Pros: The card performs very well in video playback. It can handle hardware decoding and chroma upsampling of at least three 720p streams simultaneously, which is handy when comparing quality. Excellent performance in 2002-2007 games on high settings. The ASUS card comes with a stronger bracket with an angled edge, which doesn't bend like the Gigabyte model in my other system. Due to the absence of a fan, the card appears to be of reliable construction. Good VGA signal quality. Custom resolution support for non-standard flat screens.

Cons: While being low power, the card shouldn't be considered for playing earlier games, which don't work at all or have poor 16-bit color quality without dithering. The card is limited by its 64-bit memory interface when running games in HD resolutions. Bloated drivers. Might not be bundled with a low profile replacement bracket.

Overall Review: One egg removed because the first board I purchased sporadically failed to be detected by the motherboard, froze while on the BIOS interface, and required replacement. Under full load in a regular case, the GPU temperature reaches 62 °C, which is good, and means the heatsink is adequate and not too large.

Pros: Extremely flexible configuration. Any ethernet port can be connected to any network, be it WAN or LAN. Multiple WAN uplinks are possible, and their use can be conditionally specified in RouterOS firewall for load balancing. This also includes the wireless radio, which can serve as an access point, bridge or station for uplinking to another wireless network. Wireless can be fine tuned to use frequencies below the public 2.4 GHz ISM band (with appropriate license) at manually specified Tx power up to the strong 27 dBm. Mikrotik devices can use the NV2 protocol among them for increased speed and security. Router is managed from Winbox, a special utility, which runs on any Windows version and is supplied on the router itself, telnet, SSH, and Web browser. All confugration interfaces have a similar layout. I am primarily using Winbox because its GUI is clear and responsive, and a telnet terminal for CLI access can be opened within Winbox at any time. This is useful to set some options not exposed via the GUI, such as changing of MAC addresses, or to export lengthy configuration parameters, such as firewall rules, for reference or loading into another unit. RouterOS includes advanced diagnostic tools, such as Packet Sniffer, Ping, Traceroute, IP scanner, Wireless frequency scanner, connections monitor, which run from the router's perspective are handy for troubleshooting problems. The throughput of the device is high, and depends on the number of active firewall rules. It will range between 150 and 300 MBit/s. The two sets of ethernet ports can be separately switched together, and will then work at wire speed without loading the CPU. I've reached 900 MBit/s over Cat 5E. By default only the Fast Ethernet ports are switched. Activity of each port in a switch group can still be monitored. Thermal management of the unit is good. The 600 MHz Atheros AR9344 CPU and the AR8327 switch have decent heatsinks. Wide range of accepted power voltage (8-28 V). Configuration changes don't require a reboot, except overclocking and firmware upgrade.

Cons: Strong Cons are few. No 5 GHz radio transceiver and expansion slot for one, to use the less crowded band. This is partially compensated by the ability to select custom frequencies, but then all devices must be able to broadcast on those. Setup requires itermediate knowledge about IP networking. The RB2011 comes with a default configuration where WAN is on ether1, radio disabled, remaining ethernets bridged as one subnet, which will get basic connectivity. But this setup might not be optimal, such as if the uplink is only 100 MBit, or admin wants to power the device by PoE not in the uplink. Port forwarding is also difficult. Activity LEDs are not near network interfaces, and blink at a lower frequency than normal with NICs, which makes it more difficult to see and pinpoint activity. The design of the red plastic front panel feels cheap, especially around LEDs and the micro-USB port. The blue power LED is too bright making it difficult to see the green programmable activity LED next to it. Socks 4 proxy instead of Socks 5. Micro-USB is too tiny and fragile.

