System Mechanic 8 is the latest incarnation of iolo technologies PC tune up software.  Formed in 1998, iolo is recognized worldwide as the market-leading provider of PC tune-up software and is best known for its award-winning System Mechanic family of products.

As your PC is utilized more and more, its performance seems to slowly degrade and become more sluggish.  With System Mechanic 8 on board, these issues are addressed pro actively, keeping your operating system running at its peak performance.  System Mechanic 8 cleans unwanted services from startup, optimizes the registry, fine tunes the internet settings, defragments system memory and hard drives, repair hard drive error and much, much more.

When I had a chance to talk to one of the representatives from iolo at the Pepcom show, they stressed how System Mechanic 8 was ideal for both the neophyte PC user and the power user.

For the beginner, System Mechanic 8 offers “fix and forget” capability.  One click repairs and power tools allow automated repair and maintenance of your PC.  The ActiveCare technology allows System Mechanic 8 to do all the work and fix issues as they arise.

The power use has over forty tools to choose from and allows tweaking of system performance tools.  The Intellistatus technology allows the user to visualize key statistics and track performance.

Iolo also allows System Mechanic 8 to be installed on up to three computers per license.  This helps protect your laptop, desktop and one additional family computer.

So let’s take a closer look at the latest version of System Mechanic.

Read Full Review HERE

InsideHW.com has posted review of Firefox 3. You can read a clip from review:

“After a lot of anticipation at June 17 this year Firefox 3 was released. Great expectations were on a table because of great need for eliminating the biggest faults of Firefox 2.  Firefox 3 is based on new Gecko 1.9 platform that should provide more precise display of pages and therefore to improve surfing quality, which is confirmed at acid 2 and acid 3 tests…”

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

http://www.insidehw.com/Software/Internet/Firefox-3.html

So today I’m taking a look at Extra Video Converter, which doesn’t rip DVDs, it converts your already ripped movies or other video files over to many formats including PPC, which of course is why we’re interested in it..

The program works great and it works fast, it’s a bit on the expensive side though compared to other programs like this, but it might be worth it actually since it can convert to many popular formats and the fact that it’s very easy to use.

Read Full review HERE

Date: 08-28-2008 By Vlad Mihaiescu
For the casual RPGer who every few months picks up a copy of an RPG out of pure boredom, this might not be that random purchase that you want to make. I love my job, but as I reviewed this game all I was thinking about was my want of strangling the programmers, reviving them with a potion so I can strangle them all over again.The game is nothing new really, just a bunch of clicking, bad voice acting and a storyline mostly based on borrowed ideas from other titles. The gameplay is mediocre at best, and the lack of character creation is a big no-no in my book. I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but something tells me that this game won’t remain forty bucks for very long.

Link: http://www.gamepyre.com/reviewsd.html?aid=1010&p=1

This year, PAX is held at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. Originally, the Penny Arcade Expo was held at the relatively small Maydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington, and is now ten times bigger. PAX 08 occupies 300,000 square feet of the trade center and features over 70 exhibitors and acommodates over 50,000 attendees.

Wil Wheaton returns to PAX this year, not as the keynote speaker but as a panel speaker. Wil’s panel is Sunday afternoon, and we hope to bring you more from Mr. Wheaton. You can read about Wil’s awesome keynote from last year. You can also download the entire hour-long audio.

We have already seen a bunch of costumed gaming patrons, as well as some cute girls… of course we’ll add to our world-famous Booth Babe gallery as we snap more photos.

Review URL ::
http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=1311

NEW CONTENT (Visual) - Point of View GeForce 9500 GT Graphics Card

QUOTE: “I’ve never had the chance to look at a graphics card from Point of View before, but now is as good a time as any to start. When word came through that the first card the company would ever be sending to me would be the 9500 GT, I felt kind of sorry for them. Clearly they didn’t read my original review of the 9500 GT from Leadtek.

I made my thoughts pretty clear on the card, offering half the performance of the 9600 GSO but not half the price. This absolutely killed any form of value for money the product offered. Apart from being cheap, there wasn’t really much else the card could offer; even if you were extremely tight when it came to the money side of things, we recommended that you simply bite your lip for a few more weeks and save to buy something from the 9600 series.”

For more information, please visit - http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1578/point_of_view_geforce_9500_gt_graphics_card/index.html

Best Regards,

The TweakTown Team
http://www.tweaktown.com

Digit-Life Review: Thermaltake BigTyp VP and MaxOrb EX CPU Coolers

Excerpt:
“Today we are going to examine two High-End coolers from Thermaltake — BigTyp VP and MaxOrb EX. Both are actually overhauled versions of their famous predecessors (Big Typhoon and MaxOrb), which formed a positive image in our reviews. So it will be very interesting to see how far these new products have gone in the highly competitive layout of forces of High-End coolers, including other Thermaltake products.”

