Joined on 08/20/07
Great for the price!
Pros: Lightweight, this is not heavy to use on the lap for long periods of time. Include the fact that it is a slim laptop it is very easy to toss into a laptop bag. All aluminum body is comfortable when using for long periods of time. There is no real hot spots on this laptop per say. The display on this laptop is incredible for the money. It rivals that of my gaming laptop. 1920x1080 resolution. The touch-pad is very neat to have one touch access to certain applications. I'm sure in due time and with more development these apps will continue to improve. It is an interesting idea to control things like a audio streaming service directly from the touch pad without having to change screens. Laptop charges quickly, it took approx 75 minutes to charge from 20% to full with basic use / screen on and internet browsing. The battery life is pretty good. Through normal use for example just light internet browsing and typing a paper, the initial battery life is listed around 8 hours of run time in windows. I'm finding it to be a little bit less of actual use maybe 5-6 without power save options kicking in. Overall, the speed of this laptop is pretty phenomenal considering it is a "u" series processor. These are designed to operate on ultra low power for battery conservation.
Cons: The number pad on the side is a mini number pad. I have relatively large hands and it is a bit cumbersome to use. Almost so much that I have to single press each button while looking at the key. If you do a lot of clerical entry type stuff, might suggest a USB number pad. In order to provide the touch-pad, this is an extended monitor so windows recognizes it as 1-2. In doing such, it makes going to the task bar a little awkward at times by default. when you go down to the quick launch bar, you may go down to the touch pad screen. You can move this monitor around if that becomes too much and make it to the very top or side for example. The touch-pad hand writing is not as smooth as I would anticipate. After using several android and other applications, this works OK, but not very fluent. The windows options for the touch pad are basically not really effective. If you want to operate this in a normal touch screen mode use your Function buttons(f6).
Overall Review: My initial impressions using this laptop were a bit of frustration, until I got more familiar with this touch-pad. This took a few days of use and practice to learn all of the functions with it. The first day I got an internet browser stuck on the touch pad and took a few minutes to figure it out. If you use the device with a mouse you can easily disregard any of this. But to the point of a con, as this is an extended monitor it doesn't feel as comfortable using a mouse and having the pointer go to the touch-pad. The back-lit keys are actually in fact difficult to see the letters over the brightness of the screen. The under-light for the keys is fine and works well. However if you need to look at the key to identify it might be difficult. I do think that the touch pad interaction demo could be more of a video to show all of the capabilities by default before sending you loose to getting things stuck in the display. The touch-screen / touch-pad can be disabled/normal touch-pad functionality through the function buttons on the laptop. Good overall Laptop, the quirks are not anything the product does not deliver as advertised. just personal experience with the devices.
Good Product, terrible configuration
Pros: After the install is complete, the application to configure the smart plug works as intended. It has a few preset modes, of course all of which can be modified. The thermal sensor is available to monitor from the software. One of the few options you can change in the settings is displaying the temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit. Holding the WPS button on the side for 10 seconds will factory reset the device, or a quick press and release will just do a reboot. The ability to monitor the power usage by devices plugged into it is an incredible bonus. You can drill down the power usage report to just about any configuration to compare.
Cons: Extremely difficult for initial setup. It really makes me wonder why they did not take the time to develop a PC application as well. The convenience of having it on the phone is great, but the initial configuration is painful. Software is kind of buggy and freezes up from time to time. The card that comes with the device states you should download the ‘mydlink Wi-Fi Smart Plug’ app, and the instructions from the technical support page say to do this with the ‘mydlink home’. Either way, this is one of the most awful setup’s I’ve ever had to go through. The device would not connect to my router with a password on it. After opening up the guest network, the device was then able to connect. However the application lost the smart plug from its configuration after the plug rebooted (part of the process). Once connected, if the device is lost on the dlink smart plug application, you have to go through the painful process of trying to reconfigure from scratch. There is no setting to ‘explore’ the network to add a plug that is already connected to the WiFi network.
Overall Review: I cannot imagine a novice to networking/mobile devices will be able to get this setup. The instructions are as simple as ‘1-2-3’ or so dlink would like you to believe by the card which they have supplies. Simply download the software, launch the app and connect to the plug. Needless to say after an hour of trying, I was unable to do this with my Samsung S4 Phone. I launched the Application on my Android tablet, and we had success… eventually. I put a splitter on the plug and ran a few different items at the same time without issue. I do not think this has any surge protection built into the device. Which prevents me from wanting to plug anything with value directly into the plug.
Amazing Software!
Pros: Upon initial use and over the course of a week or so, I'm fairly impressed with the improvements to the application suit. Auto Sync is an awesome feature, the platform runs seamless and you can jump from desktop to mobile. If you're like our family, you are asked about what pictures they can get at holidays and such. Being able to pull all of the photos/videos up on the phone anywhere is awesome! The ability to order prints directly from the application. It has everything without needing to upload to additional interfaces and such. Photoshop Elements: The desktop application looks very similar to the mobile app which is currently in Beta. If you have a touch screen monitor the application works amazing. It can be a slight be counter intuitive with mouse clicking. But at least with a little practice you'll be good to go. I'm pretty excited to be able to use on the tablets that we have around the house. It is a nice seamless blend between the two operating systems. I've only got a handful of photos edited through the desktop application so far. Everything is incredibly seamless. The initial pull for all media on my machine took a few minutes, As with any scan on the machine, it does not filter out specific application level images etc. So you have all of the interface icons / different things pulled in to sort through. However, with this import, it stores all of the 'folders' on the side of the menu. I would love to see a 'hide folder' button here to not have to have that every time it pulls up in the application. The mark face / people finder is fantastic. The process does take some time to review the photos. I assume it is only due to the first pass through and then it flags/internally archives them somehow. But I believe that will be easier as time goes along and I'm more familiar with the application. Adobe Premiere: Although I have not used adobe premiere since college, it is undoubtably faster. They claim 5x faster than previous versions, I have to agree this is really fast. I do believe that a lof of this comes from system hardware and the ability to tap into the increased performance of the computers running on. We do not have many videos of our son yet to see how the editing goes there. However there is certainly the ability for game capture/recording to edit in application for posting. This overall process worked seamless, adding overlays is super easy. Transitions everything worked great and as expected.