Overall Review: I've been using RouterBoard products for several years. My first RB532A from 2007 is still in working condition, but doesn't quite meet the performance demands of today. These devices hardly ever need rebooting or reset if working properly. As another reviewer put it, the RouterBoard is a real geek's router for those who are eager to learn, or a professional device. No functionality is deliberately locked down. But the CPU and RAM limit the number of functions that can be active simultaneously. The online wiki manual for RouterOS is easy to understand, as it uses clear technical language, and doesn't hide behind marketing buzzwords. The manual gives examples as telnet commands, which are closely mirrored in the menus of GUI tools. I always start configuring a Mikrotik with Winbox, and don't bother with the Web UI. If connected directly to a PC, or via an L2 switch, WinBox can access the router by MAC even if IP addresses are not set up correctly. In the RB2011, I started with disabling the default firewall rules, and enabling WinBox MAC server on all interfaces, to avoid locking myself out from the router. The chosen WAN ports can be secured later. The Web UI is useful for monitoring traffic or system resources. I always enable that via Graphing, and disable webUI configuration access for all users (including full/admin) to harden security. The touchscreen is helpful for monitoring Wlan activity and CPU usage. To execute drags/swipes on the resistive touchscreen, one must press hard on it for the whole duration of the drag. I also set the touchscreen to read-only in WinBox to prevent accidental changes to the configuration. The RB2011 was tested upgraded with RouterOS v6.10.

Pros: Stable LED light source that doesn't need warmup and recalibration. Power supply is embedded in the scanner itself for a compact setup. Compact software that occupies little space on disk and on screen; only the "driver" is needed for acquisition and basic processing. Software is compatible down to Windows 2000. Verified to work with the cover open for bulky documents like books. The cover has a retractable hinge to support thicker documents. As a CCD scanner, the unit has good depth of focus, and natural blurring of unfocused, distant edges. All automatic correction in the software can be switched off to obtain raw scans of matching, reproducible color balance. Decent actual resolution at or slightly above 1200 ppi. Decent dynamic range for any type of reflective document, able to resolve both the darkest HQ print and the texture of the whitest paper. Greater than 24-bit actual precision. Decent on-the-fly "descreening" filter for quick moire-less copies, but not to be relied upon for making quality scans of printed artwork.

Cons: No significant cons for this price range. No larger than 35 mm transparent documents (film) can be scanned. Dynamic range and resolution might not be sufficient for some negatives. The power supply makes tweeting noises when the switch is off; switch doesn't fully disconnect power. Adjustment of contrast in ScanGear is imprecise because the histograms are small. Data is processed only at 24-bit at high resolution. With enough memory, 48-bit can be manually selected.

Overall Review: I have only tested reflective documents via the TWAIN interface from within Windows XP. The Navigator EX application is only needed to have the buttons on the scanner respond. When scanning documents that approach the amount of available memory (which is displayed in ScanGear), a small application like IrfanView will allow to make larger scans. I've previously owned CanoScan 4400F. I was disappointed that I didn't get the elite-looking translucent USB cable with the 5600F. Resolution in this unit has increased slightly from around 800 ppi to about 1200 ppi. It also doesn't need calibration and compensation for a 'weaker' color (which was blue in the old model). All colors come out balanced by default without correction. I was able to obtain good partial scans of Vinyl artwork, which could be seamlessly rejoined in Photoshop. The ScanGear "driver" has changed little, and can be controlled precisely via TWAIN. It first starts up in simplified mode. The 5600F driver allows to correct contrast on the fly, and performs some correction by default. However, when the resolution is increased to 1200 ppi, the transfer curves operate on 24-bit data only, and histograms come out with visible bands. Full 48-bit precision is used at 600 ppi and below. This is probably done to increase scanning speed when the USB interface becomes the bottleneck. Because of this, contrast adjustment on the fly becomes pointless, as one can use better preview facilities in a graphics editor to do it. At 2400 ppi and a regular sized document the stepper motor had to pause because my computer's USB wasn't fast enough to receive the data. The scanner was able to restart, without backing up and without visible tears on the picture. The 2400 ppi resolution must be manually keyed in the dialog, and is of limited use since the scanner's optical resolution isn't that great. I was able to preserve a little more detail when digitally rotating a picture supersampled this way. I was unable to verify whether the scanner can scan all money bills. It successfully scanned $10 (as a sample of detailed print without a halftone pattern) and all of my local currency, but I believe they don't have the special dot pattern. If the unit does have protection against scanning of money, I would deduct one full Egg from the score. After I first installed the driver, the scanner would first refuse to make a full resolution Scan, but succeeded producing a Preview. I received an error message with code "95,0,0", directing me to turn off the scanner and follow instructions in the manual. The manual didn't explain this error code, and the error went away by itself after a few more attempts, without power cycling the unit. I suspect the driver wanted me to install the software in a particular order.

