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Adam M.

Adam M.

Joined on 02/12/10

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 14
Most Favorable Review

Surprisingly good

BIOSTAR A75MH FM1 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
BIOSTAR A75MH FM1 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Solid state caps for power regulators, one of the latest AMD chipsets, 6x SATA, and low power shutdown option. This is a solid board with lots of features in a rather small package.

Cons: Lack of old school parallel IDE, but this appears to be more of a "fault" of the chipset than than the motherboard.

Overall Review: This has been a surprisingly good product. Lots of bang for the buck. Paired it with AMD A4-3300 Llano 2.5GHz (AD3300OJGXBOX) and 8G G.Skill Sniper RAM (F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR - on sale :) and it works very nicely. The only downside to this setup is the lowend chip doesn't 1866 stock, running the ram at 1600.

12/16/2011
Most Critical Review

Poor quality, fake info, 640x480 camera

IMC ZB3005 2.0 M Effective Pixels USB 2.0 WebCam with Mic
IMC ZB3005 2.0 M Effective Pixels USB 2.0 WebCam with Mic

Pros: It works! No drivers needed as it uses standard video interface. Works well in Linux and Windows. Manual focus is a plus (for me at least).

Cons: Poorly made. The little screw that holds the housing of the camera body wasn't even in as the camera arived in semi-broken condition. The threading was basically torn off. QA? Specs are lies - expect a standard webcam. Resolution is 640x480, as other webcams at this price point. I was not able to change FPS from 30Hz capture. Limited controls.

Overall Review: USB idVendor - 0x1871 - Aveo Technology Corp The one that arrived today (May, 2012) has QA sticker dated Oct. 2012.. Old stock?? MaxPower = 500mA (2.5W) - not for laptops?? It probably uses as much considering the housing gets warm after a few minutes. NEWEGG: scr3w is a normal word, censoring it is not very cool. Maybe review reviews instead???

Slow? Well, depends I guess

Rosewill RHKT-12002 Stainless Steel Kettle 1000W - Water, Tea or Coffee
Rosewill RHKT-12002 Stainless Steel Kettle 1000W - Water, Tea or Coffee

Pros: Heats water. Had to post simply as a reply to the "slow" review. If you have 1.6L of water, and you need to heat it up with 1000W power source by about 90C, it will take at least *10 minutes* for the water to boil. If it takes longer, then the kettle is losing heat and is inefficient. If it takes less time, then it is somewhat against the laws of physics if things are functioning normally ;) For North American power sources, 1kW is using more than half the maximum load on a typical 15A circuit. Now, in Europe you can get 3kW kettles because they have 20A 220V circuits so their water boils in 3.5 min, not 10. But you can't blame the kettle for that!!

Cons: From the pictures or Rosewill's website it is not possible to determine if the kettle is all stainless steel inside (including the filling cap), or it has plastic parts that come in contact with the water. No pictures inside the kettle. No pictures of cap. Is the heating element immersed in water? Egg deducted purely for poor marketing effort.

Overall Review: I'm a non-owner and will most likely remain so due to the above cons. Little information on a website doesn't matter for brick stores, but quite important for online sales.

12/27/2012

Works, mostly

MSI 760GM-P23 (FX) AM3+ AMD 760G + SB710 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
MSI 760GM-P23 (FX) AM3+ AMD 760G + SB710 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: This is a budget board with some very configurable overclocking options although the 95W max power envelope is probably going to be a limiting factor here. BIOS updates are very straightforward and can be done from within the BIOS itself.

Cons: The onboard graphics and the PCI-E x16 slot video seem to be mutually exclusive. The board is capable of either onboard video OR PCI-E video, not both. This may be a chipset limitation though, but is not documented anywhere. When one is active, the other device is completely disabled. It cannot be used from within an OS. BIOS settings that select the onboard or PCI-E video to be initialized are quirky to say the least. Changing the settings either way always initialized PCI-E video until I installed a 2nd stick of RAM - this probably reset some cached device table and renumerated devices actually utilizing the BIOS video setting! Then onboard video would initialize irrespective of BIOS option until powered down and removal of all connections to onboard video before powering back up.

Overall Review: Lack of dual-video support (onboard and discrete) is disappointing. But if you are not looking for dual-video support, this is a good motherboard.

Good

Kingston 8GB DDR3 1333 Desktop Memory Model KVR1333D3N9/8G
Kingston 8GB DDR3 1333 Desktop Memory Model KVR1333D3N9/8G

Pros: Lots of bits in a tiny space. Newegg's photo of this RAM seems to be out of date. The chips that arrived seem to be low-profile RAM. They end at the top of the 2nd notch.

Cons: Use memtest86 to verify your memory. Sometimes you get lucky with a faulty bit or two.

OK, not great

IOGEAR GFR204SD 10-in-1 USB 2.0 SD/ MicroSD/ MMC Card Reader/ Writer (Green/ Gray)
IOGEAR GFR204SD 10-in-1 USB 2.0 SD/ MicroSD/ MMC Card Reader/ Writer (Green/ Gray)

Pros: Small and nice looking Very handy if you need SD(HC)/microSD(HC) access on the go.

Cons: S.L.O.W. Read speed maxed out at about 1MB/s whereas another USB reader read the same card at 19MB/s.