Joined on 09/18/04
WD Recertified = Awesome
Pros: Price/Performance "WD" RAID (TLER...YES)
Cons: none
Overall Review: I purchased 4 of these re-certified (two initially, which worked well so i went back for two more to set up RAID1) Over 30 days 24x7 on an Dedicated raid controller and these babies are rock solid. Also have TLER firmware option unlike other WD drives other than their RE edition. Newegg was selling the re certified for $65 inc S/H but even at the new price these are worth the money. SSD write cycle limitation has caused several OCZ drives to fail in my config. Magnetic HDD are still more durable for high write RAID arrays albeit they may not bench fastest.
Stay clear of OCZ PSUs - support/warranty is below industry standards.
Pros: Modular, PFC
Cons: Reliability Noise OCZ Support & RMA process
Overall Review: Had this PSU working for about 7 months without and issues. Then it dies unexpectedly. RMA required copies of receipt, serial # and shipment back before a replacement would be sent. Took 2-3 weeks with me on top of the process. BUT.....The replacement unit was much louder and had the infamous winding noise described by others. I contacted OCZ and they want me to go through this process again ( paying for shipping...again) and they were unable/unwilling to look at previous RMA from less that 30 days. I had to start from scratch. Before I was able to get info together (again) OCZ closes my trouble ticket....WTT^&%? I would expect better from OCZ. This unit was not cheap. ( I own 4 vertex, Summit, many RAM modules, etc.) There reliability has not been what it once was, and their support/warranty is below industry standards.
Firmware not ready for prime time
Pros: Great range if you can get it installed
Cons: 4 hours on set-up and it still wasn't running properly.
Overall Review: The software is buggy. The first time I set-up the Orbi it wouldn't let me into the advanced settings section. The best Netgear support could tell me was to hard reset. That was after an hour chat with them. After the hard reset, the advanced features were accessible. The first thing I tried to do was update the firmware. The auto update kept hanging so I tried to manually update. I managed to manually update the base unit but could not get the satellite to update as it kept telling me I was using wrong firmware version. I downloaded again to make sure it wasn't corrupt. Same problem. Another thing was it kept telling me I had no internet connection and to reset my modem. I kept doing it and it would take 5-10 minutes before internet came up. After spending 4 hours "trying" to set-up I decided to send it back. I'll wait a year before trying again with this. Back to my trusty old ASUS RT-N66U running WRT Merlin. It performs well enough and is reliable. So I lose a few mbps. I can still stream HD on a 802.11n. ac is not a must have in my opinion after doing some light testing with the Orbi base unit. I'll be $400 richer for it.
Nice Camera for Price
Pros: 3MP, POE, Great Picture
Cons: Aver-USA NV6480e16 capture card doesn't natively support, although it works under RTSP.
Overall Review: Other reviewers don't know what they are talking about. to give one star because of linux support is a joke. This is an open standards ONVIF camera. doesn't get much more universal than that.
Great Board - USB3 Header?
Pros: Dual intel NIC ECC Ram Xeon CPU Support TPM The extras that come with this board are amazing. A big bag of add-on goodies all included (unlike some other vendors)
Cons: Motherboard USB 3.0 Header? I know the board supports but think I need adapter to use with my case front panel USB3.0 which uses a 19-pin front panel header. I cant find this on the MB.
Overall Review: Case is Corsair 550D (which is really nice...silent...truly tool less)
Great Craftsmanship - But Engineering shows case Age
Pros: Can beat finish/craftsmanship of Lian-Li aluminum Cases ( I own several of them, & others before Lian Li).
Cons: in 2011 a $200 case should include 2.5'' Bracket for SSD to align with Lian-Li back-plane (neither Intel's or Corsairs brackets shipped w/SSD align sata/power ports inside cage). Forget this case using MB with right-angle (side facing) Sata ports (most Gigabyte High-ends) unless you want to remove & modify HDD Cage ( takes about 1 hour). Engineering oversight IMO as aluminum cut-out could easily have been done at factory/MFG. Use with MB having upward facing sata connectors.
Overall Review: Fit and finish is Lian-Li...second to none. USB 3 on front would've been nice (again, sign of design age)