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James V.

James V.

Joined on 08/23/11

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 13
Most Favorable Review

Well...

Sennheiser HD 428 SC Closed Circumaural Hi-Fi Headphone, 4.5ft Single Sided Cord
Sennheiser HD 428 SC Closed Circumaural Hi-Fi Headphone, 4.5ft Single Sided Cord

Pros: It's Sennheiser. Comfortable enough for my big, sensitive head. Super-duper clear. Crisp-highs, well-toned mids.. Great soundstage(big sound). You hear things in songs you don't hear from cheaper earbuds/headphones. *See other thoughts*

Cons: These are marketed for iThings, mp3 players, and I assume other smartphones, even though it's not specifically mentioned on the package. Maybe iOS products have more power output, but my android phone doesn't have the power output to properly drive these cans. Don't get me wrong, they still sound superb, but lack the punch to be fully immersive.

Overall Review: When attached to my powered desktop speakers, these headphones really come to life. For some bands, I have to dial back the low-end a tad, and these haven't even been properly burned-in. All-in-all, these are a great buy, for what I payed, at least. I'm not sure if they are worth $99, but they are hardly ever that price.

Most Critical Review

Depends on how you use it

DD-WRT Supported, Rosewill RNX-N150RTv2 - Wireless N150 Wi-Fi Router - IEEE 802.11b/11g/11n, Up to 150 Mbps Data Rates, 5 dBi Fixed Antenna, WDS Bridge Connection, QoS and VPN Supported
DD-WRT Supported, Rosewill RNX-N150RTv2 - Wireless N150 Wi-Fi Router - IEEE 802.11b/11g/11n, Up to 150 Mbps Data Rates, 5 dBi Fixed Antenna, WDS Bridge Connection, QoS and VPN Supported

Pros: Low ping time via lan port, unlike my cheap ASUS. Wireless N speed is about 13mbps on a 20mbps line. Only had to reboot once(first day) in a 2 month period. No noticable wifi N speed degredation with low signal strength, but....

Cons: Wifi N strength is not great. My router is not in a great spot, but it is about 6 feet high. about 30 feet away is fluctuates 2-3 bars with no walls in between, but take into account that is with interference from a baby monitor. These cons are not a deal breaker and only get 1 egg deduction. The deal breaker and final egg is no QoS. The wifey streams a lot of Netflix and my online gaming lag times go through the roof when she starts a new episode.

Overall Review: before netflix i had no issue with no QoS, but now i see the advantage. If no one is streaming movies(and no torrents, i would assume) then this is a pretty good router, and its great for the price. i was amazed how stable it is. after the firmware update it adds the ability to use it in bridge mode or an access point. i cant stress enough how stable this router is.

DV7-7030us

HP Laptop Pavilion Intel Core i7-3610QM 8GB Memory 1TB HDD Intel HD Graphics 4000 17.3" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit dv7-7030us
HP Laptop Pavilion Intel Core i7-3610QM 8GB Memory 1TB HDD Intel HD Graphics 4000 17.3" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit dv7-7030us

Pros: Big screen, screen looks great(glossy) for 1600x900, big keyboard with good action for a chiclet style, big battery that allows airflow under the laptop. Quad-core(good if you actually need it).

Cons: stock boot time around a minute(only booted twice before tinkering), RAM speed is only 10600. Quad core is slow in single thread processes. bloatware. Knew this going in, no eggs deducted.

Overall Review: Bought for my wife's work. Wanted a quad core laptop with a good screen and a keyboard that didn't feel like mush. She may have benefited more from a faster clocked dual core. She runs about 8 system hogging programs that are hogs because they are poorly written. I wanted the quad core for the 6mb cache, although, ultimately, since i put in a Plextore M3 512 ssd and a fresh instal of win 7, it may be a moot point. After the ssd and a 0 second post delay with no log in password, cold boot to windows fully loaded and ready in about 13-14 seconds. Her work programs put the boot time back around a minute, though. Shut down still only takes a few seconds, which is remarkable difference compared to minutes. HD 4000 gets a 6.5 WEI rating(decent or bad, depending on laptops use). "Beats" sounds marginally better than a normal laptop. A lot cooler looking than a D e l l and less pretentious than a piece of fruit that's had a bite taken out of it.

Plextor M3 512

Plextor M3 Series 2.5" 512GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) PX-512M3
Plextor M3 Series 2.5" 512GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) PX-512M3

Pros: super fast, great price for the quality and size.

Cons: Least random 4k IOPS of this line

Overall Review: Still really too soon to tell, but initial thoughts are very impressive. Didn't check/change the firmware. Just did fresh win 7 pro install with no issues. With 0 second post delay and no password to input, cold boot is ready to go in just under 13 seconds on a laptop with a 3610QM. After my wife's tech department got all of its crapware running, it still boots in under a minute and shuts down in just a few seconds, which is at least 1/3 for start up and at least 1/10th the time for shutdown. My wife doesn't give a hoot about computers, but even she said it was fast. Will update review in due time.

wow

Rosewill N300 Wireless PCI Express Adapter, 300 Mbps (2.4 GHz) PCIe Wi-Fi Network Card for PC
Rosewill N300 Wireless PCI Express Adapter, 300 Mbps (2.4 GHz) PCIe Wi-Fi Network Card for PC

Pros: Went from a usb card on a 6ft cord to this and WOW!. My signal went from 1-2 bars to a solid 5 all the time. In my neighborhood, I'm currently picking up 6 other signals and we live on .5 acre lots. No worries about lag, packet loss, dc's at all in big name MMOs. Very, very suprised. I cannot say enough about how great this is.

Cons: When I brag about it most people don't give a....

Overall Review: I was skeptical about picking up a Rosewill vs an ASUS or other name brand. No regrets at all.

VX2453mh

ViewSonic VX2453mh-LED Black 23.6" Full HD HDMI LED BackLight LCD Monitor Slim Design w/Speakers 250 cd/m2 DC 30,000,000:1 (1,000:1)
ViewSonic VX2453mh-LED Black 23.6" Full HD HDMI LED BackLight LCD Monitor Slim Design w/Speakers 250 cd/m2 DC 30,000,000:1 (1,000:1)

Pros: The best text clarity I have ever seen in an LCD/LED monitor as long as it's at native resolution. No text ghosting. No gaming ghosting when responce time is set to ultra fast. Colors are great on ycbcr444 after lots and lots of tinkering around with colors.

Cons: Color pre-sets by themselves are worthless. I'm not a professional monitor color settings specialist by any means, but it took me about 12 hours or so to get the colors set up to a suitable lvl. Would've actually preferred DVI so that what's being output from my graphics card will be instantly on screen. I don't know if this is an HDMI thing, but my TV does it also when using it via HDMI.

Overall Review: Coming from an HP w1907. I'm the oddball, I guess, but i like the glossy screens on monitors that have them. The colors are more vivid. The VX2453 has a matte, and most people seem to prefer it. All that to say, coming from the HP, i was used to very vivid colors and having some very useful pre-set color schemes. I mentioned before, and I mean it, it took me around 12 hours of gaming with dual monitor set-up side by side to finally get a color scheme that I could live with. Once i got a game right, then my internet window colors would be off. I finally had to use nvidia control panel to play with color settings to dial it in correctly. Switching to ycbcr444 on the monitor doesn't provide correct colors. I use nvidia gpus, so i swtiched to ycbcr444 in the nvidia control panel. Ultimately, the initial pain and headache of color set-up was worth it. I don't use the word "amazing" lightly(it's a currently over-used word) bu this monitor is AMAZING.