Joined on 02/07/05
This + Raspberry Pi = Poor man's solid state NAS.
Pros: Great capacity to price ratio. Works flawlessly with FreeBSD on Raspberry Pi.
Cons: The part that plugs in is plastic, whereas other low-profile USB devices I own use metal. Could be an issue if you are plugging and removing a lot.
Overall Review: Definitely recommend for Ras Pi.
Beautiful monitor, but shows up as an audio device???
Pros: The picture and the frameless look is amazing. For the price, it cannot be beat.
Cons: The only thing that is odd about this thing is that it shows up as an audio device whenever it's plugged in to a PC. There are no speakers on the monitor. There is no headphone jack. Why on earth does it show up as an audio device? If that's all it did, I could say, oh, well. But, it causes windows to change the default audio output to the monitor... that doesn't have any speakers. So now every time I plug it into the laptop I have to switch my audio output back to what it was before. This is my only reason for subtracting a star from the rating.
Overall Review: Good picture. Good price. Stupidly shows up as an audio device.
Great companion for Dell Inspiron 7570 base model
Pros: 16G total system memory now, easy as pie. Identical manufacturer as the Dell original.
Cons: None.
Great way to speed up an old Dell Inspiron
Pros: Let me extend the life of an older Inspiron 15 7548 with a noticeable performance boost.
Cons: No cons
Overall Review: If buying, make sure to check if you need PC3 or PC3L. They are not interchangeable.
Inexpensive and easy
Pros: Nice aluminum case for a low price. Recognized by Windows 10 right away.
Cons: Only USB 2.0, but considering the price it's fine.
Overall Review: Extra screws included in case you lose one.
Nice addition to old motherboard
Pros: Breathes new life into my old motherboard that only had PATA-33. I can continue to use my existing PATA-100 drives and upgrade to SATA when I need more capacity. The VIA chip used in this card is well supported by Linux. Great product for the money.
Cons: Manual has some minor flaws and looks as if it has not been updated in a while. For example, it says to press TAB to get into the BIOS setup for the card, but it's actually CTRL+Z according to the card's splash screen.
Overall Review: I read some reviews where people complaining about slow SATA I speeds. This is a limitation of the 32-bit, 33MHz PCI bus that the card plugs into, not the card itself. There's just not enough PCI bandwidth to support SATA II speeds. Wikipedia and a little basic math are all it took to figure this out.
Good prices, good parts
I have purchased two memory upgrades from Star Micro for two different Dell laptops. Both times it was the same manufacturer as the Dell OEM part (Samsung or Hynix) and both times they worked flawlessly.