Another lovely weekend has passed and that means a handful of new links. Sites are busy this time of year, getting out those final product reviews before Christmas and working on other articles to help you figure out what to buy. Here’s what was sent our way this weekend from around the web.
Thrustmaster T-Fitness Pro Pack NW for Nintendo Wii
http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/review/thrustmaster-t-fitness-pro-pack-nw-for-nintendo-wii/
The Nintendo Wii has changed the face of consoles, now you don’t just sit there like a lump and play games, with the Wii you can get physically involved in your games. With this physical element, the natural progression would be fitness games, these games have become very popular and have allowed us to not only have fun but get more physical activity than we would by just sitting there with a controller in our hands.
Budget Friendly Tech Gift Ideas
http://igadgetlife.com/gadgets/other/budget-friendly-tech-gift-ideas/
Everyone knows that tech gifts make some of the really coolest gifts to give out as Christmas presents. But, with the current state of the economy as it is, I proposed to myself a challenge: To find respectable tech gifts for $20 or less. I know what you are thinking – the words “tech gift” and “$20 or less” go together about like Macs and plentiful FPS games, but nonetheless I believe that such a thing is possible.
BlackBerry to Laptop Tethering Made Easy
http://igadgetlife.com/gadgets/blackberry-to-laptop-tethering-made-easy/
Searching the internet for methods of tethering your phone to a laptop can be overwhelming. There are dozens of ideas out there depending on your phone model, service and software. Some look easy, some look complicated, some look illegal, and some look like they’ll end up costing you your first born child in fees. With everything out there and the evolution of the technology over the past few years, it’s hard to know which approach to take.
Noctua NF-P14 FLX 140mm Fans
http://www.dragonsteelmods.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15516&Itemid=1
Today for review I’ve got a pair of new fans from Noctua, they’re called the NF-P14 FLX fans. They’re 140mm fans making them fairly large of course, these 140mm fans are special in that they have round frames. The round frames make the fan essentially smaller, or at least the frame is smaller. The mounting holes in the frame will fit where any 120mm fan will fit, thus the end user can easily replace a 120mm fan with a 140mm fan for even more cooling ability. You can use the NF-P14 though in a 140mm space since Noctua has included adapters to help you do this. So read on to learn more…
TweakTown Holiday Buyers Guide 2009
http://www.tweaktown.com/guides/3044/tweaktown_holiday_buyers_guide_2009/index.html
Actually, you might find you’re the computer loving geek and wonder what you should buy yourself. Better still, you know that your partner or parents are going to be sitting down on the computer in the next few hours and you think if you conveniently leave your internet browsing software of choice strategically placed on the right page of our guide, you might just get exactly what you want without having to say something. I know; I’m really that smart!
Public Enemies
http://www.ascully.com/blu-ray-reviews/public-enemies/
OH my good grief it’s hard to write about this movie. Why? Well, let me tell you. Public Enemies has so much goodness in it’s pocket I keep thinking about moments here and there and it’s very enjoyable. Then again, it’s got problems that are equally as bad as the good parts are good.
Mionix Saiph 1800 Mouse Review
http://www.hi-techreviews.com/index.php/review-links-mainmenu-80/9837-mionix-saiph-1800-mouse-review
One of the most often used and perhaps most over looked devices of any computer is the mouse. Without this simple apparatus we would be stuck using keyboard shortcuts most of us never learned. Today we are going to be looking at a pair of mice from our friends over at Mionix. The go by the names of Saiph 3200 and the Saiph 1800. We will be reviewing both mice over the next two days so we hope you enjoy the reviews.
TR’s Christmas 2009 system guide
http://techreport.com/articles.x/18042
All of this year’s exciting hardware launches are behind us. So is Windows 7. What we’re left with, now, is the short stretch leading up to December 25. We’ve decided to give the TR system guide a last touch-up before 2010 arrives and we face another new batch of launches in the first quarter.
AMD Athlon II X2 240e & X3 435
http://techgage.com/article/amd_athlon_ii_x2_240e_x3_435/
This past October, AMD accomplished a world’s first. It became the first company to release a sub-$100 quad-core processor to the market, and given how much Intel has been dominating the CPU landscape as of late, it was great to see the green team at least attempt at hitting Intel hard in the budget CPU market. As we saw in our article, the Athlon II X4 620 is certainly a capable CPU, and for the price, it’s hard to beat.
Antec Nine Hundred Two Mid Tower Case Review
http://www.thinkcomputers.org/antec-nine-hundred-two-mid-tower-case-review/
Anyone who’s been in the market for a case in the past couple years has probably heard of the infamous Antec Nine Hundred. Today we have a chance to look at the redesigned Nine Hundred Two, which offers the same features of the original, but with further improvements. Improvements include a complete black interior, built in fan controllers, and better quality materials. Read on further to see what else the redesigned Nine Hundred Two has to offer.
