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James C.

James C.

Joined on 03/26/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 4
Most Favorable Review

Awesome phone, but a tad overkill

Cisco SPA 525G2 5-Line IP Phone with Color Display, PoE, 802.11g, Bluetooth, Mobile Link
Cisco SPA 525G2 5-Line IP Phone with Color Display, PoE, 802.11g, Bluetooth, Mobile Link

Pros: The phone has a wonderful display, and everything my customers love about the SPA5xx line. They look good, sound good, and perform well. I have two of these units specifically for the built in WiFi functionality. Semi portable phones where my wired network doesn't reach. I find this to be a more secure solution than to use the other phones with the cisco wifi dongle (which can easily be plugged into any other device). The phone also locks out it's PC LAN port when on WiFi so nobody can try to plug into that.

Cons: The provisioning interface (web gui), while adequate, looks absolutely nothing like the rest of the phone's series. It's OK, but different. I don't understand why you'd make a whole series of phones, then change that on ONE of them. Using Ubiquity access points with "zero hand-off" enabled makes these phones not connect to the network at all. They'll scan, see the network, try to connect, and get stuck there. The phones are also only wireless G devices. Not a huge problem, but as ubiquitous as N is getting, you'd thing a $300+ voip phone would have it. Custom pictures on the display and the ability to play MP3s off a USB stick hardly make this worth the premium it commands.

Overall Review: Awesome phones that work great with Asterisk. I just wish they'd left some of the fluff off. If there were a SPA504G with the wifi functionality built in (not the dongle) then I'd go for that in a heartbeat.

Most Critical Review

Decent Laptop, refurb process stinks

ASUS Laptop AMD A8-4500M 8GB Memory 750GB HDD AMD Radeon HD 7640G 15.6" Windows 8 K55N-BH81-CB
ASUS Laptop AMD A8-4500M 8GB Memory 750GB HDD AMD Radeon HD 7640G 15.6" Windows 8 K55N-BH81-CB

Pros: It's a laptop. It does laptop things. It came in a package that looks like a bunch of otter pops taped together. I could probably use that as a life raft.

Cons: The keyboard is the "French Canadian" one that is on ASUS' website. A little funky, but I will be able to figure it out. The documentation (one whole sheet of paper) mentions that there is no recovery partition due to the refurb process (but there is one). The massive one sheet of paper also has underlined hyperlinks to how to make recovery disks (since the ASUS Software apparently isn't included with this WIN8 image). The actual web site is never mentioned, nor is the file this page came from included with the notebook. The hard drive is horrendously slow (I suspect under 5400rpm) and bottlenecks the system horribly. Compared to my 5 year old Core2Duo HP laptop, this thing is still a snail. I am already looking into a better HDD or SSD.

Overall Review: If you're fine with a slow HDD, funky keyboard, and virtually ZERO documentation (because the documentation included is for win7 and not the installed WIN8) then this is great. Otherwise spend a little more and get a better notebook.

Great performance, design is OK

ASUS P8Z77-V LK LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
ASUS P8Z77-V LK LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Pros: Its a great board. I absolutely love that a lot of the things that used to be on premium boards have trickled down to the more value oriented ones. This board has everything you need for a solid gaming setup, without the expensive fluff. Obnoxious amount of USB headers on the board to fit just about any case's front port needs. 4 sets of USB 2 and one usb 3 header were more than I knew what to do with.

Cons: My two problems with this board are the memory slots are over an area that was shortened (you only use 6 screws to attach this guy to your case). You have to hold onto the board to snap the memory in, or it will bend. I don't really understand what shaving an inch and a half off the length of the board is supposed to accomplish. This definitely isn't microATX, so I don't know what they were going for. If you're going to swap memory lots, you might want to put something non conductive under the slots for support. My other problem is the VGA header stacked on top of the DVI port. Again, the thing moves when you plug in a tight cable. If you're going to be using that port a lot I'd suggest you get a short extension cable to keep the wear off of the on board port.

Overall Review: Great board, If you can catch it on a promo (like right now) I'd totally buy it!

Awesome monitor, but that is all that is in the box.

LG IPS224T-PN Black 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor 250 cd/m2 5,000,000:1 IPS Panel
LG IPS224T-PN Black 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor 250 cd/m2 5,000,000:1 IPS Panel

Pros: Out of the box the monitor looks great. Very slim and looks AMAZING next to my two 4 year old E228WFP Dell screens. Comes with a cable, albeit a short VGA cable.

Cons: Should have a DVI cable in the box. Who exclusively uses VGA anymore? Screws didn't come with it, so I had to hunt down some so I could use my VESA mount for it. The included stand looks flimsy, though I won't be using it. The [red] power light is too bright, and BLINKS when there is no signal (e.g., your computer is off or on standby), which is annoying. The power brick (wall wart)'s cable is just a tad too short. It should at least take the standard PC power plug instead of going into the wall itself, so i can lengthen it if needed.

Overall Review: The panel itself is great. LG obviously skimped on everything else to get the price point down. How much does a DVI cable cost, honestly? As much as I hate the monitor's shortcomings, I am honestly thinking of replacing the two older Dell screens with these too.

12/11/2012