Article: http://www.digit-life.com/articles3/cpu/tt-bigtyp-maxorb-shootout-july2k8-p1.html

Hard drive docks have become very popular lately taking on many shapes and forms, they really are useful especially if you’re in a hurry. With a dock you can just plug the hard drive into it and you don’t have to worry about putting it into an enclosure, docks are also great for tech people for the same reason really, they’re easy and allow fast access to the hard drives.

Today for review I’ve got a very interesting hard drive dock, this one support only 2.5” HDDs, it can use either SATA or IDE, there’s one port on each side for either style, and it also has a space on the top to be able to read and transfer data to or from a CF or MD card. It’s called the 2.5″ SATA/IDE HDD and CF to USB 2.0 Bridge Adapter and it’s from USBGeek. It’s a well made device that is inexpensive, coming in at only $22, for that price it’s well worth the money in just the time it can save you.

Read Full review HERE

CPU3D Review: Gigabyte GA-EG43-S2H Motherboard

Gigabyte gives HTPC users more choice by introducing their latest socket-775 motherboard  featuring Intel’s G43 chipset. It’s based on Intel’s already popular P45 chipset, but this time it offers onboard graphics in the form of the Intel GMA X4500 graphics engine. It supports DDR2-800 ram, 1333FSB and has a host of connectors which are ideal for HTPC users.

“The Gigabyte GA-EG43M-S2H motherboard is a good all-rounder. Using Intel’s GMA X4500 integrated graphics, it offers all the necessary features required to satisfy any HTPC user or system integrator. “

Read the rest of the review … http://www.cpu3d.com/content/view/5733/54/

ATI All-In-Wonder HD Video Card Review

Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 08-29-2008

The All in Wonder HD is an interesting jack of all trades video card. The good points include the ability to playback and record live TV on the PC, decent gaming performance in the form of the HD 3650 and the ability to run FM Radio. If gaming is your primary concern it would be better to buy a HD 4850 and a HDTV tuner if that is the route you want to go but the A-I-W HD is targeted for the home theater crowd not the hardcore gamer. For the casual gamer wanting to watch TV or listen to FM Radio, the A-I-W HD is definitely an excellent buy as you get much more than just a video card. For the Home Theater crowd, the A-I-W HD fits the bill in spades with the ability to watch HDTV, and HD content like Blu Ray discs without another card or additional software.

Review Link: http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/hardware/1811_1.html

TechwareLabs has published a review of the APC Power-Saving SurgeArrest P7GT Power Strip. Here’s a clip from the review:

Quote: With so many expensive electronics in the households of the world, how do we protect them all? Today, TechwareLabs takes a look at the new APC SurgeArrest Power Strip. It could save you money on electricity!

LINK: http://www.techwarelabs.com/reviews/PowerSupply/APC_SurgeArrest_P7GT/

Title: APC Power-Saving SurgeArrest P7GT Power Strip @TechwareLabs

USB hubs are great to add more ports to your computer, but most of them come with long cables and those that don’t are usually bulky and cumbersome making them hard to plug into tight spaces, especially on laptops.

Today for review I’ve got the USB 2.0 4-port Hub with Fold-away Plug and extra Power input from our friends over at USBFever, and it’s actually a fairly cool little product. It features a USB plug that rotates 315 degrees and also revolves 90 degrees as well making it so that it will fit in the tightest of situations. It even includes an extra USB power cord in case you need to have more power for the devices you plug into the hub that might need it. So continue on for a quick look at a simple little gadget that actually works well…

Read Full review HERE

Title:
Air Live HP-3000E 200Mbps Ethernet over Powerline Adapters

Link:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AirLive/HP-3000E

Brief:
Power Line adapters utilize the existing cables in your home to establish a network where Wifi is not an option. The Airlive HP-3000E is the company’s newest offering of such a system, it promises up to 200 Mbps of bandwidth

Titel:
Foxconn A79A-S vs. MSI K9N2 Diamond - NVIDIA vs. AMD

Teaser:
AMD (and ATI) versus NVIDIA. The ultimate battle. We took two boards, one with nForce 780a and GTX 260, and one with 790FX/SB750 and
Radeon HD 4870 for a comparison.

Link:
http://www.tweakpc.de/hardware/tests/mainboards/msi_k9n2_diamond_vs_foxconn_a79a-s_sb750/s01.php

AMD Spider Platform 9950 Black CPU Review

Author: Benjamin Sun Date: 08-28-2008

For a retail price of $230, the 9950 is an interesting choice from AMD. This has driven the price of the 9850 Black Edition down to the $200 level in 1000 unit quantities. The 9950 performs higher than the 9850 across the board as to be expected from a CPU that doesn’t have any architectural differences than the higher clock speed over the older CPU.For those wanting performance, but at an affordable cost the 9950 does well for the target area its aimed at. It plays games, runs Photoshop and works with all media without a problem. Not the fastest CPU in the world, but neither is it a lag dog.

