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James F.

James F.

Joined on 11/20/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 19
Most Favorable Review

It's Totes Magotes Amazeballs

Lenovo IdeaPad S415 14" Touch AMD A6-5200 4GB / 500GB HD Win 8  (59385549)
Lenovo IdeaPad S415 14" Touch AMD A6-5200 4GB / 500GB HD Win 8 (59385549)

Pros: 14" touchscreen, the best keyboard I've used in quite some time, Looks really nice. Nice power button, and white LEDs. Not too much third party installed software. Has removable battery (although extended batteries are not available as of this writing), Bottom cover is removable to access entire motherboard. RAM and hard drive can easily be upgraded, Windows 8 is actually fun with a touch screen

Cons: The nice silver paint on the lid scratches very easily. I keep this laptop in an official Lenovo Ideapad carrying case, and somehow it still managed to get a few scratches within a week. Its really a bummer, because the scratches reveal black plastic underneath. Within six months the thing is probably going to look hideous. There is only one memory slot. The battery is small, but shows you how far laptops have come in the past ten years with regard to battery life. The CPU is just ok, despite it being a true quad core. A dual core modern entry Intel Pentium will beat it, and modern Intel Core i3, i5, etc with hyperthreading will murder it. The CPU fan seems to stay on, even when the system is completely cool.

Overall Review: For the sale price, this is a wonderful machine. Its sleek, and quality built compared to other machines in its class. The Accutype keyboard is wonderful, and the touch screen is very responsive for navigating throughout Windows 8. I've had a number of Windows 8 laptops in the past year. This is my first touchscreen one. Before this laptop, I never used the Modern UI because it was difficult to navigate using a trackpad. I instead used the Desktop UI for everything. Now, I hate using the desktop because it seems so antique. Its really fun to navigate using the touch screen and Internet Explorer. I haven't used Internet Explorer since 2003, but until Chrome or Firefox are Modern UI apps that support gestures like IE, I'll continue to use Internet Explorer. To make up for the quality of the machine, Lenovo chose to use AMD APU in this machine. While I used AMD processors from 1997-2007, I switched over to Intel when their processors started murdering AMDs performance wise. This is a quad core, running at 2.0 ghz. I am not impressed. The benchmarks are low, but I know you can't always go by benchmarks. When you compare this laptop to a 10.1 inch laptop with a Celeron 847 CPU (that's dual core, 1.1ghz) and there is little difference in boot time, responsiveness, etc, then you know that you are going to have problems. It's really embarrassing when your laptop from 2010 that was around the same price is faster. I thought perhaps it was because of the battery / power settings. I changed it to the performance setting and there really wasn't a noticeable change. I can't comment on the graphics, which appear to be the saving grace of the processor. I don't have time to get into computer games. From what I did play (solitaire) there were some small hiccups with cards being dealt. There is one memory slot. You can upgrade it to 8gb, which I did. It helped with multitasking a bit. When I received the machine, I was a bit unhappy with how long it took to install Windows 8.1. The upgrade went smoothly, and I am happy. I'm not used to hearing the CPU fan, but the fan in this machine seems to run a bit loud at times, despite the unit being cool. There is a neat setting in the Lenovo utilities to turn the fan on at different speeds to expel dust from the machine. That's pretty neat. The battery is smalI (Around 2200 mah). Don't expect much from it if you're used to larger batteries and Intel CPUs. Web browsing, I get around three, maybe four hours with the backlit dimmed. I program on the go, spending 50+ hours a week. I like this machine for its 14' display, slim design, and keyboard. Because of the nature of my work, laptops don't last long for me. I know this machine isn't going to be durable, but I'm okay with that. The 'APU' may stink compared to Intel's CPUs, but it will suit most peoples' needs. The touchscreen is a nice feature that actually made me excited about the machine. Its worth it

12/15/2013
Most Critical Review

Expected Better Quality Product

Sunbeam RHK-BA Rheobus 5.25" Bay 4 Channel 20W Fan Controller Panel (Black)
Sunbeam RHK-BA Rheobus 5.25" Bay 4 Channel 20W Fan Controller Panel (Black)

Pros: It works (but for how long). The LEDs are not soldered in and easily pull out. You can turn the LEDs around to change the color scheme, or replace them entirely. The control knobs seem like quality products.

Cons: The LEDs are way too bright. The frame of this thing is way too thin, and I had to bend it a bit to get it into my drive bay. The fan controller board has nice heatsinks on it, but has poor construction attributes; I'm afraid this thing is going to fail, and something drastic is going to happen.

Overall Review: I understand that this is a niche product, but the quality of this product is unacceptable for the price. Either the quality should increase, or the price should drop. I don't trust this item, and will not leave my system unattended with this fan controller installed. If you spent a lot of money on your system, I suggest you invest in a better fan controller.

Disaster.

