All of our devices need power, and with several types of the exact same device out there it has always bugged me that you can’t just plug it in anywhere you go, it’s all electric right? What I mean is that if I go to Europe, Australia or even China I can’t plug in my device, they’ve all got different types of plugs, why is there no standard with this type of thing? It could be the exact same device but yet it won’t work here in the US or vice versa without some sort of adapter. You’d think that since all of these things are used by everyone there might be a standard, but there isn’t, just another one of those questions that will never be answered…

Today for review I’ve got a 2 in 1 car and home charger, that’s also truly an international charger, it can be used in any country around the world where you go with four interchangeable AC Plugs . Most international chargers only come with three types of plugs, so having four makes this one even more useful, and this charger has got two USB ports on it, they look exactly the same but the amperage is different on them, one runs at 500mA, while the other runs at 1000mA. You might wonder why this is special, but take a look at your iPhone, or iPod, and you’ll see that it needs 1000mA, while a regular mp3 Player or cellphone might only need 500mA for charging. I’ve not seen any other types of portable chargers out there that specifically address the needs of high-current devices.

Read Full Review HERE

We have just posted up a review of the Arctic Breeze.  This is a 92mm USB fan from Arctic Cooling that actually performs as good as it looks and it looks pretty nice.  It has a heavy base and a two-speed switch to provide you with either a little or even less airflow.  Overall, it is much better than I ever expected.   More details in our full review.

Title: Arctic Breeze USB Fan - Arctic Coolings makes a HSF for people!
URL: http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=5839&Itemid=40

Quote:
A USB fan is a pretty simple piece of hardware.  The Arctic Breeze has a very aggressive design - especially for a USB fan.  Other fans I’ve seen have cloth blades or a grill for safety, but the Arctic Breeze sits bare - waiting to chew off your finger.  It stands about 7.5″ tall and has a nice heavy base to keep it standing upright on your desk.  The neck is flexible and allows proper positioning to blow air where you need it most - your face, back or armpit - whatever the case may be.

Title: Scythe Kaze Master Fan Controller @ Tech-Reviews.co.uk

Briefing: With the ever increasingly popular gaming cases - such as the Twelve Hundred which we reviewed at Tech-reviews yesterday – more and more fans are being added to cases. This is good in the way of cooling; hence better performance from components, however installing lots of fans increases the noise levels of computers considerably. To drop these noise levels, you need control over your fans and if you don’t have mystic powers, one such product that achieves this is a fan controller. Fortunately, we’ve been lucky enough to review a fan controller from reputable manufacturer Scythe. Introducing the Scythe Kaze Master…

Link: http://www.tech-reviews.co.uk/reviews/scythe-kaze-master-fan-controller/

Title: Tagan PipeRock TG1100-BZ 1100W PSU Review on Technic3D

Link: http://www.technic3d.com/article-683,1-tagan-piperock-tg1100-bz-1100w-netzteil-im-test.htm

Quote: “The Tagan PipeRock TG1100-BZ 1100W arrived Technic3D. See you in the following Review from Technic3D the next PSU with modular cable management with colorful housing to avoid wrong connection, 135mm LED Fan, Six 12V rails, 12 Serial ATA connectors, 2x PCI-e 6+2 Pin and 4x PCI-e 6-Pin.”

Title:
Apple Wireless Keyboard Reviewed @ TheTechLounge

Quote:
“Mmm, Mac hardware. Sharp. Purposeful. Tasty. Downright industrial designelicious. Half of the people who make the vaunted switch do so because of this keyboard. I mean, not literally this keyboard, but because of the engineering and style that this wireless device is the apex embodiment of. The keyboard is small because it’s cut down; the keys are standard but a lot is sacrificed to make the whole package as miniscule as possible without cramping digits. I see a lot of potential in this input device, and not because it’s portable. But I also can’t help but wonder, can design be taken too far?”

Article URL:
http://www.thetechlounge.com/article/535/Apple+Wireless+Keyboard/

Thermaltake XaserVI Mx Case Review:

Link: http://www.rbmods.com/Articles/Thermaltake/Xaservi_mx/1.php

Quote: Today its time for another case review, Thermaltake was kind enough to send us a sample of their XaserVI Mx case for review. This seems to be a nice looking medium tower case if we take a quick overview of it but the question is how good is the quality, and what kind of new features does it have that should give it the edge over its competitors? The main feature seems to be that the case is designed for both air and watercooling so lets see if there is enough space to squeeze in a watercooling setup.

Delivering the World’s First Truly Affordable High-Performance SSD for Consumers at Price Points Less than 50% of Comparable High Performance SSDs

Sunnyvale, CA—July 1, 2008—OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled the OCZ Core Series SATA II 2.5” Solid State Drives (SSDs). OCZ has gained momentum in this pioneering technology, which uses NAND flash instead of rotating platters as the storage medium, and is a high-performance, highly reliable and energy-efficient alternative to conventional hard disc drives.

