Joined on 01/11/06
great for 3 monitors
Pros: Super sturdy. This thing took all three of my Samsung 23” widescreens and really cleaned up my desk. I popped the base stand out of all 3 monitors and at really looks clean and spacious. Good solid construction. I have 3 23" samsung 2333T monitors. They are actually 22" wide and they barely fit on this stand. In fact for me to get the angle of the outside monitors so they were in a decent field of view I had to offset the outside monitors behind the center one. I have included a pic so you can get an idea of what I am talking about. I was a little disappointed but it is still a good working scenario as I can see all the screen without obstruction. So dont expect to have 3 23" monitors all lined up edge to edge and the outside ones turned in at a nice angle because it wont happen. You can have them edge to edge but they will be lined up with a poor field of view if you are sitting directly in the center. They will basically be lined up straight with the outside ones barely tilted in.
Cons: I would have given this four starts but during assembly there is a plastic insert the slides over the main support and it did not fit very well. I had to really monkey around with it to get it to slide over the vertical support with the main mounting bracket attached. Also with all 3 monitors edge to edge there was no way to angle the outside monitors in without putting them behind the center one. I have worked with 3 monitors for years and for me the outside monitors must be angled in at least 30 degrees. I got about 20 degrees out of this bracket with the outside monitors behind the center and it is barely enough to get a decent field of view. (see attached pic)
Runs too Hot
Pros: Size, cost, construction, HDMI out. I really like the concept of this unit but the heating up is an issue. I have 2 of these and they act the same so it's not isolated . AVOID the2807 and BUY the GB-BXCEH-2955. They seemed to have resolved the cooling issue with that one and it's smaller and faster. I put the 2807 in large cooling areas for pallets of milk where it 34 degrees. In that environment it stays cool for obvious reasons.
Cons: runs way to hot. This unit is sitting in the open in an air conditioned office 72-74 deg running a simple surveillance program rotating cameras and it gets hot to point of hanging up.
Overall Review: BUY the GB-BXCEH-2955 instead. Runs cooler and is faster.
save your money
Pros: it's shinny
Cons: works intermittently, rejects files that are half the size of the drive, will show a copying state and then just hang. Do yourself a favor and get the USB 3.0 version of this stick for another 5 bucks. The USB 3.0 version works like a champ. For the cost it wasn't worth the hassle to return.
Overall Review: I got duped into buying this with an impulse offer I apparently found irresistible. For the cost it wasn't worth the hassle to return. The life cycle of this product must be nearing with the proliferation of USB 3.0.
workhorse
Pros: I put 2 of these drives as raid 0 in my new alienware m18x laptop with 8GB ddr3 1333 and a i7 2.0 ghz. It installed win7 pro in about 12 minutes. Boots to login screen (post bios) in about 13 seconds. According to PassMark sequential read and write are at 340 mbps. I thought I would get over 400mbps as both drives were striped as one but i cant complain. I installed adobe master collection cs5 (full install) in about 10 minutes. (awesome) It opens programs in the blink of an eye. It opens adobe photoshop cs5 64 bit in 2 seconds and that is impressive. Where this drive really screams is installing large programs off a virtual DVDROM (daemon tools lite) and iso images. I have never seen a faster install of ms office 2003 (30 seconds). I am completely happy with this drive.
Cons: none at this moment.
Overall Review: i recently purchased 2 OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD drives for my desktop. There was a significant performance increase over the samsung but just as most the posts said I got a BSOD a week after install. (cant flash the firmware update to a raid 0 drive) So if you are looking for mid range performance and solid reliability I would go with the samsung. If you are looking for a screaming drive go with the OCZ but use the firmware update tool prior to installing an OS or prior to configuring as raid.
nice unit
Pros: The assembly (hardware) from beginning to end took about 15 minutes. I dropped an AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz 95W Quad-Core in this rig with 4 gigs of G.SKILL DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel. I installed windows 7 64 bit Ultimate. The OS install took about 5 minutes. As this was my 2nd 64 bit machine I was very impressed at the speed it installs applications. I dont really have any app's that take advantage of the 64 bit arch but you can really see the value of quad care when you are running multiple app's. I was ripping a DVD down to a HD 720p AVI using AVS video converter and using the machine for normal use (browsing, email etc.) and there was no noticeable performance loss. It installed office 2003 (complete) in about 70 seconds (SATA DVD combo drive). It installed dreamweaver CS4 in about 140 seconds. That is amazing as it took about 15 minutes on my wolfdale core 2 duo 3.0 ghz 1333 fsb with 4 gig DDR2. Graphics are ok for my needs as I dont game much these days.
Cons: It would be nice to have some eSATA support and an optical out on the back. HDMI on the back would have been a plus as well. As this is a work machine I was not that concerned but it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
Overall Review: I actually forgot to plug the fan back into the header on the mobo when I installed the OS. DUH! It still ran cool enough to complete the install without issues. I have built over a dozen of these shuttles and I have never had a problem with any of them. Several of them have been up and running for over 2 years without any issues. I have read a few posts of those with problems out of the box but I have never experienced that.
Lasted 8 month
Pros: Easy to hook up and switched between ports fairly quick. The status light are well laid out and let you know what port is active and when a server is down. This was used in a surveillance application so there were no real intense graphic demands but the display was acceptable for this application.
Cons: After 5 months one of the ports died. This unit is maybe switched 30 times a month from server to server so there is little use. After 8 months another port died. I am going to replace it with another brand as I expected this to last about 5 years given the amount of use.