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Brian H.

Brian H.

Joined on 02/15/06

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 6
Most Favorable Review

Great product, but misleading product photos on Newegg

LG 23" IPS LCD Monitor, IPS-Panel 5 ms D-Sub, DVI, HDMI 23EA63V-P
LG 23" IPS LCD Monitor, IPS-Panel 5 ms D-Sub, DVI, HDMI 23EA63V-P

Pros: Incredibly light, as you'd expect from a current-generation LED-backlit display DVI-D, HDMI and VGA inputs cover all of the bases. Capacitance-driven buttons on the bottom-right of the monitor. No clicks -- just a feather touch. Beautifully bright, evenly lit screen. Again, what you expect from an LED-backlit monitor. Very little brightness falloff from vertical or horizontal oblique angles. Lovely, classy design. You can disable the annoying red power LED. Not a knock on the product -- I find most power LEDs to be overly bright to the point of distraction. Just glad that I can turn this one off!

Cons: As a previous reviewer mentioned, while the plastic bezel is 1mm, the screen has an internal bezel of another 10mm on the left, top, and right sides.

Most Critical Review

Great keyboard, lousy batteries

Logitech K800 2.4GHz Wireless Slim Illuminated Keyboard - Black
Logitech K800 2.4GHz Wireless Slim Illuminated Keyboard - Black

Pros: Unified RF receiver, rechargable, construction quality is quite good.

Cons: The batteries were DOA. The keyboard shipped with (2) Sanyo Eneloop 1950Mah NiMh batteries that were completely dead and unrecoverable, resulting in the bottom battery LED flashing red on a 1s constant pattern. These are pretty easy to replace, if you have some spare NiMh AAs, which is the route that I took.

Overall Review: Replaced dead batteries with 2100Mah low-self-discharge NiMh parts from Tenergy. Keyboard fires right up and topped off the charge in 30 minutes.

Fantastic!

Matrox Graphics eXpansion Module DualHead2Go Analog video converter D2G-A2D-IF
Matrox Graphics eXpansion Module DualHead2Go Analog video converter D2G-A2D-IF

Pros: Combines (2) 1080p monitors into a single,virtual 3840x1080 monitor Lets laptop utilize (3) monitors with a single VGA output (laptop screen + 2 externals) Functionally, it's perfect. I have it strapped to my dual-monitor stand, with the cables all neatly wrapped. Used the HD15 VGA cable that came with the monitor to bring the cable to the laptop. USB is connected to a hub, so the ONLY reason to connect USB to the laptop is to take advantage of features in Matrox Powerdesk (maximize to the monitor where the application resides, etc.) Alternately, you could power this off of a spare USB wall-wart, assuming that you didn't want the Powerdesk functionality.

Cons: Setup can be tricky ... the new GUI for Matrox Powerdesk is inferior to the old version that I had for a TripleHead2Go digital. It's prettier and has a few more options, but it seems to be more difficult to use. If the VGA cable is disconnected without power cycling the laptop, when it is reconnected, the Matrox unit connects to the monitors with an unsupported timing/resolution scheme. Words of advice - save your favorite configuration to a keyboard acclerator (mine is CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+0). Makes recovering from the above situation easy as pie.

Great cables

Rosewill RCAB-11053 - Black 3-Foot Digital Dual-Link Cable - DVI-D (24 + 1-Pin) Male-to-Male, Gold Plated Connectors with Ferrite Cores, 28 AWG
Rosewill RCAB-11053 - Black 3-Foot Digital Dual-Link Cable - DVI-D (24 + 1-Pin) Male-to-Male, Gold Plated Connectors with Ferrite Cores, 28 AWG

Pros: Excellent build quality, ferrites on both ends, and the price was outstanding!

Cons: They weren't free?

Perfect.

Synology DS209 Diskless System Disk Station 2-bay SATA NAS Server for Workgroups and Offices
Synology DS209 Diskless System Disk Station 2-bay SATA NAS Server for Workgroups and Offices

Pros: Simple installation and initial configuration. UI is very clean in design; functionality is well organized... and there is quite a bit of functionality available! All-in-all, if you have a requirement for inexpensive, redundant, high-speed external storage, then you can't beat this NAS.

Cons: Just a few quibbles - you must use the Synology-provided application to provision the device. Subsequent management is performed via the device's web interface. The CD containing the Synology tools, firmware, etc. is somewhat out of date - don't bother using the firmware located on the CD as Synology has a much newer release available via their website. The Video Surveillance application doesn't support Sony IP cameras. Also lacking at this time is support for the ONVIF or PSIA IP camera standards.

Overall Review: This device is perfect for SOHO applications, but the lack of hot-swap support for HDD's means that its use in the SMB market is fairly limited.

12/20/2009

Gorgeous

EAGLE ET-CS2XMESU2-BK Solid aluminum 2.5" Black SATA I/II USB 2.0 & eSATA External Enclosure
EAGLE ET-CS2XMESU2-BK Solid aluminum 2.5" Black SATA I/II USB 2.0 & eSATA External Enclosure

Pros: Clean & attractive design, no-fuss installation of drive mechanism. Includes eSATA, USB data, and auxiliary USB power cables; small, plastic base for optional vertical orientation; and a lined mesh storage bag with a drawstring closure.

Cons: None.