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William S.

William S.

Joined on 07/30/03

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Product Reviews
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product reviews
  • 26
Most Favorable Review

Great little box, one nearly fatal flaw

Shuttle SA76G2 AMD Socket AM2+ / AM3 AMD 760G Barebone
Shuttle SA76G2 AMD Socket AM2+ / AM3 AMD 760G Barebone

Pros: Nice little box, uses AMD processors, so total system cost of even fairly powerful machines is low. I use these for security webcam servers, with 2TB RAID arrays and all sorta of features. Nice cooling, as much horsepower as you want, 4G of memory, Centos 5.5 knows about all the devices, can't lose, right?

Cons: 1) OK, minor quibble, max 105W TDP for the CPU, but there are lots of quad-core AMD CPUs within that restriction. 2) Shuttle is pretty unresponsive, opened a ticket a week ago and haven't even gotten an acknowledgment back yet. 3) YEAH, I'M SHOUTING!!!! CERTAIN BIOS SETTINGS CAN CAUSE THE MACHINE TO GET NETWORK ERRORS, PERL CODE ERRORS, AND OTHER BIZARRE OPERATIONS. I have another {identical} box here, so I was able to determine that it wasn't CPU, memory, OS, and was in fact the chassis. Bought another new chassis (yes, thanks, Shuttle, I am made of money, and don't mind at all having to buy another chassis because you don't respond to tickets.), and it has the same problem. Tearing of hair, gnashing of teeth, rending of clothing, finally discovered the problem, and now I'm kinda back on track for my customer deployment in a couple of days. But it's win-win, because my time is worth nothing.

Overall Review: If you disable audio in the BIOS (because it's a headless file/compute server and has no use for audio), you get the above network and compute errors. Perl Magick forgets to annotate images. network file copies break after a while with "Corrupted MAC on input" errors, both on the builtin ethernet and two separate (different mfr, different chipset) PCI network cards. Just really weird and intermittent hardware failures. Not bitter at all!

Most Critical Review

I assume it's going to be great, but it doesn't match the description (wrong RAM size)

Shuttle XPC Cube SH110R4 Intel Socket LGA1151 Intel H110 1 x HDMI Barebone Systems
Shuttle XPC Cube SH110R4 Intel Socket LGA1151 Intel H110 1 x HDMI Barebone Systems

Pros: Love the Shuttle boxes, use them for everything!

Cons: The description says it uses "2 x 260Pin SO-DIMM DDR4 2133", but the actual motherboard uses full-size 288-pin DDR4 DRAMs. This cost me almost $150 in buying the wrong memory, that I have to try to get NewEgg to refund, and then waste a few more days awaiting the correct RAM. And the pins that hold the heatsink down to the motherboard weren't installed, and one of them got bent, and didn't want to hold together properly, though I took it all apart and straightened it out. This "pushpin" thing doesn't hold a candle to the previous method of using screws... Sigh.

Overall Review: OK, so Shuttle seems a bit confused as well, as they list quad memory kits (there are only two physical slots) in their hardware Memory Support List, but this turned a nice Saturday evening build into a disappointment. More results if I think of it after I get the parts and try again...

OK monitor till it developed a problem in 8 months and it cost me $100 to return it for warranty service

Acer KG271U bmiippx 27" WQHD 2560 x 1440 2K Resolution 1ms (GTG) 75Hz 2xHDMI, 2xDisplayPort AMD FreeSync Built-in Speakers LED Backlit Gaming Monitor
Acer KG271U bmiippx 27" WQHD 2560 x 1440 2K Resolution 1ms (GTG) 75Hz 2xHDMI, 2xDisplayPort AMD FreeSync Built-in Speakers LED Backlit Gaming Monitor

Pros: It wasn't terribly expensive (see TCOO below), compared to the Dell monitors I usually buy, and this allowed me to shift more money to the computer it was connected to.

Cons: After less than 8 months of extremely light use, it developed a green vertical line even when disconnected from the computer, so I pursued the RMA process, only to discover I needed to send it back to them at my expense. Since I hadn't kept the box (who keeps boxes for 8-month old monitors? Future Me does, but Current Me not so much) I had to pay the UPS Store to pack and ship it for me. Had I kept the box, the shipping still would have been on the order of $50, so not cheap either way. Plus a non-zero amount of my time diagnosing the problem, doing the RMA process (We want the serial number. No, not the Serial number, the SNID, etc, etc, etc), and taking the monitor to the UPS Store and selecting all the options for shipping it back to Texas. And I'll be down a monitor for ~2 weeks during the process.

