Pros: This laptop is fast, runs fairly cool, and has a very nice hardware layout. Chiclet style keyboard provides ample finger room for typing, plus a numerical keypad for those who like having those (I certainly do). The screen is bright and clear, with decent resolution. I don't use this machine for gaming, nor would I try to, but the graphics are more than sufficient for watching HD mkv files and full-blown BD rips on vlc player.
Cons: The only con I encountered was with the "smart" buttons above the keyboard. They are meant to provide one touch access to enable and disable certain functions, one of which is the wireless NIC. I accidentally pressed it, but my OS (windows 7) didn't show the NIC as "disabled", but rather indicated that no wireless networks were available. Since the "smart" button doesn't turn off (it's backlit) when it's respective function is disabled, I had no idea I had pressed it. Only once I had spent half an hour trying to figure out what was wrong with my wireless router did it occur to me to try to touch the "smart" button, which fixed my problem.
Overall Review: The "smart" button issue is a minor one, and the sort of thing that you won't forget once you learn it the first time. That being the case, I no longer consider it a true "con", rather a design quirk that I wouldn't have chosen to implement in that way had I designed it myself. Therefore, I fully recommend this laptop for any non-gamer looking for a fast, powerful laptop for general home/office productivity.
Pros: Simple unmanaged switch. Plug it in and go. Ample memory and processing power for the 8 ports it's got. Does a great job of passing Gbit traffic at high speed.
Cons: The only con I would mention is the fact that the distinction between Gbit and 100Mbit is a green light vs. a yellow light, respectively. It's really difficult to tell the difference between the two colors, since the shades of green and yellow put out by the little LEDs are so similar. I wish they would have gone with green and blue or green and orange, or even yellow and red. For future reference, Dlink, spend the extra few cents per unit and make the LEDs more easily distinguishable from one another.
Overall Review: I bought two of these to expand my home network with some new HTPCs I built for my living room and den. I need as much bandwidth as I can get, and these Gbit switches do the job nicely.
Pros: This router is capable of some amazing things. Streaming media and playing online games are activities that get optimized priority through this gaming-oriented device. It can maximize throughput for bandwidth intensive transmissions to help produce smoother gameplay, smoother media streams, and even smoother file transfers. It's got plenty of configuration options and is largely limited just by your knowledge of and patience with making said configurations and then restarting the device to enable the new configurations, which brings me to...
Cons: ...The one major con that I have found in this router. Every time the router is restarted, it initiates a measurement session for your network traffic. This is apparently an element of the traffic prioritization that it conducts. What I have found in my case is that, after changing a configuration or otherwise restarting the device (i.e. loss of power, intentional or otherwise), the device will conduct this "connection measurement" session that will prevent you from logging in to the router itself, or from the router actually performing it's job as a router, until it has finished the measurement. At least in my case, this tends to mean about 45 minutes of downtime with regard to connectivity. I'm not sure why this process takes so long, and I haven't read many similar comments around the net, so it may just be me and my internet connection (Comcast), but this long delay period is a major inconvenience. Other than that, assuming I can keep the power to the device constant...
Overall Review: It's GRRREAT!
Pros: I have 2 of these set up as WAPs on a home network in a house where a single WAP has never been enough. Now, I have 4-5 bars of reception throughout the entire house and even 3-4 bars in the back yard. This little WAP may not look like much, but it does what it says it can.
Cons: The white color is drastically different from the rest of the devices around the area where I've place them (Living room home theater and garage office), but they're small enough that I was able to stash them behind other stuff. Also, the antennae seem underpowered, rated at 2dBi. I own an ALFA 500mW USB wireless NIC that comes standard with a similar sized 5 dBi antenna. I swapped the stock antenna from my ALFA with the stock antenna from this, and I do get 1 extra bar within 50 feet of the WAP. Just a suggestion if you want that extra few Kbps from your wifi.
Overall Review: Powerline ethernet, an all copper electically wired house, and a 220V phase coupler at my stove outlet make up the backbone of the network that these WAPs work off of. If your base network doesn't provide you good bandwidth to begin with, don't expect WAPs like these to improve upon the bad foundation.
Pros: This case is nice and roomy. Plenty of space for your mobo, PSU, and various fans. I swapped out the stock fans for quieter ones, as the stock fans were rather high pitched and loud. I used this case to build a NAS for my home theater. The NAS sits underneath my 46" LCD, and so the noise got annoying fast. Now it's basically silent.
Cons: As I was sliding in the HDDs, one of them wouldn't slide all the way in. I slid it out and back in several times, but once it was about 90% of the way into the slot, it would stop. After trying several times, I felt something at the back of the slot give, then the drive slid in all the way and lock. When I powered on the machine, the RAID card was missing 1 disk. I opened the case to find that one of the headers on one of the backplanes had popped off, presumablu due to my pushing the drive in. Once I removed it and looked more closely, I could see that the only thing holding the SATA connector to the backplane was the solder on the metal pins. This makes for a very weak and easy to bend/snap-off connector. Beware drives that won't slide in easily on their own. You may be best off sliding the drive in while looking at the rear side of the slot inside the case to make sure the connector lines up properly
Overall Review: Aside from some flimsy connectors on the backplanes (honestly, I think they should have been reinforced with something, even if only some plastic brackets), this case is great for my needs.