Cons: None of these cons are worthy of knocking off any eggs for review. It is just something I'd like to share for awareness. When making a desktop application to mirror a mobile application, it does kind of take the 'controllability' away from the user on the desktop. All of the features are still there, I'm kind of old school and like menus and all. This requires a windows 10 or later system. So if you have an older machine lying around that you just like to keep for photo editing, it will not work.
Overall Review: Overall I'm incredibly impressed with the application! It has been a few years since I've used any photo editing software. Typically I have been just posting photos online and doing the minor adjustments with the built in software for the phone/device that I am using. Wife and I recently introduced our first child, so this will be great to help edit/capture these moments for a lifetime. This will take some time if you're writing/reading from an external USB drive that is 2.0 or older.
Great Product, small form factor!
Pros: After using this for a little over a week the product really works well. The form factor does not hold it back from power output in the least. The cables which are all black and modular is great for builds that don't want white or vibrant colored wires. Power rails output are spot on. The fan is extremely quiet even at peak loads on the unit. The overall end goal for this power supply, it will go into a small formed custom made build for arcade games.
Cons: Short wires, I realize this is a form factor power supply, but these wires were incredibly short to make some runs. You can see this by the photograph attached it has a hard time just making around the frame of the case. Really debated knocking an egg off for this but everything else on the unit performed superb!
Overall Review: Overall I'm extremely impressed that this had no issues running on this machine. specs of machine that was running just fine on Rtx 3060 ti Amd Ryzen 5 5600g 16gb ddr4 3200mhz
Amazing product!! Great for detached buildings!
Pros: This device was online in less than 5 minutes from plugging it in. It is really difficult to judge exactly how long, as plugging it into the garage requires time to get outside to the garage. The installation is incredibly simple, you plug your ethernet line in from your network source into the base unit. Plug the base unit into the wall and that is basically it! It will light up and turn on. After the power light is on, just plug the extender device into any outlet on your grid. You do not even need to download the app for this process to take place! The ability for this to broadcast a signal in my garage is a blessing. I have a detached garage with metal siding and fully insulated. The best I could ever do was have a mini hub next to the window and hope that I could stream music. The garage is approx. 25 feet from my house, and 25 feet wide, I put this on the furthest outlet away. I've used multiple variations of mesh networks / networking equipment over the years. This is the first time I have been able to add WIFI in the garage consistently! The network overview seems to be pretty neat inside of the app, it shows connected devices in a tree form to show you just where things are at. This would be more beneficial in an office setting for IT management. I was also incredibly surprised at the throughput on the WIFI signal. Streaming video services had no lag and matched my internal house speeds. There is a very slight increase in ping to game services and such when using this. However it is 5-10 or less milliseconds (just adding extra network hops).
Cons: The only true con, is that it tends to be somewhat directional on the WIFI antenna. Although your plugging it into a power outlet and its back is against a wall or should be kind of limits this.
Overall Review: The smart phone app seems to be a bit plain in regards to how much you can actually configure in here. It is a very well designed application however, easy to navigate and understand what is going on. Would be cool if this had a lot more in the lines of smart plug technology embedded into its operating system. It is REALLY good at what it advertises. I'm not sure the exact length of max range on the power line. Or what kind of implications that has towards the signal strength. Hoping that would be listed in tech specs or inside the pamphlet. The packaging on this was very tightly and in the other picture you can see on the far side of my garage how it looks plugged in.
Excellent Small form 750w P/S
Pros: The initial thought on this power supply was wow... its tiny in comparison to others. Width and mounting is normal, however it is not a very deep power supply. This will give a lot of extra room for cable management, and will help fit into smaller form factor cases a little easier.Fan on top is wide open, and can output a lot of heat. Large 120mm fan which is ultra quiet. There was NO sharp edges on any of the panels. This includes the mesh cut out for the back area on the power supply.Had absolutely no issues running everything at full load. Either machine that this power supply was plugged in had no issues. One includes extra liquid cooling multiple accessories.All of the cable plugs on the back of the power supply were secure. Yet when re-wiring and removing them, they came out without much of a fight. This is very nice when working in a confined area.
Cons: Cables can be a little bit short at approx. 3 feet. This could be an issue you're using a larger case or have some difficult cable routing with a tough case layout.Although the main power cable has a good black colored mesh around it, the rest of the cables do not.
Overall Review: Would be nice if it included a second 4+4 cable.This had a really interesting smell coming off of it the first time that it was booted up. I'm used to these smells but lingered for a little bit longer than anticipated. Completely gone after a few hours of running.Ran this on a 4th gen intel just fine. Also ran on a Ryzen 5 with 1060 Ti video card.I wouldn't hesitate to purchase this power supply. I've only got experience for around a week with it, it has shown to be a good contender.