Pros: Amazing drop in rise-over-ambient (RoA) and noise level from retail Q6600 heatsink and fan. At idle, I'm seeing a 14deg Fahrenheit RoA with the Ninja vs. a 24deg F RoA with the stock cooler. Under full load, 18F RoA with the Ninja, 33F RoA with the stock. And much, much quieter... that nine-blade 120mm fan spins at around 800rpm, as opposed to the 1400 or so that the stock five-blade 90mm fan was rotating.

Cons: The directions for the LGA775 push-clips miss two important details. One: Make sure that the black tops of the clips are rotated clockwise --- against the direction of the arrows on the pins --- or else they won't lock down securely. Counterclockwise is the release position. It will still click down, but when you push down the opposite corner clip, it will release. Two: I have a relatively roomy Antec P180 case, and I can't imagine a case in which you'll have enough room around the CPU to push down on those pins without removing the motherboard. Be ready to pull the motherboard, and watch for screws you may have difficulty reaching once this behemoth is in place.

Overall Review: This thing truly is a beast, size-wise, but doesn't weigh that much more than the stock cooler. The latter is made from a single block of milled aluminum, whereas the Ninja's fins are much thinner sheets of stamped aluminum. Once firmly attached, I don't have any fears of this thing coming loose and destroying my video card on a downwards tumble. No issues with memory or northbridge heatsink clearance on my abit IP-35 Pro, but I will have to remove the fan temporarily in order to fill the second set of DIMM slots.

Pros: High port density in an inexpensive switch; solid feature set with LACP, LLDP, port mirroring, QoS, 802.1x and 802.1q.

Cons: No SNMP. Cisco has issued an errata that says the mentions of SNMP in the manual were in error and will be removed in the next iteration of the manual.

Overall Review: Cisco kept Bonjour, of all things, but dropped SNMP. I missed that omission in the list of other very useful features, which means that I cannot monitor this switch with our centralized NMS without writing a wget wrapper.

Pros: On any sort of semi-textured surface, the mouse tracks perfectly. Some of the most useful applications now have quick-strike keys (Calculator!)

Cons: Keyboard action is a little mushy compared to the Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite it replaced. It doesn't react as fast, and when I really get a good head of steam going, I feel it holds me back. It's a four button mouse, not a five... I never realized how much I used the forward button on the mouse in gaming until I tried playing Fallout 3 with this. (Whoops --- no reload!).

Overall Review: If you can get used to the function key change, it speeds up some productivity applications, but be ready to hit the F-lock key for gaming. Learn to use SHIFT-mousewheel instead in a browser to scroll forward and backward.

Pros: Solid card for home users; very low fail rate.

Cons: Must be an administrator-level account in order for the card drivers to operate! That's fine for the typical wide-open Windows Home install, but is completely untenable in a corporate setting.