wonderful over HDMI. I got a deal on it while it was on sale as well.

Cons: As usual, the speakers are absolute cr*p(very common for LCD monitors). No worries for me though, because I have external...

10/28/2011
Most Critical Review

Was good for 1-2 years

CORSAIR TX Series CMPSU-650TX 650 W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply & New 4th Gen CPU Certified Haswell Ready
CORSAIR TX Series CMPSU-650TX 650 W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply & New 4th Gen CPU Certified Haswell Ready

Pros: I own two of these, both purchased in late 2010. The PSU worked great and flawlessly for about 1.5 years on one machine, and 2 years on the other. They operate 24/7 in two FreeNAS boxes, each with 6 HDDs and a flash drive with a micro-ATX motherboard.

Cons: After 1-2 years, the fans started to make bad noises. Extremely noisy. A few weeks later, the clicking starts. It's certainly internal to the PSUs. I have RMAed both of these today, waiting to hear back now from CORSAIR.

Overall Review: The PSU's still work, but the clicking and fan issues are unbearable unless this thing is tucked away in a closet.

11/12/2012

Worse mouse movement ever

Logitech diNovo Mini Black 63 Normal Keys Bluetooth Wireless Mini Keyboard
Logitech diNovo Mini Black 63 Normal Keys Bluetooth Wireless Mini Keyboard

Pros: It's small, that's about the only good thing I can say about it.

Cons: I got one in the mail, set it up without much hassle on my PC, and the keyboard seemed to work fine - but the mouse functionality was the worst in the world. No matter how I played with the settings, movement was sporadic and unusable. I thought it was a lemon so I got a replacement. Unfortunately, the replacement was just as bad. I even tried the thing on two computers. I'm not sure how logitech is using or testing these things, but it's miserable. Additionally, no back-light.

Own 12, 3 RMAed - around 2 yrs

Western Digital WD Green WD20EARS 2TB 5400 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Western Digital WD Green WD20EARS 2TB 5400 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: 75% of them are still up and running, and I haven't hadn't operational issues until they begin to fail at least.

Cons: I've owned 12+ of these. 3 I have been replaced (RMA). Obviously 25% is a huge percentage for HDD failures, pretty unacceptable really. Granted, I run these nearly 24/7 in a small server, but I've never had such high percentages of failures. They work for a 6-18 months than die, unfortunately.

Overall Review: I don't have a huge problem replacing these whenever they fail. I'll live, I have my data in a RAIDZ array and use other means for the most important data - so it's not the end of the world when they fail and I need to rebuild. It's more just a pain. Anyhow, I wish I had about 20 hours of my life back from dealing with these. I won't skimp on HDDs next time!

Works like it should

GARMIN 4.3" GPS Navigation with Lifetime Map Updates
GARMIN 4.3" GPS Navigation with Lifetime Map Updates

Pros: It's about what I coudl expect. I got a great price over the holidays, and I'm happy with it. It usually finds the GPS signal pretty fast, too. Lifetime maps is nice =).

Cons: Even with the latest maps, it's not always the most correct, it thinks some roads still don't exist. Maybe next version...

Solid

Intel 320 Series 2.5" 160GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDSA2CW160G3K5
Intel 320 Series 2.5" 160GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDSA2CW160G3K5

Pros: Works as expected. It's certainly faster than my 7200 RPM drive, so it's exactly what I wanted.

Cons: The encryption is just ok. To be clear: it beings actually being "encrypted" once your SATA HDD password is set via BIOS. At this point, the encryption key is linked to that password - and bam, you're set. I say only "OK" because almost every bios will limit your SATA HDD password to 8 characters. 8 characters is NOT a very secure password. If you have a real need to encrypt your drive, you're likely using a password with over 20 characters. Point being, it's as I said - fine. Although, I await the moderately priced SSD that can actually allow for some proper encryption...

Overall Review: I'm still using this HDD encryption in lieu of TrueCrypt FDE.