Pros: Sturdy design without moving parts, looks great at a black computer case, and in a corproate environment where "enthusiast" devices might not. Small height allows to insert the device in the rear ports next to another plug. Verified compatibility with legacy USB 1.1 ports.

Cons: No LED to indicate activity, and warn that the device shouldn't be disconnected. This is usually non-issue with file transfers, as one can simply wait a couple of seconds afterwards, but might be a problem when applications are executed from the stick (and slowly updating their configuration). I am deducting only one Egg, because bulk file copying is still the most common application. The "rim" at the end might not allow insertion in front panel ports that are horizontally right next to one another.

Overall Review: The speeds are not horrendous. A write speed of 5 MB/s is sufficient for the majority of usage cases. A high capacity Flash memory will always be slower, with all other factors being equal. The speed is limited by the memory configuration. Having a faster interface does not necessarily help. USB 3.0 is the latest hype.

Pros: Has the latest technology, including one SATA III port. PCI slots for "legacy" expansion cards that do not get obsolete. Good quality sound codec that can output a separate stream to the front connector. Four RAM slots allowing to expand memory in the future. Functional AMI bios, offering all expected compatibility features, like IDE and non-UEFI boot, and having them on by default; easy to navigate. System fan's speed can be controlled precisely for a quiet system. All types of video outputs for compatibility with any screen. Fully supports XP.

Cons: Realtek NIC. What happened to Marvell? POST screen showing a list of system devices doesn't exist anymore. System locks up unnecessarily on invalid bios password. The single SATA III port is not marked differently. Single system fan connection (not much of a con for a micro board). No driver for USB 3 under XP (but ports remain functional). The right side of the board, which is wider than ones with 2 mem slots, may not supported in most chassis: be careful inserting the power connector.

Overall Review: This board can serve as the basis for a compact and fast system by current standards. It has out of box support for Ivy Bridge, SATA III, USB 3, but still continues to offer PCI expansion slots for good existing h/w, such as sound cards or radio receivers. The XP system that I built boots in less than 30 seconds due to small memory footprint of the OS, and did it without needing settings adjustment or patches. Under XP, the Realtek drivers responded to configuration changes well, including creation of new WDM devices, and the computer was able to enter into and wake from sleep mode. The 7x chipset appears to be the last platform that Windows XP can be fully functional on. There were no issues with driver installation, which I got from the Gigabyte website. (I skipped the Intel storage and management apps.) A quick glance in the manual to double check USB and front panel pinouts, revealed that the connectors were even depicted in the correct orientation freeing up from the need to find pin 1 of each. The Realtek control panel has always been bloated, ridden with impractical functions. But you don't need to see it anymore, and can remove it from autostart, once you've set the right configuration. I did not test video output aside from verifying that it worked. Installing a GT 610 video card with the same three outputs worked fine in this case. Curiously, the new style BIOS offers mouse support, but my regular Microsoft USB mouse had such a poor sensitivy that it wasn't usable to quickly navigate the menus. PS/2 keyboard worked fine. BIOS looked sharp on my LCD at native resolution.

Pros: The drive is phenomenally fast in sequential reads. Over a SATA/150 interface read speed was 120 MB/s flat, and reached 210 MB across the outer third of tracks over SATA/600. Seeking can only be heard as a low buzz, which however could translate through the chassis. Performs well over Intel's first generation SATA I.

Cons: The first sample I owned had the infamous chirping problem, where the drive heads are being parked after a short idle period. I used HDAT2 to permanently disable Advanced Power Management (search my post for DCO, and Software Settings Preservation). The second sample that I bought this week, had APM already disabled and no clicking was observed. One extra egg! Doesn't have a jumper to select interface speed, which makes it incompatible with some early SATA controllers.

Overall Review: This drive will greatly improve the performance of any aged computer that has a SATA connector, but currently uses an older model HDD. I tested it by installing Windows 98 on it. Since the drive's reliablity cannot yet be evaluated, it receives only four eggs.