“SSDs offer higher performance, reliability, and energy efficiency than conventional HDDs but the cost variance has limited adoption of vastly superior SSD technology, until now,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. “It is our mission to deliver the highest performance products to consumers at reasonable prices, and with the release of the Core Series SSDs we have done exactly that.”

Core series SSD drives are available in capacities of 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB and deliver incredible 120-143MBs/ 80-93MBs read/write speeds and seek times of less than 0.35ms, making the Core series up to 10x as fast on a seek-time basis and up to 40% faster on a R/W basis that the best performing 2.5” HDDs on the market, all while consuming 50% less power. MSRPs at time of launch are USD $169, $259 and $479 for 32GB, 64GB and 128GB models respectively.

Press Release

Product Page

Title: BHV Homepage Maker 6 Express @ Tech-Reviews.co.uk

Briefing: Website design software is useful for many people from massive websites like Google and eBay to the smaller one-man band sites. If you do happen to be a bored housewife breaking out into the wide world of the internet then you probably don’t have much programming knowledge. BHV’s Homepage Maker 6 Express states that you need no programming knowledge to be able to use this software. So let’s put this software to the test and see just how easy it is to use.

Link: http://tech-reviews.co.uk/reviews/bhv-homepage-maker-6-express/

TechwareLabs has published our review of Gaming with Dell & HP. Here’s a clip from the article:

Quote: Looking for a new gaming rig but don’t want to build it yourself? Interested in what Dell and HP have to offer with a preconfigured machine and a good warrenty to boot? We take a look at how the offerings of Dell and HP stack up against eachother and give you a good idea of where your money is best spent.

LINK: http://www.techwarelabs.com/articles/editorials/gaming-with-dell&hp/

Title: Gaming with Dell & HP @ TechwareLabs

Title: All Phenom Models
Link: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/504
Category: Tutorials

Summary:
A quick reference table showing the main specs of all Phenom models released to date.

Here is a snippet:
“Phenom is the latest CPU series from AMD, based on their new K10 architecture. In this short tutorial we will list the main specs of all Phenom models released or announced so far.”

InsideHW.com has posted review about Toshiba Satellite U300. You can
read a clip from review:

…”Notebooks from Toshiba were relatively often tested in our test
lab, but mostly those were models with 15.4” screen diagonal. Models with
13.3” are present on market but not as much as 15.4”. It seems that
manufacturers don’t agree with consumers’ claims that notebooks with 13.3”
screen have best ratio of mobility and functionality. Only one manufacturer
that stands strongly with 13.3” models is Apple with MacBook series.”…

If you are interested to read some more, we present you link:

http://www.insidehw.com/Reviews/Notebooks/Toshiba-Satellite-U300.html

Win a Triforce Touch Screen Pointer over at Tiltsite!!!

They’ve got four of them to giveaway in July, one per week!

http://tiltsite.com/2008/07/triforce-giveaway/

Title:
AXP 2.5/3.5″ SATA to eSATA & USB Dock

Link:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AXP/SATA_HDD_eSATA_USB_Dock

Brief:
AXP is now offering the very popular external hard drive docking station for SATA drives. The unit can take a 2.5 or 3.5 inch drives and offers eSATA on top of the usual USB 2.0 connectivity.

“Sony’s DSC-W130 is a good all-rounder, though image quality is quite run of the mill with softening around edges and noise at ISO 800 and higher. Colours are vibrant and shots are generally acceptable, though aren’t quite as sharp as they could be - but they’re more than suitable for respectable A4 prints, e-mailing, and posting on the Web. The DSC-W130 doesn’t set the world on fire, but its build quality, fast shutter, longer-than-normal lens, and handy in-camera editing and slide show functions make it a well-rounded offering for the asking price.”

http://www.biosmagazine.co.uk/rev.php?id=768

CPU3D Review: MSI R4850-T2D512 (Radeon HD4850)

AMD/ATI is finally back in the game. Their latest RV770 GPU offers one of the best price/performance ratios in recent times. It’s made using a 55nm fabrication process and offers 480 processor streams. Today, we take a look at MSI’s R4850-T2D512 (Radeon HD4850). It uses the RV770 Pro GPU and it’s equipped with 512Mb of GDDR3 ram, supports DX10.1 and Shader Model 4.1.