ASUS Laptop Intel Pentium 2020M 4GB Memory 500GB HDD Intel HD Graphics 15.6" Windows 8 64-Bit X501A-SPD0503W
ASUS Laptop Intel Pentium 2020M 4GB Memory 500GB HDD Intel HD Graphics 15.6" Windows 8 64-Bit X501A-SPD0503W

Pros: Thin, nice trackpad,Attractive white casing, Decent speakers, 500gb hard drive, Stays cool with browsing

Cons: Horrible quality control, spacebar only registers 75% of the time, Two total usb ports, Poor packaging, Endless loop of restarts due to software, no access to RAM

Overall Review: I have SIX ASUS laptops in my household and was planning to switch to them at my workplace. This is the absolute worst laptop I've ever used and will switch to another brand. The bezel around the display was not attached when I received the unit. I tried to snap it into place, however a couple of the plastic clips were missing. How did this pass quality control? HOW? The keyboard looks great, however the spacebar only works when it is struck in a specific location. While writing this review, I've had to backspace several times to fix missing spaces. The trackpad gesture software keeps getting uninstalled by Windows during a 'hotfix'.(I have it set to install no updates). Everytime the computer starts ASUS Live Update starts and wants to reboot the computer. It never installs anything. It just wants to reboot.

Amazing

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic Blue Unlocked GSM Touch Screen Phones with 3.2MP camera
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic Blue Unlocked GSM Touch Screen Phones with 3.2MP camera

Pros: This is a great phone. I am impressed in all aspects. Awesome music experience; not only has built in stereo speakers that are actually loud, but also comes loaded with music. Never used a touch screen phone before, but its a lot better than the small keyboard of my old Centro. There are a lot of applications and games available. You just have to look around the internet, or for a limited selection use the OVI store. The small size of this beast is a big plus to me too. I wanted a touchscreen phone, but it seems everyone I looked at were too huge. This thing actually looks like a phone, and the relatively high resolution for a three inch display is amazing. I get reception with this phone in places that my Palm Centro would only display "Emergency SOS Calls Only". The battery life is also amazing. I can actually use the fun stuff on this phone (MP3 player, Wifi, etc) without having to worry about draining my battery and missing phone calls.

Cons: I don't care about GPS and 3G. I don't need GPS to drain my battery, and I don't live in a 3g coverage area. The only problems I have with this phone is sometimes the phone fails to rotate the display when I rotate the phone. I've never had a Symbian device, so it is taking me a bit of time to understand how everything works. As for the applications, I can't believe that this phone does not thread text messages. Even my prehistoric Palm OS based Centro did that. Not really a complaint, considering there are software applications available for download that fix that issue.

Overall Review: I'm not a phone geek; I just wanted a cool, small, touchscreen phone. I can use wifi to browse the internet, download games and applications straight from the phone, and play music through the built in stereo speakers. There are people who complain about Nokia releasing this, when there is also the more feature rich 5800 available, but again I just want a small phone; not a huge thing. This is the first cell phone I have had that I actually became excited about.

11/27/2009

What A Deal.

Rosewill 80mm Computer Case Fan (Case Cooling Fan) - Black Frame & Red Fan Blades, 2-Ball Bearing, Silent Fan with Rotation Speed Controller; RFX-80
Rosewill 80mm Computer Case Fan (Case Cooling Fan) - Black Frame & Red Fan Blades, 2-Ball Bearing, Silent Fan with Rotation Speed Controller; RFX-80

Pros: I bought this solely for the fan controller. It's a very nice looking, controllable fan, that comes with a nice fan guard, and fan controller that you can place in an empty PCI slot. I was going to purchase just a fan controller, but this was actually cheaper.

Cons: When using the fan controller, there is a mess of wires. I don't understand why Rosewill took the time to put a sleeve around the fan wires, but just left the fan controller wires a mess. If you're worried about the aesthetics of your case, you might want to think twice about using the fan controller, unless you have some tricks up your sleeves. For me, the mess really wasn't a concern because my case is very unorganized, and I have wires everywhere.

Overall Review: Good deal, and worked exactly for what I wanted (took fan controller and rewired VGA card fan to it). I love Rosewill products!

Great Performance, Not So Great Fan

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 3850 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 100226L
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 3850 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 100226L

Pros: Purchased on sale with free shipping and a shady rebate offer. For the price, excellent performance. I don't play many games (bought mainly because of the low price, HD video support, and the ability to play DMC4), so I can't really elaborate on the performance. Packaged very well, and came with many nice little accessories including VGA, HDMI, component, CrossFire adapters. Used the auto-tune feature to overclock it to 739 GPU and 939 mem, which I suppose is nice if you're into that kind of thing.

Cons: I hate the heatsink / fan on this thing. The fan is too loud for me. The fan is two pin, and I've tried editing profiles in Catalyst, but it seems that that only two speeds this fan has is Loud (normal usage) and really loud (when I play DMC4) I like my system quiet, and I can't stand using this card. I thought that maybe I had a defective card, so I contacted Sapphire only to find it completely normal behavior. If noise doesn't concern you, then this is an excellent product.

Overall Review: I'm not really a gaming guy. I came from a nice quiet Geforce 7300 to this card, and I couldn't work with such a loud fan that I took the 3850 out and put the 7300 back in. I ordered an aftermarket cooler for the card (1/2 of what I paid for the card onsale), so hopefully that takes care of my main concern. Other than that, it's a great card and when its on sale, it's an excellent deal. I guess I should have expected the slight problem for the price I paid. Also since i'm used to a very quiet system, so it's very well possible that most people wouldn't mind the noise at all.