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Brian S.

Brian S.

Joined on 07/01/05

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 6
Most Favorable Review

Awesome drive!

Western Digital Blue WD6400AAKS 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
Western Digital Blue WD6400AAKS 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Pros: Very fast and quiet. Owned three for over a year now and still going strong with no problems. As you may know, these 640 GB drives use only two platters with very high (record-breaking) areal densities to achieve fast response times and read/write speeds.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: This is a great drive, and even better since the price has gone down. Buy five or six for a RAID 5 array. Who needs SSD?

Great unit

Rosewill RX355-U Aluminum 3.5" IDE USB 2.0 External Enclosure
Rosewill RX355-U Aluminum 3.5" IDE USB 2.0 External Enclosure

Pros: Works great. Runs VERY cool, adjustable fan speed (silent at low setting, very quiet even on highest setting). Didn't require drivers in XP. Quick foolproof installation, uses thumbscrews and slide-out tray. Very clever arrangement for powering fan. Fast read/write speeds: I averaged almost 50MB/s read on an old 20GB Maxtor drive.

Cons: Supplied USB cable is pretty short, maybe 2-3 feet. Oh well.

Overall Review: I'm going to buy at least one more for all the old IDE drives I no longer use.

Great game

Blue Dragon Xbox 360 Game
Blue Dragon Xbox 360 Game

Pros: Very customizable character "classes" and skills allow you to make many different kinds of parties to suit your style. Very addictive leveling system, where not only does your character level but his class (which you can change at any time) levels separately. Lots of fun to play with this to get the best combination of stats at a given point in the game. Graphics are beautiful. Lots of things to search and lots of play time (game is 3 DVDs). This is probably one of the least repetitive turn-based RPGs I've played due to the ability to change up the character classes. Maybe less repetitive than Chrono Trigger (gasp)!

Cons: The boss-battle music, which thankfully is somewhat infrequent, is really bad. The first time I heard it I laughed out loud, after that, I rolled my eyes, and now I want to end my life a little bit more each time I hear it. It's really really cheesy faux-80s glam rock, and I think one of the game's programmers did the vocals. Also, the dialogue is a little Engrish, and can get tedious, but you can skip cutscenes with the start button. And as someone previously observed, Marumoru = Jar Jar Binks.

Overall Review: If you buy this game for under thirty or so bucks, it's worth it. I paid much less, and so I am very satisfied and pleasantly surprised. And I'm picky about RPGs.

12/24/2009

Great!

G.SKILL 1GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL4S-1GBPK
G.SKILL 1GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL4S-1GBPK

Pros: Low latency!

Cons: None!

Overall Review: Bought a couple of these, they are performing flawlessly after well over a year.

Great

Rosewill RNX-EasyN1 Wireless-N 4.0 Dongle (1T1R) IEEE 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0 Up to 150Mbps Data Rates WPA/WPA2 (AES, 64,128-WEP with shared-key authentication) WPS PIN, PBC (Hardware WPS Button) QoS-WMM
Rosewill RNX-EasyN1 Wireless-N 4.0 Dongle (1T1R) IEEE 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0 Up to 150Mbps Data Rates WPA/WPA2 (AES, 64,128-WEP with shared-key authentication) WPS PIN, PBC (Hardware WPS Button) QoS-WMM

Pros: Cheap, works. Finds B, G, and N networks as promised.

Cons: You may have to use a USB extension cable to orient the adapter so it gets the best signal.

Overall Review: Install in Vista was easy. Had to use the included CD installation program, reboot, and then point Vista's driver install to the Rosewill folder in Program Files to get it to find the drivers, but no big deal.

Great component

Philips DVD Player DVP5990
Philips DVD Player DVP5990

Pros: Plays all kinds of formats from disc or from USB. Great quality picture and sound. Upconvert makes a huge difference. Quiet. Remote batteries included and apparently last forever. Unbelievably convenient for watching divx/xvid "backups" straight from your PC on a USB flash drive. I have an 8 gig and it holds about 11 700MB divx movies that take only seconds to load before playback. Apparently also will work with an external HDD formatted in FAT32. Is awesome as an MP3 jukebox, and obviously sounds better when hooked up to a reciever (compared to TV speakers). Oh, and it can convert audio straight from a CD to MP3 (you choose bitrate) and put it on a flash drive for you. How cool is that?

Cons: Only 32x fast forward, fast forward barely works on certain WMV formats, will not read h264 format (freezes and sometimes must be unplugged if you try). A bit of lag between remote control inputs and action, say when skipping tracks on a list of MP3s, and that could be related to the speed of the USB drive I use for that (my mp3 flash drive is slow, to be fair). But you know what, I'm giving it 5 eggs anyways. It's just that great.

Overall Review: I've had this thing for about a year now, and it has performed very well. There have been a few random lockups, mostly when trying to play unsupported formats, and you sometimes have to unplug the thing to get it working again. Other than that, it has performed VERY well, and it was worth EVERY penny and then some. It's been just so convenient to not have to transcode everything back to MPEG-2 and burn a DVD to watch movies from my computer. Not to mention it makes a great MP3 jukebox: I have it hooked up HDMI to TV, and RCA audio to my reciever which plays through Klipsch speakers. Even 128kbps audio sounds fantastic. I believe it has digital coaxial and optical audio out as well, which my old reciever doesn't support, so I can only imagine it would sound even better using those instead of RCA. Um, buy this right now.