Seagate Barracuda XT Hard Drive ST32000641AS
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=390&Itemid=60
Somewhere between the speed of Solid State Drive technology and the reliability of value-priced Hard Disk storage is the Seagate Barracuda XT. The industry’s first SATA 6GBps HDD features 2TB of data storage capacity, and is also the first product to receive compliance with the third generation SATA controller interface. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the Seagate Barracuda XT hard drive against a cross section of competing storage products using the ASUS P7P55D Premium (Marvell 88SE9123) and Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 (Marvell 88SE9128) motherboards, comparing the model ST32000641AS hard disk on the both SATA-6G controllers as well as Intel’s P55/ICH10 SATA-3G chipset.
Colin McRae: DiRT 2 (PC) review
Colin McRae may have tragically passed away in a helicopter accident in 2007, but despite this shocking blow to the world of motorsport his name and legend still burn brightly, thanks at least to some degree due to Codemasters hugely popular video game franchise based around his reputation.
Kingston SSDNow V+ 64GB
http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews.php?/storage/kingston_ssdnow_v_64gb/1
Solid State Drives are one of the most desirable upgrades for modern PC users. No matter what your hardware preferences are, or even what the main use of your system is for, pretty much everyone wants a Solid State Drive to power their system with.
iStoragePro iT8SAE 8-bay SAS / SATA Expander
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3042/istorage_pro_it8sae_8_bay_sas_sata_expander/index.html
Many years and several bottles of Jägermeister ago I produced a few songs and ran the live soundstage for a couple of local bands. At the time digital recording with computers was in its infant stages. Logic Audio could still be run on the PC and Mark of the Unicorn (MOTU) was putting out better hardware than Pro Tools. It was a very exciting time for digital music since we were pioneering new techniques and battling latency at every turn. This period in my life played a large role in my career as a storage product tester since back then money was scarce and dual processor motherboards, rack mount equipment and even the balanced cables were expensive as hell.
A-DATA SH93 Rugged Portable Hard Drive Review
http://www.techspot.com/review/216-adata-sh93-rugged-external-hdd/
While commonly overlooked, regular backups is one of the most sensible tasks one should perform when it comes to personal computing. Without the help of a secondary storage device or some sort of remote backup strategy, chances of recovering data should your computer’s hard drive completely die overnight would be bleak at best.
GIGABYTE 275GTX Super Overclock
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1733
Once again we are finding companies optimizing their already proven hardware. For video cards, companies on average just change out the GPU cooler, up the clock speeds, to maybe changing the rear IO ports on the video card itself. With an occasional make over we see, for instance the 295GTX went through a complete make over from the screwy sandwich design that Nvidia originally used, to a single PCB design, too doubling of the video memory on the 285GTX video card. All the while the smaller yet still very powerful video cards the 260GTX, 275GTX video cards get no change at all.
Intel Xeon 3450 Processor
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/intel-xeon-x3450-p1.html
The rollout of the LGA1156 platform was welcomed by most computer users and reviewers. Rid of unnecessary architectural excesses of the LGA1366 in a common computer, the new platform has become simpler and cheaper and presented the Nehalem for the masses, which people had waited for so long. And the future launch of new dual-core processors for this socket will apparently add popularity to this platform, lowering the club entry fee by another $100. It goes without saying that the new Core i5, i3, and Pentium processors will not demonstrate miracles of performance, as two cores (even if spiced up with Hyper-Threading) is a bare minimum these days. But we don’t expect these processors to break records.
Noctua NH-D14 140mm CPU Cooler
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3045/noctua_nh_d14_140mm_cpu_cooler/index.html
Larger than life coolers aren’t exactly new and I have seen a few cross my desk over the past year. The first few coolers that come to mind are the Cooler Master V10, the Xigmatek Thor’s Hammer and even the likes of the Scythe Mugen 2. The major concern with any of these coolers is interior room inside the chassis, as mid towers make installation a real chore for most of these coolers. If room isn’t an issue, these coolers all can handle their weight in doing their intended job. Now we have another entrant into this category of coolers.
Thermaltake Toughpower XT 750W Power Supply
http://www.techwarelabs.com/thermaltake-toughpower-xt-750w-power-supply/
The current crop of power supplies are all about efficiency and power and for good reason, you require power enough to manage today’s video cards and efficient enough not to destroy your power bill. Lately Thermaltake has updated their famous Toughpower line with the newer Toughpower XT more specifically for this review the Toughpower XT 750w. Revision of the Toughpower line brought about changes that appear to be relatively minor… First they added several LED lights that are power supply status lights ( more on that later), and a switch that will allow you to set a power off delay on the cooling fan which theoretically will prolong the life of the power supply. These added “features” combined to give us the pleasure of reviewing the Thermaltake Toughpower XT 750w an 80Plus bronze certified power supply.
