Joined on 01/05/05
Great platform for OpenWRT
Pros: The Gigabit ports (even for the WAN port) are very welcome, since most cable modems support speeds > 100 Mbps. Supports OpenWRT firmware, and is quite stable.
Cons: Indicator lights may be a bit too bright in a dark room. Wish it included ports to connect external antennas, the built-in ones are fine for small houses, but signal drops off outdoors, especially at 5.8 GHz.
Overall Review: This router has similar hardware to the WNDR3700 v2. Newer builds of OpenWRT support it out of the box, without having to do a full custom build. 128 MB RAM, 16 MB Flash, Aetheros AR7161.
Bad adhesive and bearings
Pros: Cheap
Cons: Like others have complained, the thermal adhesive is no good. Also, the sleeve bearings dried out in a few months and the fan started growling loudly.
Overall Review: I'm using it with an MSK K8N Neo4 SLI, where the southbridge is too close to the second PCI-E slot, so I needed something with a low profile after the original fan died. The southbridge on this board gets very hot, which probably accelerated the failure. After the bearings started to dry out, I took the fan off and carefully peeled back the sticker on the bottom (side that faces the heatsink). I dropped in a little oil there, which keeps it going for now.
Looks good, needs a few fixes
Pros: Looks nice, fairly accurate, easy to read display.
Cons: The capacitive buttons don't work well for me. It's hard to accurately tare the scale, since the force of pressing the tare button adds to the weight of the bowl. Needs a level surface to work properly, since the sensors are in the feet.
Overall Review: Got it on sale for $10. Can't complain too loudly at that price!
Pros: Black. Looks good in my Corsair Carbide case. Doesn't play well with it though (see below). Hosts my Fedora 20 installation on a HyperX SSD with no trouble so far. Built-in video works great, without fglrx (open-source radeon driver). Solid caps are a plus. Onboard audio is nice and quiet with headphones - a problem I've had on previous Gigabyte motherboards.
Cons: The HDD indicator doesn't work. The trouble is NOT with the case LED, if I plug it onto the Power LED pins, it lights up. Northbridge heatsink is a bit "shaky" and gets quite hot in use. Why oh why do they always put the capacitors in the path of the hot air from the CPU? Only one case fan connector. Wish they put more on, even if they don't have speed monitors. A keyboard plugged in to the USB3 does not work during BIOS setup. My case only has front USB3 ports - no USB2.
Overall Review: It's a nice board, with some minor drawbacks.
Pros: Razor sharp screen, deep saturated colors that almost look like an OLED. Fast CPU, plus Android 4.4 make the UI nice and smooth. Swipe gestures, for example, are super fluid. The unusual 7" form factor's biggest benefit is you can hold it with one hand. Useful camera, pity there's no flash.
Cons: No expandable storage. Sometimes wish the screen were bigger. Volume rocker and power button are located in a hard-to-reach spot.
Overall Review: My first tablet. I didn't really feel it was that much more useful than my phone+laptop, so I gave it to my technophobe mom. I was over the moon when she called me a month later and said she stopped watching the news on TV now that she gets it through her tablet :)
Pros: Cheap, large screen. Runs generic Android 4.1
Cons: Poor wifi reception - one room away and it quits completely. CPU is sluggish, and has difficulty dealing with simple tasks like displaying high-res (21 MP) photos from a network storage drive. The touch screen sensitivity is poor. Sometimes you have to mash your finger down to get it to register a touch. Other times, it seems fine. About 3-4 hour battery life. This is worse because there's no ambient light sensor, so the display brightness has to be set manually. Really awful camera, no flash. The charger is not micro-USB (what the heck! I thought it's 2014 already!), but micro-USB will work with an external charger. It won't charge as fast, though.
Overall Review: Bought this as a gift for my technophobe mom, but the sluggish CPU plus the poor sensitivity of the touch screen meant it was very hard for her to use. I eventually gave her my Nexus 7, which she uses quite well. Bought this on sale, but it's too late to return...
Bought a pair of speaker stands. Package arrived on time, packed well. Thanks!