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James T.

James T.

Joined on 12/05/03

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 72
Most Favorable Review

Great little board

ASUS AT3GC-I Intel Atom 330 479 Intel 945GC Mini ITX Motherboard / CPU Combo
ASUS AT3GC-I Intel Atom 330 479 Intel 945GC Mini ITX Motherboard / CPU Combo

Pros: It's an ASUS product. The one thing that makes this board stand out against the other Atom based ITX boards is the heat sink. It's huge and covers both the CPU and the north bridge. Stress tested the cpu at 100% load for 30 minutes, CPU temp never went above 49 C. Seeing as this was used in a new PC build that will be used for web surfing, email and office apps I doubt it will ever see 100% CPU usage for any stretch of time.

Cons: The 40 mm cooling fan on the heatsink runs at 6000 RPM by default, and makes a whining sound. I bought a Zalman Fanmate 2 here at Newegg. By turning the RPM down to around 4200 the fan is silent. The EMI shield feels really really cheap, be easy with it.

Overall Review: As another reviewer had stated I turned the heat sink fan upside down to blow cool air into the heat sink fins. I did not try the fan they way it comes out of the box. Overall a great board and would buy again.

12/22/2009
Most Critical Review

Beware the drivers

ASUS M2A74-AM AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 740G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
ASUS M2A74-AM AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 740G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Nice simple board for an office or home machine. On board DVI is nice. It's an ASUS board so the name can be trusted.

Cons: The only con I have with this board is the onboard video. It's a Radeon 2100. This board is suffering from the ati2dvag infinite loop issue. Google that and you'll see this has been an issue for the last 5 years or so with ATI cards. Being an Nvidia guy I was unaware of this issue. Basically at random the ATI video driver will get stuck in an infinite loop and cause a BSOD. I tried the drivers that on the install DVD and the latest drivers from ATI's website, neither worked. The only two solutions I could find was install Omega drivers (3rd party drivers, again Google it) and disable all hardware acceleration. This isn't the fault of ASUS but ATI.

Overall Review: I will continue to buy ASUS boards, but I will buy ones based on Nvidia chipsets. An why doesn't ASUS include the q-connector with all of their boards, it got one with a more expensive board and it was great!

Odd experience

Cooler Master RP-065-S19A-J1 (NA 65) - Universal Laptop AC Adapter with 10 Adapter Tips
Cooler Master RP-065-S19A-J1 (NA 65) - Universal Laptop AC Adapter with 10 Adapter Tips

Pros: The unit works, just not with my laptop.

Cons: See other thoughts.

Overall Review: I bought this for an HP Pavilion DV4 laptop. This charger will not charge or power up this laptop. However this charger did work just fine on an HP Pavilion DV5 model as well as two Toshiba Satellites. I don't have a good explanation for this as the DV4 and DV5 lines both use the same charger, same wattage and all. I can't take any eggs off since this charger does work just fine, just know that it may not work on everything out there. If you are looking at this product for a Pavilion DV4 model, maybe you should get a 90w adapter?

Awesome

Logitech F310 Gamepad with broad game support and customizable buttons
Logitech F310 Gamepad with broad game support and customizable buttons

Pros: Looks brand new. Honestly it looks like someone took this controller out of retail packaging, put it in a plastic bag (that's how this item arrived, in a baggie) and shipped it. Downloaded the software from the Logitech website and I was ready to go.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: Others have mentioned they got a B grade or worse product. When buying a refurbished item there is always a gamble. At my office we bought 50 refurbished Panasonic laptops, not from Newegg though. About 10 of them went straight into storage for parts because they were so roughed up.

Great unit....odd packaging

HP Laptop Intel Pentium T4500 3GB Memory 320GB HDD Intel GMA 4500M 15.6" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit G62-219wm
HP Laptop Intel Pentium T4500 3GB Memory 320GB HDD Intel GMA 4500M 15.6" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit G62-219wm

Pros: This is a great unit at $350. The case material is slightly textured and is finger print proof. You can read the specs for yourself.

Cons: The shipping packaging on this was odd. The laptop was literally shrink wrapped to a piece of card board that was propped up in the middle of the box. No packing peanuts or anything else. I was shocked and frightened when I opened the box. The laptop did not have any blemishes on it and fired right up.

Overall Review: The packaging cause me to take a step back, but the laptop was undamaged. I would gladly order this again. I've already had three people at office comment about how nice this units looks and they were shocked at the price I paid.

What a steal

Fuel PC Game
Fuel PC Game

Pros: What a steal at six bucks! The game is fun. I like the post-disaster setting and the fact that you can free roam. The sound track seems to fit well enough. So far I have encountered four types of vehicles, a dirt bike, an ATV, a dune buggy and a muscle car. There may be other types I'm not sure, but the game does advertise 75 different vehicles in the game. I also really like the fact when you are free roaming you can pause the game and change to any vehicle you own on the fly. You don't have to go to a garage or some other special area to change your wheels.

Cons: Seems to only support the XBOX 360 controller. There is an emulator out there that will let you use other controllers. I downloaded the emulator and am using a Logitech Cordless Rumble Pad 2.

Overall Review: If you have Windows XP and a Creative X-Fi or Sound Blaster audio card you may have some popcorn-ish crackling noise coming from every vehicle's engine. This issue does not appear to affect Vista and 7. To fix it go to Start and then Run. Type dxdiag and go to the sound tab. Turn the hardware acceleration all the way off. Not the best solution but a good work around. I don't really consider this a con because most gamers have moved to Widnows 7 for DX 10 and 11 support. Some people say the handling is sloppy, is the first racing type game I've ever owned for my PC and it didn't seem sloppy to me. Yes there is some sliding, but it's off road racing. It makes sense that you slide a bit in gravel, grass and mud, maybe I'm just under-educated about racing games though.