Pros: Small, easy to set up, has a quick scan feature so you can do a batch with minimal setup time, but also has the Silverfast software for critical tweaking. Scan time is unexpectedly fast even at high resolution, comparing to our high end Microtek Scanmaker i800 at work. Because Silverfast is also a Twain interface, you can scan from your favorite Twain-aware photo editor. The main reason I got this was that our Epson Perfection 1660 has poor focus when used on slides or negatives. This Plustek is like night and day on focus improvement. I am well pleased in that area.

Cons: The first one I received was defective. I called plustek tech support who were very helpful and told me it was definitely bad. It was producing unexpected purple splotches in a clear blue sky, and random yellow snow on dark solid areas. Looked very strange. Only other con is that the negative holder is kind of a clunky thing. I prefer the slide-in holder that Epson uses. But it works and you get used to it.

Overall Review: Like I said, the first one was bad out of the box with funny color snow that it added to the scans, but the second one is a dream machine. I have nearly a thousand negatives and slides for which I have no prints, and this scanner will make it possible to see them again. If you are handy you can also make a paper mask adapter for 110 negatives and scan then with the negative holder.

Pros: It does work fine as long as you don't need to use 3D Accelerated apps.

Cons: This board was bought specifically so that all the layers in WoW would show up, replacing an older card that worked but some things didn't appear in the scenes. It installed fine and appeared to work with various apps, but then we tried it on WoW. As soon as we went past the opening screen, the whole computer froze and then rebooted. Got an RMA on this and sent it back. NewEgg promptly sent another one. Put it in, same lockup problem. I then ordered a different model from Newegg with same NVidia chipset and it has worked fine for almost a year. I put this card in another workstation that wasn't for gaming. It worked fine, until I tried to use Google Earth. Then it froze and rebooted. Finally I put it on my Linux workstation and used the nvidia driver. Worked fine, even with Google Earth, but when I fired up Thunderbird, it would randomly lock up the whole machine. Finally I called it quits. It's a waste of money sending it back twice. I salvaged the fan and put the board in the trash.

Overall Review: I am happy that some people aren't having problems with this board, but since I sent the first one back and the second one has the same serious problem of system lockup, which is repeatable on three machines and with different OSes, I have to conclude that there is a design flaw with the board. It's not NVidia's fault because a similar 7600 card from another vendor works fine. My recommendation: don't buy this particular card. There is a design flaw somewhere in it. Shop around. NewEgg has lots to choose from.

Pros: It worked right away, detected the drive with no problems, and I have used it with Windows 2000 and Linux (Debian Etch) so far. Works fine. This is a handy way to test and reformat drives without tearing the case apart. And the old issue of finding a spare IDE port and hoping it plays nicely with the existing drive is eliminated.

Cons: Not really a con, but the manual implies that it doesn't matter whether you set the drive as master or slave. It does. On all the drives I tried, both in Linux and Windows, the drive is not detected unless its jumper is set as master. So set your drive as master!

Overall Review: This is a great way to test and format drives, or make yourself a giant portable drive. No drivers should be needed with modern OS. But bear in mind that for failed-drive testing, your dos boot utilities such as Maxblast may not work since the USB drive probably won't be detected on DOS or older BIOS, which is my case. So you work around this with Windows utilities or in the case of Linux, I used fsck and the mke2fs -cc command does a nice check while attempting to reformat. Everything you need is in the kit, so this looks like a good answer for whatever reason you need to connect an IDE drive without opening the case.

Comments: Works great for me. Using Athlon 1700. No problems setting up. This board is shipped with the CMOS jumper set in reset, but there was a piece of paper strapped across the RAM sockets warning me of this. Great board, great price. I'd get another, but this was a replacement for a slower CPU. Next one will be faster than this board can go!