Overall Review: I've got hand-me-down Dell monitors a decade old that still work, so decent reliability is an achievable goal, but I guess you get what you pay for. I used to work in reliability engineering, so I know what can be done, and the costs of proper engineering and testing versus RMA, but this monitor is on the wrong side of the Total Cost Of Ownership line for me. Next time I'll get a Dell monitor and not worry about it.

Works great FOR ABOUT A YEAR

TP-Link 5GHz N300 Long Range Outdoor CPE for PtP and PtMP Transmission | Point to Point Wireless Bridge | 13dBi, 15km+ | Passive PoE Powered w/ Free PoE Injector | Pharos Control (CPE510) White
TP-Link 5GHz N300 Long Range Outdoor CPE for PtP and PtMP Transmission | Point to Point Wireless Bridge | 13dBi, 15km+ | Passive PoE Powered w/ Free PoE Injector | Pharos Control (CPE510) White

Pros: Easy to install, wizard for simple setup, low cost. PoE passthrough for running two devices from one power supply with a single CAT5 feed.

Cons: Not 802.3af PoE, they saved a few dollars by cheaping out on 24V passive PoE. But then PoE passthrough, so not all bad. Our infrastructure is mostly 802.3f, so extra power supplies and loss of remote control for power-cycling is less than ideal.

Overall Review: I've bought 60 of these for a wireless Island Area Network over the last year, and almost all of them have eventually failed. The 'window' that lets you see the LEDs for power, ethernet, and signal strength rots out in the sun, allowing rainwater ingress and rapid failure. Yeah, 2-year warranty, but my business plan doesn't involve visiting every client site and swapping out the radio every year. <Previously> We're starting to deploy these on some 50-ish locations on an island in the Caribbean to replace some aging and expensive PMP gear, it's an order of magnitude less expensive than the "professional" gear we were looking at, and seems to work even better than expected. Won't know for 6 months or so how it does in multiple PMP mode (4-5 APs at a single location and 50-ish clients), but we're about to order another dozen or two for the next stage, so we're pretty happy. Cost really matters when you are buying these things by the dozen, and we've been pretty impressed! </Previously>

10/21/2017

An expensive learning experience, but a nice looking box!

Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) BOXNUC6CAYH Black Barebone Systems - Mini / Booksize
Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) BOXNUC6CAYH Black Barebone Systems - Mini / Booksize

Pros: Trying to build these up as cheap Windows desktops for folks, so $150 for the low-end box, $100 for 8G RAM, and $100 for a SSD, and we should have a nice $350 PC.

Cons: I read here a week or so ago that they come with a Windows 10 licence. Not true, and another $100. The spec says the BOXNUC6CAYH has M2/SATA, but the M2 slot is only 30mm long, so won't hold a SSD, and is taken up by the WiFi card anyway, so return the M2 SSD and order SATA SSD. more days go by. As a 'loss leader' $450 is a bit much, when Dell boxes start at $270 with a Win10 license... Good thing my tim eis worth nothing.

Overall Review: I'll report back when I've got everything running, and the size can't be beat, so maybe this will become part of my available goods and services, but not as thrilled as I was hoping to be.

MDP Does not work

StarTech.com CDPVGDVHDMDP USB C Multiport Video Adapter - Aluminum - USB-C to VGA/HDMI/Mini DisplayPort/DVI Adapter -Display Adapter (CDPVGDVHDMDP)
StarTech.com CDPVGDVHDMDP USB C Multiport Video Adapter - Aluminum - USB-C to VGA/HDMI/Mini DisplayPort/DVI Adapter -Display Adapter (CDPVGDVHDMDP)

Pros: Other ports work fine on 2016 Touch-Bar MacBook Pro

Cons: Mini-Display-Port non-functional

Overall Review: Nope, expensive, and there are other options

seller reviews
  • 1

It's a toner cartridge

Price was good, it came in plenty of time, seems to be genuine Lexmark, not much to say.

On-time
Delivery
Product
Accuracy
Customer Service
Satisfactory