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Karl B.

Karl B.

Joined on 08/12/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 14
Most Favorable Review

very nice

SUPER TALENT Pico_A 2GB Flash Drive (USB2.0 Portable) STU2GPAS
SUPER TALENT Pico_A 2GB Flash Drive (USB2.0 Portable) STU2GPAS

Pros: Perfect design. This drive has lived on my keychain for almost 3 months and has been very durable. I use it all day with cisco routers to move files to and from the router. It is one of the few 2gb flash drives I have found that works with the cisco IOS.

Cons: Can be inserted upside down by accident. Sometimes the weight of my keys pulls it out.

Overall Review: I have been waiting for it come back in stock so i can buy more!

Most Critical Review

BUYER BEWARE - 1 device per PC only!

U.S. Robotics USR5637 High-performance V.92 modem 56Kbps USB
U.S. Robotics USR5637 High-performance V.92 modem 56Kbps USB

Pros: No serial port required. Driver installed in Server 2003

Cons: WARNING! Do not try and use more than one of these on the same pc/server. They will not work at the same time.

Overall Review: I installed 4 of these on a HP server to use for Microsoft Fax server. First off, they failed to install when connected to a startech 4 port PCI USB card based upon the NEC usb controller. I gave up after several hours and connected them to the built in HP ports. They all installed OK and show up correctly in device manager and in the Fax Server Manager. However, I was getting complaints of faxing not working. I found thru testing that only the last modem connected works. If you unplug a non-working one and plug it in, it becomes the modem that works. When discussing it with a coworker, he told me he had discovered the same problem a year back and never got a solution. Hopefully this post saves someone else from this nightmare! oh.. and yes, i contacted usrobotics and no they did not return my emails or calls.

Works great for Live TV in Media Center

XFX HD 6000 Radeon HD 6450 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 Low Profile Ready Graphics Card HD-645X-ZQH2
XFX HD 6000 Radeon HD 6450 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 Low Profile Ready Graphics Card HD-645X-ZQH2

Pros: Silent and no 29/59 bug in media center. Enough said

Cons: None.

Overall Review: If you are looking for a way to get rid of the studdering in your media center live TV feed. First learn about the 29/59 bug and then purchase this card.

Update to my Previous Review

XPG SX300 128GB Mini-SATA (mSATA) MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) ASX300S3-128GM-C
XPG SX300 128GB Mini-SATA (mSATA) MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) ASX300S3-128GM-C

Pros: Cheap

Cons: Died after 3 months of use. Started the RMA process. It is too complex to deal with. Basically the warranty is too much trouble. You might as well consider AData products to have zero warranty. I just pitched it in the drawer and purchased an Intel SSD instead.

Overall Review: In my work i deal with a lot of vendors and a lot of warranties. AData is up there at the top of my list when it comes to hassles. I think if i have another product of theirs die i will probably just stop buying their products all together. I don't have time to deal with their RMAs.

Not a good fit for a media PC

Foxconn Brazos AT-5570 AMD A45 (Hudson D1) Black Mini / Booksize Barebone System
Foxconn Brazos AT-5570 AMD A45 (Hudson D1) Black Mini / Booksize Barebone System

Pros: Very nice design. I love everything about the size, shape, and features. Perfect for a media PC

Cons: The CPU is too slow to use for Netflix, DIVX/XVID, or H.264 decoding. at 1024x768 Netflix content would gradually get the audio/video out of sync to the point where it is a full 45 seconds off after about 10 minutes of watching. Playing SD xvid movies was slow and jerky. Playing a BR backup in H.264 format (MKV) was not possible due to the 100% cpu usage on both cores and sever delay in the video

Overall Review: I am not new to building media center PCs. I have built and sold many of them as well as having many in my own home. I was hoping this box would be a good fit for the guest rooms. I did a fresh install of Windows 7 Enterprise X64 w/sp1 on a new 500GB SATAIII disk. Loaded drivers from the included thumb drive and then tried Netflix. It was unacceptable. I ran windows updates and even installed updated video drivers. Netflix still lags and is unwatchable. I installed my usual codec pack and tried XVID and h.264 files. Both were unwatchable due to lag. This box would be a perfect media PC if it just had enough CPU power to play media. As it is, it would probably make a good PC for web browsing or working with MS Office. You could also make a decent thin client out of it. oh.. and I did have a 4GB DIMM in it for the tests.. so it should have been very capable of playing Netflix. RMAed and paid the restock fee. Don't make the same mistake I did.

Fantastic Value

AGPtek External USB Blu-ray Combo Burner RA2B - Black
AGPtek External USB Blu-ray Combo Burner RA2B - Black

Pros: This is actually a HP branded blu-ray reader / DVD writer inside a cheap plastic external enclosure. I took the drive out of the enclosure and popped it right into my new HP Elitebook. My Elitebook only came with a DVD drive. I wanted Blu-Ray. The same drive from HP costs more than $250.

Cons: no five eggs because the enclosure is goofy. It requires a separate power plug and the usb cable looks like it will fall out on its own. It looks like the whole enclosure cost about $2.

Overall Review: I took the USB to SATA board out and used it to put a slimline DVD drive in a HP ProLiant Microserver so i could put 5 hard drives into the MicroServer. Worked great. I really got my money's worth.