Review Link: http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/hardware/1810_1.html

Date: 08-28-2008 By Vlad Mihaiescu
City Life is by no means an easy game. Appeasing six unique classes is an art of itself, and as real life goes, the larger the city the harder it is to manage it. While Societies was more of an utopian city builder game, City Life focuses on the harsh realities of dealing with your neighbor. Maybe the day will come when a millionaire will share a meal and his home with a have not, but until that day comes I’m going to play City Life instead of Sim City Societies. City Life is just that much more realistic.

Link: http://www.gamepyre.com/reviewsd.html?aid=1009&p=1

Title:
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB Toxic Video Card Review @ TheTechLounge

Quote:
“This is the ATI counter-point to the 9800 GTX+: Sapphire’s Toxic HD 4850.  It may be alone, and it may not be more power-friendly, but it’s, ahem, wickedly fast.  The icing is that it doesn’t really cost more than other HD 4850s–sure, it’s on the high side, but it’s still cheaper than a 4850 and a Zalman heatsink.  The astounding thing is how closely the Toxic keeps up with an HD 4870, cards that cost close to a hundred dollars more.”

Article URL:
http://www.thetechlounge.com/article/564/Sapphire-Radeon-HD-4850-512MB-Toxic-Video-Card/

We all like to take pictures but what if you take lots of them? You either have to carry around your laptop to transfer them to, or several memory cards which can easily get lost, not really a couple great choices there…

Today for review our friends at USBGeek have sent me over the Digimate III Touch Screen – SATA Edition hard drive enclosure. This enclosure is very special in that is features an OLED display and, as the name suggests, a touch screen. The Digitmate III also have several memory card slots located on the top and sides, the idea of the device is to eliminate the need to carry your laptop or many memory cards, with this device you can just pop in a memory card and transfer everything to the enclosed hard drive. It’s not only good for pictures but for anything that is on a memory card  like data, videos etc, you are only limited to the size of the hard drive inside as to what you can store on the Digimate III.
Read Full Review HERE

Title:
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB Toxic Video Card Review @ TheTechLounge

Quote:
“This is the ATI counter-point to the 9800 GTX+: Sapphire’s Toxic HD 4850.  It may be alone, and it may not be more power-friendly, but it’s, ahem, wickedly fast.  The icing is that it doesn’t really cost more than other HD 4850s–sure, it’s on the high side, but it’s still cheaper than a 4850 and a Zalman heatsink.  The astounding thing is how closely the Toxic keeps up with an HD 4870, cards that cost close to a hundred dollars more.”

Article URL:
http://www.thetechlounge.com/article/560/

The Nightmare Before Christmas Collectors Edition Blu-Ray & DVD Review & Podcast @ Ascully.com

Quote

“Halloweentown, Christmastown, it’s right up my alley. I wish I had had this movie when I was a kid. It would have been one of those movies that inspired me to imagine all sorts of alternate realities. Just like those Christmas classics like Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Coming to Town. I’ll throw Wizard of Oz in there even though it’s not stop frame animation, it was one of those things I watched over and over and over and could get lost in them all so completely…”

Article Link - http://www.ascully.com/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcontent&id=790

Article Title - The Nightmare Before Christmas Collectors Edition Blu-Ray & DVD Review & Podcast @ Ascully.com

The review is on the Sansa Fuze MP3 Player and the link to the review is:

A few months ago, NVIDIA first told us about their plans to organize a massive event called NVISION that focused on all things in the visual computing field. NVIDIA planned to take over a number of major venues in downtown San Jose, including the convention center and a number of adjacent hotels, and invite experts and celebrities from the high-performance computing, gaming, video, movies, and graphics fields, to participate. An ambitious plan to say the least.

Tonight we have our first glimpse of NVIDIA’s NVISION -

NVISION 08 Day 1: Jen-Hsun Huang’s Keynote

http://www.hothardware.com/articles/NVISION-08-Day-1-JenHsun-Huangs-Keynote-/

Make sure you check out Tricia Helfer of the TV series Battlestar Galactica…  She’s relatively easy on the nvision too…

Title: Topower PowerBird 900W Power Supply at Overclockers Online
Link: http://www.overclockersonline.net/?page=articles&num=1951
Quote: For Topower’s first showing here at Overclockers Online, they have
done a great job. The PowerBird series combines the best of performance,
features, and of course, affordability. For the $200 dollar range, Topower
has its audience sorted out. While the PowerBird isn’t a value oriented
power supply, for the price, it’s a solid contender in the high end power
supply market.