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Edward B.

Edward B.

Joined on 10/22/07

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Product Reviews
product reviews
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Most Favorable Review

Easy

APEX MI Series MI-008 Black Steel Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case 250W Power Supply
APEX MI Series MI-008 Black Steel Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case 250W Power Supply

Pros: Cheap, comes with PS. Had enough connectors for drives as well. The DVD drive door works well too, doesn't hang up or catch and the case button is the right length and in the right spot to engage the drive tray button. I have to say it's nice when stuff lines up and works on the first try. Plastic front is nice and shiny looking. I would have preferred a USB 3.0 socket in the front as well. No sheet metal cuts.

Cons: The drive adapter rails weren't for a 2.5" drive I guess, since I tried using them to mount a flash HD into the 3.5" bay and couldn't get the rails to line up properly. So the 2.5" drive is only mounted using 2 screws, which is fine in this case since the SSD drives weigh next to nothing and doesn't wiggle much, but I prefer things solidly bolted in as a general rule. A provision for an IR sensor would have been nice as well. I'm sure a lot of people would consider using this as a low end HTPC case (I am) and an IR option, or a deluxe version with a media center remote would have been nice. I ended up using a Rosewill MC remote but it has a dongle which kind of ruins the look of the front if it's left plugged into the USB port there. <shrug>

Most Critical Review
Transcend 32GB Secure Digital High-Capacity (SDHC) Flash Card Model TS32GSDHC4
Transcend 32GB Secure Digital High-Capacity (SDHC) Flash Card Model TS32GSDHC4

Pros: It seemed like a good price ($45.99) for a mid-speed sdhc 32 GB card.

Cons: Worked ok for about 2 weeks. I painstakingly encoded my 5 yo daughters favorite movies to work with the Aluratek 8" player (APMP101F) bc she's adores movies. Then the movies started to jump and skip. I assumed it was the player or encoding errors on my part. But by the third week it would barely play anything off of the card. So I decided to wipe the card and start over again, only it would no longer read/write properly using XP, Vista or Win 7. My other cards work fine. So RMA'ing to Transcend since at least their stuff has a LT warranty so we'll see.

Update

GIGABYTE GA-J1800N-D2H Intel Dual-Core Celeron J1800 SoC (2.41 GHz) Mini ITX Motherboard / CPU / VGA Combo
GIGABYTE GA-J1800N-D2H Intel Dual-Core Celeron J1800 SoC (2.41 GHz) Mini ITX Motherboard / CPU / VGA Combo

Pros: Just an update here for anyone using this board in an HTPC build. Verified working with Happauge 1250 tuner card (N82E16815116024) for cable QAM channels (unencrypted) with MythTV backend and XBMC front end running Ubuntu. Also works with the Rosewill Media Center remote (N82E16880101008). There is about an 8 second delay between channel changes, which is twice as long as what my cable box takes, and the channel mapping needs some tweaking, but works fine.

Cons: See previous review

Overall Review: 9 year old daughter seems pretty happy with the setup. She streams movies and TV shows from the network DVR and the office suite built into Ubuntu (Libre Office) is both FREE and MS Office compatible so far, so school work is doable on the cheap. For a kid needing a computer with homework space you can add one of those Sauder desks for $50 and a $20 task chair (Menards) and mount the case underneath (what I did) making the desk useful for both puter and homework.

Cheap

Logitech MK270 Wireless Keyboard And Mouse Combo For Windows, 2.4 GHz Wireless, Compact Mouse, 8 Multimedia And Shortcut Keys, For PC, Laptop - Black
Logitech MK270 Wireless Keyboard And Mouse Combo For Windows, 2.4 GHz Wireless, Compact Mouse, 8 Multimedia And Shortcut Keys, For PC, Laptop - Black

Pros: Cheap price. Logitech, so the drivers work effortlessly of course.

Cons: Cheap quality. I bought two of these, one for each of my daughters. While doing a system build it irked me how cheaply made these were for Logitech products. Maybe I should have spent more. I use LX-710's for myself at work and at home for my computers. I've bought 4 of them over the years, but they quit making them. Which sucks because the Fwd Page and Back Page buttons for web page navigation are on top of the mouse and easy for my thick fingers to operate. They put them on the sides of the higher end mice now and it's just not the same. Oh well, they quit making the Pringles I like too and no longer stock Guava juice at the grocery store, so just more of the same...

Shame on Newegg...

Microsoft Kinect w/Kinect Adventures for XBOX 360
Microsoft Kinect w/Kinect Adventures for XBOX 360

Pros: Great toy, played with one at the store with my seven year old daughter.

Cons: The tracking wasn't dead on like it appeared in the ads, but still fun.

Overall Review: I was all set to order Kinectimals and Dance Central for my two girls from Newegg tonight and it says bundle only. -The only bundle other than an xbox 360 bundle (already have the xbox) has 3 games I don't need and costs around $335. I won't give a product bad eggs for this but having been a customer of Newegg's forever I'm disappointed by the greed factor and obviously buying elsewhere. -I'm pretty sure most of us are capable of deciding which games we do and don't want to buy.

12/12/2010