Joined on 12/11/12
Good Looks, Good Price, Great Product
Pros: This is a nice enclosure! It looks great, is easy to assemble, and works on almost any OS because it shows up as a USB Mass Storage device. I put a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB in it and it picked it up at full SATA 300 speed and formatted fine. USB transfers are reasonably fast, 25MB/s average in Vista, can reach 30+ depending on drive's seek time. The finish is nice and the assembled drive feels solid. The cords are nice, not cheap or weak. Works fine with IDE drives too, put in a Maxtor DiamondMax 20 (7200RPM 120GB) and it worked fine, also hitting 20+ MB/s during transfers. The indicator LED on the front glows blue when the drive is on and also has a red LED that flashes on activity. I would definitely buy another one of these should I ever need another external drive!
Cons: None, really, cables are a bit cramped but nothing you can't manage with a little effort. Doesn't report SMART or other drive info to the PC, but it does show the drive's name as the USB device name. External power supply is a pain if you're using a laptop, but, after all, 3.5" drives need a 12V supply which you can't get from a laptop.
Overall Review: Excellent product, works with my 1.5TB drive even when my onboard SATA 150 controller refuses to boot with the drive in (awful cheap Silicon Image chip). SATA/IDE compatibility leaves it open for swapping drives should you decide to move the external drive into your PC later. I have used this in Windows Vista 32, Windows Vista 64, Ubuntu 8.10, and Windows XP. I'm sure it will work in most other OS'es as well.
Great service from Newegg, not so much PSU...
Pros: I reviewed this PSU below, gave it 5 stars. It is a good PSU in that respect. Newegg is sending a replacement for free, that's the other pro.
Cons: Well, last week the stupid thing blew on me. It shorted out and kicked the GFI which all of my PC's were plugged in. It also kicked the circuit breaker to my room. Not so happy about this! Luckily, Newegg is shipping a replacement unit for free.
Overall Review: I don't know what caused the PSU to go bad, I thought I saw blue sparks when I plugged it in when it shorted the breaker, but I'm thinking that maybe the wires from the power input may be touching. I may end up using the fans from the dead unit as case fans.
Excellent Gigabit Switch
Pros: -Cheap -8 Ports (vs. 5 for many similarly-priced units) -Full 1000Mbps Gigabit compatibility -Maintains compatibility with 10 and 100Mbps devices -Green status LED's work and aren't too bright
Cons: -Lightweight, may be pulled off of table or desk by the weight of 8 cables
Overall Review: Bought this to replace a Netgear 10/1000 5-port switch after building a new desktop with gigabit and installing a gigabit card in my older home server PC. With this switch in between them, data transfers can exceed 50MB/s, regular 10/100 Ethernet is limited to around 12MB/s. This should theoretically do over 100MB/s but is going to be limited by your PC's HDD, IDE/SATA/RAID controller, and CPU.
Nice, High Quality Case
Pros: Looks nice, has good padding, has the Archos logo, and keeps my Archos 43 from getting dirty and scratched when I throw it in my pocket or laptop bag. The case seems pretty well made as well.
Cons: The case is a sleeve design but is open at both ends. To keep the device from falling out, a strap is sewn into both sides of the case on the inside. It is a bit confusing at first, do not pull the strap out. Instead, the strap forms the "bottom" of the case after you put the device in. This isn't really a con, just confusing.
Overall Review: Well worth the money, especially when the Archos 43 was 15% off, got the A43 and case for less than the A43's normal price alone! The Archos 43 is an awesome pocket computer, I highly recommend it, and get this case as well to protect it!
Incredibly awesome tablet, Great pocket computer!
Pros: This is an excellent tablet/pocket computer for the price. For $200, this device gives great media playback, a ton of mobile apps, a nice pocket computer, and plenty more features if you're willing to dig in and install the developer firmware. LCD - The LCD is very high resolution (854x480) and text and graphics both look very crisp and clear. The color is good and the backlight has a great brightness range for different usage environments. The touchscreen isn't that bad either. System- The ARM Cortex processor runs at 1GHz and has 256MB of RAM. This means that it can run multiple apps, live wallpapers, and 3D games well. The processor is a TI OMAP3630 which also includes a PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 graphics processor. It also features HDMI out and USB host capabilities (I have ordered a cord but have not tested these yet). Connectivity - It has WiFi N and Bluetooth wireless interfaces. I use the Bluetooth to connect it to my car to play music.
Cons: The one thing that everyone seems to be mentioning is the touchscreen. Yes, it is resistive and no it does not have multi-touch. For some apps this can be annoying, but the resistive screen is quite nice as far as resistive screens go. Also, it allows you to use a stylus for more precise tapping and also drawing/writing on the screen. The Android Market is a non-issue as well. It is not included by default, but it is available in several places and once installed works perfectly. The ArcTools package in AppsLib will install it as will any other .apk package found online for the Marketplace. The Market is also included in unofficial OS images like UrukDroid.
Overall Review: As a long-time Linux user, one thing I found particularly interesting about this device is the ability to dual-boot a Linux operating system. The developer firmware is easy to install and provides a basic Linux environment called Angstrom. You can replace the (fairly limited) Angstrom environment with Debian and have a full Linux desktop on the device. Support is still limited but improving. I bought this to replace my old Dell Axim X50v as nothing supports Windows Mobile 6.x anymore. It is a nice improvement over the Axim without having to pay for a data plan or other expensive services. The audio quality is also very good in this tablet. I haven't listened to many other players, but with a good set of headphones this will provide a great sound. When running Linux I found that it has a Wolfson audio controller.
Epic Card!
Pros: Looks awesome, 6 monitor outputs, CrossFireX compatible, 2GB RAM. I bought this because it was cheap compared to when I bought my first 5870 (this was $230, my other one cost $420 and it's not x6). It is a reference-design style which matches my other card perfectly except for the label and the outputs. The reference design cards have software voltage adjustment, a solid full shell cover with backplate, and a powerful fan.
Cons: There are no major cons, but I had a few issues: Uses an 8-pin and a 6-pin PCIe power connector despite having the exact same GPU as my other 5870 (which uses 2x 6-pin connectors). I didn't have anymore PCIe connectors so I used the two included adapters. It doesn't make much sense to require two Molex connections per adapter as the PSU connectors are all on one of two output wires, so 4 wires are unnecessary and clutter. CrossFireX installation and setup was difficult. The card was picked up by 11.3 right away but crashed with Afterburner. After discovering a driver feature called ULPS crashes Afterburner, I disabled it and stopped the crashing. I was able to enable CFX but GPU2 was getting zero usage and the game had low FPS. Finally after switching between modes and installing the Radeon Pro tool, I managed to get CFX enabled and working in most games (DX11 games still don't seem to work right, but it's a driver issue and should not detract you from this card in any way)
Overall Review: My other card is a Diamond HD5870 reference design, not Eyefinity x6. I'm running 3 Dell ST2210 1920x1080 monitors in Eyefinity. My system is a 4.12GHz i7 930, Gigabyte X58A-UD3R, 6GB DDR3 OCZ Gold, and Antec EA650 650W PSU. I had doubts about the EA650 PSU being able to handle an overclocked i7 and two 5870's but it appears to work just fine. I have both cards (not in CFX mode) running Folding@Home GPU and the Folding@Home SMP running on the i7. Everything maxed out and the PSU is still pushing 12V.