Joined on 03/13/07
Dark linen closet
Pros: Very bright, low current (150mA), their directional light is perfect in this unusual application.
Cons: Out of my three sticks, two of the leds [on the end of one of the sticks] have been blinking intermittently. Only time will tell if they hold up..
Overall Review: This 4'w x 3'd x 8'h linen closet was pitch-black during the middle of the day, I can't understand how the previous home-owner put up with it. I attached the three sticks vertically to the inside corner near the hinge and then connected to a plunger-type door switch, then to a 12VDC plug-in transformer in the cellar directly below. Most of the closet is brightly illuminated now, with a safe, low-power source.
Develops lose SATA contacts?
Pros: Cheap
Cons: Cheap lose contacts
Overall Review: I've been using three of these toaster docks for a few years now and something about the power/SATA contacts seems to go bad, maybe they're getting lose after all of the different drives being installed and replaced. I know "loose" is the correct spelling we're looking for here, but it's funny to purposely spell it wrong. Everybody else does. Anyway, I insert the drive and push the blue illuminated power buh-in and the drive doesn't appear in my explorer. Power it off and nudge the drive, repower on and it appears. I'm guessing it must be the contacts, but it's impossible to tell for sure without some major surgery on it. Anyway, I've replaced these with the (twice-as-expensive) similarly-named-manufacurer MX-1 and my drive connection problems have disappeared.
Nice blue connector on a USB2 drive
Pros: It has a pretty blue-colored connector just like a real USB3 thumb-drive.
Cons: The blue-colored connector is the ONLY feature that this has with a real USB3 thumbdrive. The transfer speeds are laughably bad. These "USB3 Compatible" drives are presently the computer industry's worst bold-faced lie, AFAICT.
Overall Review: Funny how _any_ USB2 drive is "USB3 Compatible", because that's all this apparently is...a USB2 drive with a blue connector.
Three drives ordered, all bad
Pros: None.
Cons: Two of the three drives wouldn't format, the third did, but returned error notices.
Overall Review: I've been using WD green drives for some time, with rare problems, These were extremely disappointing.
Initialized and formatted okay
Pros: I bought four of these WD7500AARS and they all formatted and tested okay with s.m.a.r.t. Cool and smooth running, like most "green" drives. Drives were carefully packed.
Cons: Zip
Overall Review: SO MANY other models of drives I recently bought have been terrible right out of the box, can't even format them or tons of diagnostic errors, it's a huge relief these are all seem perfect. I'll eventually be using these for media storage, so it's unfortunate I can't yet report on even short-term reliability.
Works well
Pros: Works fine with my old Dell 9100 Dimension.
Cons: None so far.
Overall Review: The other reviewers are right, just get your drivers from the ATI website. The XFX process seems needlessly complicated.
Ordered a headset for a Plantronics phone
No problemos.