Proporta Turbo Charger 3400
http://www.xsreviews.co.uk/reviews/other-products/proporta-turbo-charger-3400/
These days portable equipment is as ubiquitous as vomit in pub toilets, which in turn has meant a general move towards devices that allow you to recharge in-situ. Presumably so as to avoid the need to wipe said vomit from a nearby mains socket, and saving you the trouble of constantly needing to replace removable batteries. It’s also standard practice to make just enough of your product proprietary – or dependent on something that is – in order to maximise profit without pushing the consumer too far. This means you can end up carrying around a separate charger for every portable item you own along with the bushel of interfacing cables. Adaptors are of course abound, but it would be nice if more devices came with a selection of common fittings the way the Turbocharger 3400 does. This portable charger gives you the ability to juice up anything from mobile phones to hand-held consoles, and all on the move.
RAIDMAX Skyline Case
http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7969&Itemid=40
We have reviewed quite a few cases over the years here at BCCHardware and many of them have come from NZXT, Thermaltake and Zalman. NZXT generally wins in the value department while Thermaltake cases are always classy and well built. Zalman cases tend to be much more expensive and very professional. Today we have a case from RAIDMAX that is part of their “Elite” series and it brags a nice list of features and performance for a decent price tag. While the NZXT Gamma only came with one fan for $50, the RAIDMAX Skyline comes with a total of five fans for $80. If you like airflow right out of the box, the Skyline wins, but a case is more than what blows and sucks. Let’s take a look and see what RAIDMAX has to offer.
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 on the ASUS P7P55D-E Premium
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1150/1/
USB (Universal Serial Bus) is just now beginning to transition from Hi-Speed USB 2.0 to SuperSpeed USB 3.0, which has been a long time coming. SuperSpeed USB 3.0, as it is officially called, is touted as being the next generation in bus interfaces and full backwards compatibility with USB 2.0 and 1.1. In theory, USB 2.0 runs at a maximum of 480Mbit/s, whereas USB 3.0 runs up to 4.8Gbit/s: ten times faster, so you can see how this new interface will open door to new technologies and raise the limits of what we expected in our attached devices.
Corsair Flash Voyager GT 32GB
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=corsair_flashgt_32&num=1
It was nearly five years ago that we tested the first Corsair Flash Voyager that offered just 512MB of memory, but at the time it was quite a modest amount of storage for a USB 2.0 flash drive. The Flash Voyager was unique though from the other flash drives on the market in the respect that it was waterproof and far more durable than any other flash drive. As time has passed, more manufacturers have adopted designs similar to that of the Flash Voyager.
Verbatim InSight 500GB Portable Hard Drive Review
http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=1705
This year, give your loved one a little space. Storage space, that is. Christmas is just around the corner, and there’s no better gift for that nerd in your family than external storage for all those downloaded episodes of Heroes that are cluttering up precious hard drive space. Verbatim has once again outdone themselves on space and simple coolness with the InSight Portable Hard Drive. This sleek piece of blackness comes in sizes of 350GB as well as 500GB and features Always On display technology. I’ll get into that in a few minutes, but right now let’s get a better look at the HDD itself and what it brings to the storage table.
Dragon Age: Origins Review (PC, PS3, 360)
http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=1714
Bioware’s new epic, dark fantasy RPG has been receiving a lot of attention lately. The game’s marketing team has hit the internet hard and you would practically have to be blind to miss all the online ads for the game. This is a special case in which all the hype and pomp is very much deserved.
ColcaSac Macbook Pro Notebook Case Sleeve
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1146/1/
When choosing a case or sleeve for your laptop, it is all about personal taste, style and security. Everyone is a little bit different in what they look for in protective covering for their laptop, and most of us like to be unique in our choice. This is where we get to introduce to you a very unique style of sleeves that have been designed specifically with the Apple line of laptops in mind. ColcaSac was born out of an idea of a college student that wanted a way to safely carry his Macbook to the many places he traveled, yet without the bulk that a full sized backpack or case would take up. This longing led to the idea that is ColcaSac.
NZXT Sentry 2 Fan Controller Review
http://www.vortez.co.uk/contentteller/articles_pages/nzxt_sentry_2_fan_controller_review,1.html
The Sentry 2 is NZXT’s latest addition to their Sentry fan controller series. Unlike the Sentry 1, the Sentry 2 features a colourful touch screen interface in order to make the fan controlling experience much more intuitive. Furthermore, the colourful interface of the screen will certainly add a hint of modern looks to any computer system. Asides from the touch screen interface, the Sentry 2 packs many worthwhile features such as support for five case fans, five temperature diodes, automatic and manual fan control modes, and 10W per channel.