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Steven S.

Steven S.

Joined on 04/06/02

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 6
Most Favorable Review

Excellent backup drive

WD 4TB Elements USB 3.0 2.5" Portable External Hard Drive WDBU6Y0040BBK-WESN Black
WD 4TB Elements USB 3.0 2.5" Portable External Hard Drive WDBU6Y0040BBK-WESN Black

Pros: Plug-and-play with Windows 10. Great sale price for a 4TB drive. Has been working flawlessly as a backup drive for my three internal drives using Macrium Reflect Home.

Cons: None

Overall Review: I’ve never bothered backing up my Windows machines because they’re used primarily for gaming. (All of my business work, important documents, correspondence, etc. are created and stored on my Macs.) But having recently had to restore my PC manually by reinstalling dozens of programs and reconfiguring everything made me think that a large, inexpensive backup drive was probably a good idea. While this is my first external WD drive, I’ve been very pleased. It’s silent and takes up less space on my desk than a deck of cards. The initial full backup of my three internal drives (around 1TB of data total) took a few hours as expected. Daily backups of approx. 1GB of changes occur quickly.

Most Critical Review

So-so TV set

Samsung UN32J5003BFXZA 32-Inch 1080p HD LED TV
Samsung UN32J5003BFXZA 32-Inch 1080p HD LED TV

Pros: Picture is decent; screen is covered by glass, enabling it to be easily cleaned; inexpensive

Cons: (1) Slow to start up—so slow that you may not think it's on; (2) source/input choice for DVD, game, and other connections may appear greyed out unless the device is already on; (3) when switching from watching a DVD to another input, screen may go black and it may or may not show the input screen when you press the Source button; (4) very few inputs (2 HDMI, 1 USB, and 1 composite/component); (5) music from USB must be in MP3 format (unlike virtually every other set, it doesn't support common audio formats) and supported video formats are limited as well; (6) difficult to select a new input before the menu vanishes from the screen; (7) it's setup menu only offers 1080i, not the 1080p advertised.

Overall Review: You get what you pay for. I was just expecting more convenience and ease-of-use from Samsung than this set provides.

Great marketplace seller

Microsoft 365 Personal | 12-Month Subscription, 1 person | Premium Office apps | 1TB OneDrive cloud storage | PC/Mac Keycard
Microsoft 365 Personal | 12-Month Subscription, 1 person | Premium Office apps | 1TB OneDrive cloud storage | PC/Mac Keycard

Pros: * shipped promptly * great price * retail box * easily updated my current Office 365 Personal by an additional year

Overall Review: I’ve been hesitant to buy from marketplace sellers, but the transaction went perfectly and was shipped promptly.

Bargain price but too tightly wound

Coboc 5 ft. Cat 6 550MHz UTP Network Cable (Blue)
Coboc 5 ft. Cat 6 550MHz UTP Network Cable (Blue)

Pros: Can’t beat this price for CAT 6 cables Work as expected

Cons: Wound as tightly as possible to reduce shipping size. Unfortunately, this also means that the cables are curled rather than straight. Attempting to straighten them in order to get their full length is difficult.

Overall Review: On first use, one of the cables showed a 5% drop in speed compared to the 5e cable it replaced. Rebooting the router appears to have corrected this issue. Be sure to check the various shipping methods offered. By choosing the slightly more expensive expedited option (an extra dollar) rather than cheapest one, I shaved several days off the notoriously slow FedEx SmartPost. Note: These comments apply to all Coboc Ethernet patch cables that I purchased in this order: 2, 5, 14, and 20 ft.

Nice while it lasted -- but they never last

Seagate Backup Plus for Mac 2TB 3.5" USB 3.0 Mac Storage - Desktop Model STCB2000900
Seagate Backup Plus for Mac 2TB 3.5" USB 3.0 Mac Storage - Desktop Model STCB2000900

Pros: Lengthy warranty

Cons: 1) Customer is responsible for return shipping on defective drives. 2)Warranty replacements are made from other customers' returns; i.e., USED drives. 3) Included Mac software can safely be ignored; not especially useful. 4) Case is the weak link in all Seagate external drives and tends to fail.

Overall Review: I keep suckering myself into buying Seagate external drives (based on their former reputation), but the result is always the same. With 6-18 months, the case on their external drive fails. The hard disk is fine, but the case inevitably dies. UPDATE: Because this drive was no longer available, Seagate replaced the failed drive with a larger one! Excellent customer service!

Still great!

Verbatim 4.7GB 16X DVD-R White Inkjet Printable, Hub Printable 50 Packs Spindle Disc Model 95079
Verbatim 4.7GB 16X DVD-R White Inkjet Printable, Hub Printable 50 Packs Spindle Disc Model 95079

Pros: They burn nicely (probably had less than 3 failures out of hundreds) and print beautifully with my Canon Pixma printer. No matter which variety of Verbatim printable DVDs I've purchased over the past 8-10 years, they've never let me down.

Cons: None