… All-in-all, the MSI R4850-T2D512 which uses the Radeon HD4850 (RV770 Pro) GPU, is a very good performer … it’s shown that AMD/ATI are now finally back in the game.  ”

Read the rest of the review … http://www.cpu3d.com/content/view/5186/53/

Title: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Linux Performance @ Phoronix
Direct Link: http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12551
Summary: “Back in March we had looked at the Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 mobile processor with its Penryn core and 6MB of shared L2 cache between its two cores clocked at 2.50GHz. We were very pleased with the performance of this mobile processor on Linux, which was found within a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 notebook, and today we are looking at the Penryn’s desktop counterpart. Intel’s Core 2 Duo “Wolfdale” E8000 series processors were released earlier this year with 6MB of L2 cache, 45nm manufacturing, a 1333MHz FSB, and support for SSE 4.1. The processor from the Wolfdale series we are looking at today under Linux is the Core 2 Duo E8400.”

Corsair Voyager GT 16Gb and Voyager 4Gb USB Stick Review

“The Voyager GT is the high speed cousin of the well known Corsair Voyager USB stick. In this review we compare its performance to several other USB drives as well as the none-GT Voyager.”

http://www.madshrimps.be/gotoartik.php?articID=845

TweakPC has posted a new article.

Titel:
GeForce PhysX article: Videos

Teaser:
We put some videos in our article to show what PhysX is doing.

Link:
http://www.tweakpc.de/hardware/infos/grafik/nvidia_geforce_physx/s06.php

Newspic:
http://www.tweakpc.de/hardware/infos/grafik/nvidia_geforce_physx/sp.jpg

SEOUL, Korea (AVING) — <Visual News> HTC has joined with SK Telecom to introduce its slim 3G smartphone ‘Touch Dual’ in Korea market, which is designed with stylish pure white color.

Adopting a 2.8-inch touch screen, the Touch Dual features touch screen navigation with an overlaying GUI called ‘TouchFlo’ that lets users swipe through media libraries and provides scrolling for web pages or documents.

Running on Windows Mobile 6.1, the Touch Dual supports HSDPA and Bluetooth connectivity. It also incorporated 2M camera and microSD card slot.

It is expected to be available in Korea market in the mid of July for below 600,000(KRW).

Via Aving (More picture HERE)

Title: Super Micro C2SBX+ @ Phoronix
Direct Link: http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12545
Summary: “Super Micro, are you familiar with them? Chances are that unless your focus is on the workstation and server markets, you probably haven’t heard of them. However, this company has been around since 1993 and they have been producing a variety of different motherboards, servers, computer enclosures, and other products to fit the needs of their customers. Super Micro manufacturers a variety of different Intel server motherboards — and they are one of the few that offers quad-socket Xeon motherboards — but they also have a growing selection of Core 2 desktop motherboards. The C2SBX+ is one of their newest motherboards and with our first Super Micro review at Phoronix we are looking at this product. This Intel X48 motherboard is designed for digital entertainment, gaming enthusiasts, and other high-end applications.”

Quote: “ATI have been quietly boiling away at their latest gen. We take the HD4850 out for a spin and see how it gets on”

Link: http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews.php?/gpu_displays/asus_hd4850_512mb_pci-e_graphics_card_eah4850/1

We have just posted up a review of the feature rich ASRock K10N78hSLI-WiFi motherboard.  This board is for AMD AM2+ processors and has enough features to keep most casual gamers happy.  This board comes loaded with hybrid SLI, firewire, eSATA, tons of USB2.0 ports and integrated 802.11b/g WiFi.  While AMD has slipped from the minds of many gamers, this ASRock board is a good backbone for a decent gaming system or HTPC.  Catch our review for all the details.

Title: ASRock K10N78hSLI-WiFi Motherboard
URL: http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=5812&Itemid=40

Quote:
The K10N78hSLI-WiFi also proves to be a decent overclocker and has a lot of adjustments, voltage settings and performance tweaks to keep your system on the bleeding edge.  The only downside to this is that current AMD processors are not as overclockable as they used to be.  Regardless, the board will be able to take you to the limit of your processor with ease.

Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Ultimate

” While the next generation of graphics cards from ATI are just around the corner, you can get some amazing performance with full open source support for a great price. Some of the readers might also be looking for a silent solution while having good performance and the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Ultimate steps up to provide that. It combines a truly massive heatsink with the powerful 3870 GPU to create a fast and completely silent graphics card for your quiet PC. ”

Link: http://www.aselabs.com/articles.php?id=262

CPU3D Review: Coolmax CUG950B 950 Watt Power Supply

Power demands for system builds are ever so exponentially increasing. These days configuration options such as Tri and Quad SLI exist, and mammoth power supplies are required to feed them. Today we take a look at the Coolmax CUG950B 950 Watt Power Supply. It has four +12V rails (2@20A and 2@25A) and comes with a modular cable management system.

” … A great value considering the rating of 950 Watts, modular cables, and the great voltage stability. “

Read the rest of the review … http://www.cpu3d.com/content/view/5293/55/