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Jeff S.

Jeff S.

Joined on 02/01/02

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 10
Most Favorable Review

Booting with Linux

Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB USB 2.0 2.5" External Hard Drive ST903203FGA2E1-RK Silver
Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB USB 2.0 2.5" External Hard Drive ST903203FGA2E1-RK Silver

Pros: Relatively quick drive, just uses one USB port. I've got it velcroed to the back of my laptop and the laptop still fits in its bag comfortably. It's small enough to fit in your pocket (unless you have really tiny pockets) but still had a decent chunk of storage for a usb powered drive.

Cons: The cord's a bit short. Since my drive is velcroed to the lid of my laptop, it's not a problem for me, but you might want to make sure you don't need an extension cable. The lights just change slowly in intensity as the drive is used, so you can't really tell when the drive is being accessed like you can with the more traditional access LED (they're pretty, though).

Overall Review: If you're using this as a boot drive for linux, first hook it up to a Windows machine and install the Seagate utilities. Then turn off power management. There's a quirk in linux where if the drive tries to sleep, then wake up again, it comes back as a different usb device number and you're left with no root filesystem. Turning off power management on the drive fixes the issue.

12/23/2008
Most Critical Review

Horrible Design

Kensington Pro Fit Full-Size Mouse K72369US Black 1 x Wheel USB Wired Optical Mouse
Kensington Pro Fit Full-Size Mouse K72369US Black 1 x Wheel USB Wired Optical Mouse

Pros: Feels good in the hand. Most stuff works OK.

Cons: The mouse wheel has a tiny nub of plastic that goes into the rotary encoder (the part that detects you're scrolling the mouse). This mouse is designed so that every time you press the wheel, you put stress on that tiny nub until it inevitably breaks, leaving you with no scrolling ability. Mine broke in less than three months of light use.

Overall Review: Skip this one and buy a properly engineered mouse.

11/16/2022

Nice case

Case for Google Pixel 6,Google Pixel 6 Case(2021) Heavy Duty Rugged Shockproof Protective Cover Case for Google Pixel 6 (Black)
Case for Google Pixel 6,Google Pixel 6 Case(2021) Heavy Duty Rugged Shockproof Protective Cover Case for Google Pixel 6 (Black)

Pros: Feels sturdy. Grips the phone well. Easy to remove to clean the gunk out. Stand works well, and you can fit your finger through it to hold your phone more securely if you're moving around.

Cons: None that I could find.

Overall Review: It's nothing fancy, just a good case.

11/16/2022

Doesn't handle movement very well

USB-C to 3.5mm Female Aux Audio Cable Adapter with USB-C Charging Port
USB-C to 3.5mm Female Aux Audio Cable Adapter with USB-C Charging Port

Pros: Does what it's supposed to when it's sitting still.

Cons: If you move your phone around, it randomly disconnects. You have to unplug it and plug it back in to get it to work again. Quite annoying as I bought this to listen to audiobooks while flying, and just moving in my seat is enough to trigger the disconnect.

Overall Review: Gave it to my girlfriend to use while plugged into a stereo. Since it's sitting still, it works fine for that.

11/16/2022

There's cheap, then there's this thing.

Maikou USB 3.5mm Aux Wired Speaker 2.0 Channel Multimedia Speaker For MP3 PC(black)
Maikou USB 3.5mm Aux Wired Speaker 2.0 Channel Multimedia Speaker For MP3 PC(black)

Pros: Small, cute.

Cons: It's only single channel, so if you like mono sound, here you go. Mine was DOA, so I opened it up (it's not worth mailing back). It had a little circuit board with an "Income Technology" 8002C chip on it. Look it up, that's a single channel 3-watt amplifier for small devices like cell phones. Note the "single channel" bit there. There's a spot on the circuit board for a second chip, but it was unpopulated and both speakers were soldered to the same outputs. It arrived packaged horribly (flimsy taped up cardboard "box") and arrived with one of the speakers cracked.

Overall Review: I'm assuming the speakers are OK, so I'm going to build my own little amp and put it in there. Like I said, these things are cute - it's about the only selling point they have, really.

Works for Blender on Linux

ZOTAC ZT-70304-10P G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 770 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card
ZOTAC ZT-70304-10P G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 770 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card

Pros: Runs CUDA like a dream. Cycles on Blender flies with this thing on Linux. Runs dual monitors just fine. I haven't tested it much on Windows. It came with Watch Dogs, which is supposed to be a pretty good game.

Cons: NVidia only supports OpenCL 1.1 as of version 340 of their drivers (at least on Linux), so anything requring OpenCL 1.2 (like FFMpeg, for instance) isn't going to work with it (or any NVidia card, as far as I can tell). It's large (full length, two slots wide), so look at your motherboard layout and determine where your 3.0 x16 ports are and make sure it's not going to interfere with anything. Nothing like buying a card and finding out it blocks half your SATA ports or hits the chipset heat sink. Also be sure that your case has some clearance between the drive bays and where the card is going to go - hard drives usually stick out a bit from the drive bay.

Overall Review: Getting CUDA 6 and version 340 of the driver on Linux Mint was a pain. If you're having issues getting all the proper packages together for this, add the xorg edgers repository to your sources.list (assuming you're using a Debian-derived distro). I still had to install CUDA using NVidia's binary installer, but it's self-contained.