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Gary P.

Gary P.

Joined on 07/19/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 4
Most Favorable Review

Amazing with Tomato

ASUS RT-N16 802.11b/g/n Gigabit Wireless Router up to 300 Mbps DD-WRT Open Source support with USB Storage, Printer and Media Server
ASUS RT-N16 802.11b/g/n Gigabit Wireless Router up to 300 Mbps DD-WRT Open Source support with USB Storage, Printer and Media Server

Pros: Linux based processor with adequate memory. Gibabit. USB port with print server. Open Source support for DD-WRT and Tomato; Tomato is outstanding. I have mine configured as a print server feeding the USB port of a laser printer whose ethernet port was previous taken out by a lightning strike .

Cons: Asus pathetic firmware. I tried their latest version from several months ago, and the router locked up daily. You have to go to go online and download Tomato and follow the instructions. This router is only single band. Range could be improved.

Overall Review: For the first week or two, I thought this was the worse product I had ever bought. Asus's tipsy firmware is atrocious, but I bought it for its Tomato support and decent hardware. Of course, anyone who has much experience with routers knows that most of the products out there have a lot of problems. In the past, I had used Dlink, with the DIR-655 being the last. When I finally dug into the code a bit, I found DD-WRT to be functional but limited. Finally, Tomato proved excellent. Although it's still running a beta, the router has never locked up, and continues to give a decent connection on my entire lawn. Tomato is easy to use, almost as intuitive as an iPhone. Having dual frequency N would have been even better, but I'm quite happy with the general throughput, setup and features of the RT-N16. If I couldn't have run Tomato on this router, I would have to rate this product 3 stars with DD-WRT, and 1 star if you just used Asus firmware.

10/29/2010
Most Critical Review

7 & 8 are terrible

NUANCE PDF Converter Professional 8.0
NUANCE PDF Converter Professional 8.0

Pros: Not as expensive as Adobe Standard 9 & does eventually work

Cons: I got version 7 to use on a Win 7 Pro i7 1.8ghz 8gb, & it was slow & often crashed. Upgraded to PDF Converter Professional 8 & it crashed less often & is a slight bit faster.

Overall Review: Nuance should spend some money to have this app redone from the core up. It's positives include updating PDF with text in different fonts & sizes that adobe did not support- at least in my version & a couple of others I've seen.

no more Syba or Newegg?

SYBA CL-ENC35015 Aluminum 3.5" Black SATA I/II/III USB 3.0 External Enclosure
SYBA CL-ENC35015 Aluminum 3.5" Black SATA I/II/III USB 3.0 External Enclosure

Pros: They sort of work for incremental backups working in the background with a low power hard drive attached to keep temperatures down. The size is good. The aluminum housing makes a handy enclosure for your next electronics project.

Cons: The biggest problem with these is that on occasion they hang, with the red indicator light on. I've seen this with two different model hard drives, the latter being the Hitachi 0F12117 2TB; this was verified with different USB 3.0 cables to rule out cabling issues. I have contacted them but have received no reply. And as others have noted, the enclosure provides insufficient cooling, and the screws don't fit.

Overall Review: I have two of these units and they have changed my opinion about NewEgg. I am a long time NewEgg customer having put together many PCs, and have always considered Newegg to be reliable. However in this case they shouldn't be carrying these models. Further, I am avoiding all Syba products going forward. I have these enclosures with a USB 3.0 hard drive docking station from another distributor that has proven to be reliable in long term

Not so good

Media Center Programmable LCD
Media Center Programmable LCD

Pros: The second one worked fine. The display can change depending on the program that is executing. And the price is reasonable.

Cons: This display can be read up to about 7 feet, which makes it worthless on most HTPCs where it you could be 15 feet away. The software is also worthless. Besides being unstable, it's pretty cryptic to setup anything. There is a help file, but it doesn't come up.

Overall Review: I'll give the device two stars because it sort of works. It's amazing how poor the display quality is. The display is a good idea that needs better execution.