Comments: lol, i have one problem with those, they rattle my windows a lot! haha. i need to get new windows now. but no, these speakers are unearthly! the price is totally justified, my only regret is that i was in doubt and didn't go for the 5.1 ones. expect to get a quiet hiss from those when they aren't used, it's annoying but you eventually get used to it. that isn't present at playback though.

Pros: Cheap IPS monitor, great for photo/video enthusiasts on a budget.

Cons: I don't have anything bad to say about this monitor. It is great for what it is - a budget IPS monitor. I wish for 2 HDMI plugs and my Dell Ultrasharp series monitor at work renders text sharper but it it may be just configured differently. It's a solid offering and if you keep your expectations reasonable it won't disappoint.

Overall Review: I am getting serious about photography and I realized I won't get anywhere without a calibrated monitor. TFT technology (the majority of LCD screens) can not display true color. I was editing pictures at home on a TFT monitor, posting them online and then the next day I would look at them in horror at work on my IPS monitor. My home TFT monitor just wouldn't let itself to manual calibration. I considered buying a calibration tool but they go for at least $100. I figured I should buy a good monitor instead and do manual calibration. After some research I found out HP and Dell offer budget IPS monitors. This HP monitor was cheaper and had more features than the current Dell offerings but my Dell Ultrasharp at work may look a bit better. I can't decide if it's just the room light or configuration or a better quality panel. In any case my pictures great on both monitors and most importantly - they look the way I intended them to. I'm happy with this purchase, I recommend it.

Pros: AMAZINGLY vibrant colors!!, very accurate shots, best bargain for the price!!, quick startup, quick and accurate focus, decent flash, night shots aren't horrible, huge battery life, great video quality, great screen

Cons: you can't zoom in during recording in the video mode :-/ . not enough manual controls for freaks like me. the flash is not terrible but only works well for a few feet. no stabilization but you don't need any. pictures might be grainy sometimes but there are ways to remedy that.

Overall Review: shoot with iso at 400AUTO in the manual mode to avoid grains ;-) i've been buying high-end ultra-compact cams for years. after my expensive canon got stolen i decided to try out something mid-range. don't be fooled by the price tag on the f40fd, you won't find anything better. the picture isn't always as sharp as the canon models but the trade-off is stunningly vibrant colors!!

Pros: - huge lcd. the best selling point of this camera. all my friends love it. - small and stylish. this camera is light and fits in my pocket perfectly. the design is awesome. - easy controls. that's what sold me eventually. i hate cameras with the rotary button. i hate devices that turn on by accident in your pocket. this camera has an awesome feel to it and all controls are right at your fingertips. - easy menus. i never opened the booklet. it's so easy to operate, it makes you feel like a pro. - it takes sharp photos with a little effort. - the touch of a single button switches the lcd from normal to superbright mode. it helps a lot sometimes. - best flash i've ever had. - i got a discount from newegg and a free sd card with it. now i see it's even cheaper than what i paid.

Cons: - the lcd will get scratched easy. be careful. - the battery indicator only shows up right before the battery dies!! oops! hopefully they come up with a firmware to fix that. - the battery life seemed decent, not much worse than an older camera i had but i would buy a spare battery for a vacation trip. - no viewfinder. not a big deal, only a problem at a very bright light. use your intuition, point and shoot. apologize to your friends for having their heads cut off, lol. - i know that i can't demand high quality from the ultra-compact type but on certain settings this camera takes awfull grany pictures. auto mode is almost always fine. - the pictures are crisp and clear but lack the colors which i would get on my old olympus. oh well, photoshop to the rescue! - it performs poorly on extreme light or extreme darkness(no flash).

Overall Review: you have to understand that when you go for the ultra-compact type you substitute quality for space. you can take awesome looking pictures with this camera but unless all conditions are good, it's tricky and it takes some time to get it right. i'd say if you are on a tight budget go with something cheaper and quality-wise you will be still there. the best selling points of this camera are the big lcd and the easy of use. it's a very elegant camera and it turns heads. i've had a few ultra-compact cameras and to tell you the truth they are all the same. when you spend more money you don't necassarly get a huge difference in quality. i used to have an olympus and i was never impressed with it. then when i got this camera i suddenly became obsessed with my old olympus. this camera takes awesome pictures in auto mode but if you take away the flash and try to take 'artsy' pictures you get cr4p. the olympus would take cr4py pictures normally but some would come out incredible.

Comments: i decided to build a Pentium M system because i've had a P4 for a long time and it generates so much heat that during the summer it becomes unbearable in my tiny room. another pro was the low energy consumption because i like having my computer on durring the day so i can tap in with Remote Desktop from work. now when that was decided i started looking for a good motherboard and i was very disapointed to find out that there are only 4 of them out there. :-/ my mobo manicturer of choice asus makes adapters for the pentium M to 478 but no boards. i considered those because of the faster memory and bus speeds of the current 478 boards but when i did a little research i found out that the adapter does very little good and it's probably gonna be a bottleneck. don't get turned off by the 333Mhz memory and the 400Mhz system bus, this board is very tight and utilizes them very well. i'm only running a 1.3Ghz pentium M and cheap 512Mb RAM(shared with video) but this system is not by any means slow. i haven't tested it on games yet but with everyday stuff speed is never an issue. the only time i see a difference is when the P4 would usually kick in the HyperThreading. if you transfer large files, stream video and try to do something else you will find yourself missing the HT from P4. that's not a huge issue, it only comes up when you have the cpu utilized to full 100%. and frankly, software that does that is poorly designed in the first place. the pentium M is supposed to outrun the P4 at simple tasks and i actually was very happy to experience it in my favorite area of entertainment - the winamp visualizations. i was never really able to enjoy these at 1280x1024 before on the P4 even with an 800Mhz bus and dual channel 400Mhz RAM. crazy! i feel like somebody designed those little Pentium Ms just for me. hehe. i built my system on a budget, i was more inclined to go for the expensive AOpen borads because of the fancy controllers and bus/memory speeds, but these boards had no parallel and serial ports. heh. anyway, i found more reasons to dislike them and i went with this one. i was thrilled from the second i opened the box, everything on this board is a quality craftmenship and the layout looks very well thought out. remember to quit starring at the pretty controller heatsink. ;-). everything fit in perfectly no conflicts whatsoever, and i'm very happy with it. as i mentioned before i was on a budget so i saved money by getting a used cpu from e_xxx. here's the system: - pentium M 740 - AOpen i855GMEm-LFS - caseATHENATECH|A100BB.270W - NEC 16X DVDRW ND-3540A BK - HD 80GB|WD 7200RPM 8MB - PRO-GEAR Xm-4U card reader - PC3200 512MB from my old pc ---- total of my system: about five hundred bucks. i spent a grand altogether because i got a nice monitor, speakers and keyboard+mouse. in another month or 2 i'll upgrade with nice video and sound cards, maybe more ram ;-)

Comments: awesome case for the price. it looks great, it was easy to work with. i built a Pentium M system using the AOpen i855 board. needless to say i have no heat issues so i won't know if this will be a problem with a P4, the ventilation system looks pretty tight though. i had one disappoinment, the floppy bay door came broken. you should inspect the front panel throughly before start putting everything together. when they packaged it for shipping they protected the corners but not the front panel wich is very fragile and somewhat sloppy built (but still great for that price). another thing to be carefull with is the paint as it gets easily scratched even when i move it around my wooden desk. overall this is a great case, if you need a cheap, great-looking case look no further. if you need something that should last forever forget the pretty lookig panel.