Tuesday Reviews

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The Hiper HPU-4M730 is designed to be a no nonsense, all business, Quad SLI capable PSU that won't break the bank, and it would seem that Hiper have succeeded. While no one is saying a PC that needs 730Watts of power is great for the environment, Hiper have also done their bit for the green team and kept the packaging to a minimum as well as used recycled cardboard for the box. RoHS compliance rounds out the green side of things.

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The aim of this article is to make the process of buying a monitor simpler for you, the buyer, by demystifying some of the more important aspects to consider when looking for a TFT, as well as looking at some of the recent trends in the market which may impact your purchasing decision -- which panel technology is most suited to your needs?

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Sapphire's new X1950 GT is based on ATI's RV570 GPU. It comes with 256 MB of GDDR3 memory and is cheaper than the Radeon X1900 GT. Of course you can not expect performance wonders from a $140 card, but it is a great way to survive the wait for ATI's next-gen products while being able to play all the latest games.

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Sony revolutionized the world of ultra-thin digicams with its very popular T series. Although Casio, Nikon, Kodak, Pentax and others try to match them, they always seem to fall a bit short. I=92ve always loved the sliding front door that powers-up the camera. And although this design has been around for a few years, it=92s still as fresh as ever. The DSC-T100 is the latest edition and it has a number of new features we wanted to try out including higher 8.2MP resolution, a more powerful zoom, a better processor and Face Detection--the new setting almost all camera makers are touting in 2007. Now does all this add up to something special or just more of the same? Let=92s find out.

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The U.L.N.A (Ultra-Low-Noise Adaptor) is a power cable that has a resister in line with the fan, cutting the amount of power that the fans uses, which slows it down. If you use those, there is not a way to speed up the fan without powering it down and removing it.

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Quote: Kingwin has updated their line up to include a new enclosure (the JET Model JT-35EU-BK) that supports a SATA hard drive that can connect via both eSATA and USB. Taking it one step further, this unit also includes a one touch back-up feature which can allow you to keep your precious data in two locations.

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In less than three weeks it will have been a year since ATI Technologies had added it's Radeon X1000 family (R500) support to their Linux binary drivers. When that support was finally added it came about six months after the hardware was actually introduced to the public accompanied by the Windows Catalyst drivers. Even with this six months time that developers had to work on the Linux package, the fglrx v8.24.8 driver (the version that had introduced R500 support) resulted in ATI's flagship GPU series facing a miserable beating by NVIDIA's 7800GTX and even the GeForce 6800GT. However, a year later and what will be twelve driver releases with R500 support, how does the performance now compare? In this article we will be comparing several R500 parts to see how the performance stacks up using the latest driver.

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Computers are one of those things which have its novelty wear off pretty fast. Upgrade is not always a viable solution. As your system grows old, most of its components are no longer compatible with the latest available on the market. After a few years or so, you'll usually find yourself heaps of computer relics in the corner of your garage, and wondering what you are going do with them.

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Quote: There really isn't too much more to say about the nForce 680i LT SLI as there isn't really anything new about the product itself! NVIDIA wanted a part that would fill the void between the 680i and 650i and the 680i LT SLI does just that with a reasonable price-tag for the performance level that is offers. At $199 this board will peak the interest of many gamers that want to have a board that supports SLI Technology!

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Ever since the launch of NVIDIA's famous 8800GTX and 8800GTS cards, even diehard ATI fans had to admit that NVIDIA was offering some very powerful graphics cards. However to the dismay of most people, NVIDIA had launched these cards at a MSRP of $600 and $450 respectively, putting them out of reach and consideration for most. Ever since then enthusiasts have demanded a more affordable DX10 part for the masses, and in turn nVidia delivered with the 320mb 8800GTS.

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So how did the Ultra X-Pro 800watt power supply do? Price-wise, it's not cheap at $200, but not too expensive either. Performance is good, even with the 12v rails running on the high side. Connectivity is excellent, with plenty of legacy connectors. And, the brushed case looks good, giving the XPro the look of higher-end units. Ultra's AST technology is also a neat tool, and does its' job well.

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The Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 is a high performance keyboard and mouse combination that is currently Microsoft's flagship hardware product, at least until the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 arrives (later this year). This kit pairs Microsoft's brand new keyboard design with their top-shelf mouse, the Wireless Laser Mouse 8000. Throw in some very cool design, a lot of innovative features, and Bluetooth connectivity and Microsoft is betting they have a product that can't miss.

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With more fanfare and consumer enthusiasm than most companies could ever hope to muster, in late 2006 Apple announced the Apple TV. The Apple TV is Apple's opening foray into the near-trillion-dollar industry of television and movie entertainment and is billed as a product that'll revolutionize the home media experience. The Apple TV, like the iPhone, represents a bold and risky move away from the controlled and perfected realm of computing and into the generic and saturated media streamer markets. Will this new $299 Apple TV be the quintessential blockbuster hit, or will it quietly struggle for survival amongst consumers with ever-soaring expectations?

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ASUS is a brand known for quality and excellence in all of their products. With the launch of NVIDIA's 680i chipset ASUS presented enthusiasts with the Strike Extreme board with the price tag of around $400. This price tag made it very unreasonable for most consumers out there. Because ASUS knows everyone is not made of money they released the P5N-E SLI board, which uses the less expensive 650i chipset. This is a very great option for consumers who want to SLI support on the Core 2 Duo platform. So let's take a look at this budget board from ASUS.

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For time to time, one comes up with a killer idea for modding that doesn't cost much and improves the original product in ways such as looks, usability, functionalty or all these combined. I believe this following mod fits at least one of those categories. For me, this has been a true life saver even though I came up with the idea just only couple of days ago. I hope that you will find this little project worth doing for and get all the benefits out from it like I did.

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For years now we have been accustom to seeing Tyan motherboards in some of the best workstations and servers, but recently they have been introducing a couple FlexATX/microATX motherboards. The first microATX Tyan motherboard we had reviewed was the Tomcat i845GV S3098, which was about two years ago, while earlier this year we featured a preview of the Tomcat i945GM S3095. Now in hand today we will be reviewing the Tyan Toledo i965R S5180. The Toledo i965R is a FlexATX solution with an LGA-775 socket, one PCI Express x16 slot, two DDR2 sockets, and is powered by Intel's Q965 + ICH8 Chipset. The Tyan i965R motherboard also supports Intel's Core 2 Duo processors.