Monday Reviews

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Kingston Technology is a very large maker of flash memory. Like I stated in my previous review, Kingston is starting a huge push into the consumer flash market. You will see Kingston in many storefronts and online. Kingston has many competing companies in the flash market. Today we are looking at their 8GB Class 2 SDHC Card, the SD2/8GB.

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Another year goes by and I get to meet and greet many companies at CES. I was happy to see David from Kingston Technology once again. It turns out that Kingston is going to be making a large push for the consumer flash market. They want to have a much larger presence and compete with big players such as Lexar (owned by Micron). Kingston has the resources and today, we will look at their MobileLite 9-in-1 USB2 card reader.

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*The Xaser VI is the latest offering in Thermaltake's popular Xaser series of full-towers, the flagship line of their cases. Today we will be looking at the Xaser VI VG4000BWS, a steel version of the case with a side window. Will this behemoth carry on the Xaser name in style? Will we be blown away by its features? Will Frank get a hernia from trying to carry it? Read on and see!

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A few months ago, I reviewed the VisionTek TV Wonder HD 650 PCIe. It is a great expansion card for desktop users but it has small limitation that it will only work with desktop. For the user who is always on the run or has committed to use their laptop as their primary PC, it is not an option. There is no shortage of TV tuners designed for laptop users from many desktop TV tuner manufactures. They come in different shapes and forms and connects through laptops via USB, ExpressCard, and PCMCIA. Despite the fact that the PCMCIA is quickly being phased out in laptops and is being replaced by the ExpressCard, you can still find some of these cards on the market specially for the old analog tuners. Whicheve card you choose ultimately depends on what expansion slots you have in your system.

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It seems that the success of one good cooler doesn't keep it on top forever, so all companies must try and produce a successor to these units. And Scythe knows this and got on the job of constructing a new cooler. That new cooler came to be the Zipang. I am still on the lookout on what Zipang means in plain English but when it comes to coolers it means a large 140mm cooling, six heat pipes and multi-processor support. From the looks of the Zipang it just may be a overclocker's best friend. But lets see if the test backs up our early judgment.

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With the ever increasing popularity of multi-media computers comes an increase in specialized products aimed at these types of users, specifically the ones that build Home Theater PCs . One such product is the remote control, there are many types out there that come bundled with some items you can buy, but most aren't that great, in what they can do and their overall range. Today for review I've got a remote control from Adesso, called the Vista Remote Control, yes the name Vista is attached but it can work in Windows XP, and Media Center Editions of Vista and XP as well.

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Cooler Master is a very reliable source of computer products, and the 690 case is no different. With minimalistic black styling, a mesh shell, and chrome outlines, the 690 is one of the most visually appealing cases I have ever seen. Combined with an arsenal of tool-less features, the 690 case is a top-notch case. However, due to a lower level cooling performance, the 690 does not shine as bright as the more efficiently cooled cases.

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The SteelSeries Ikari Laser mouse is the first ever mouse to be designed by legendary mouse pad maker SteelSeries. The mouse features a 3200 DPI laser sensor and boasts a lift-off distance of only 1.8 mm. Coupled with some never before seen features this mouse is clearly a winner.

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Kingston Technology released the first 1.2Ghz RAM kits to the public last December. I was able to get a set of the KHX9600D2K2/2G for some fast action 2GB of ram for my Core 2 Duo system. Knowing that the 975 chipset in my DFI Infinity 975X/G was going to limit the modules in the basic BIOS setup, I needed to overclock the system to take advantage of the speed.

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A week ago we reported that a second preview release of Project Indiana, Sun's attempt at creating an operating system for the desktop based upon OpenSolaris and led by Ian Murdock, was on track to be released in the near future. Thursday afternoon that became true with the test image surfacing for Developer Preview 2 of Project Indiana, or what will formally be called OpenSolaris. Officially, this new release is known as the OpenSolaris Developer Preview 1/08 edition. The general availability release of Project Indiana is expected in March, but today we have up a tour of this new Indiana release.

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It's been a while since we've seen anything from HIS which is a bit of a shame as their IceQ series of cards have been one of the more stand-out models of ATI based graphics cards. As we mentioned earlier, this particular model not only carries with it an aftermarket cooler but also increased core and memory clocks.

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ThinkComputers and Thermaltake have teamed up together to give you some great grear! Up for grabs is a Thermaltake Armor Case a $159.99 value, a Thermaltake Toughpower 850W Power Supply a $259.99 value, and a Thermaltake V1 CPU Cooler (review) a $59.99 value. So we are giving out over $450 worth of free gear! So how can you win? Since we have not had a contest in a while we are going to make this simple. The contest will be forum based so all you have to do is be an active member of our forums with 10 posts or more to qualify for the V1 CPU Cooler, 20 posts or more to qualify for the Armor Case, and 25 posts or more to qualify for the Toughpower 850W power supply. We are really trying to grow our forums and we feel like giving away free gear is the perfect way to do it!

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We have reviewed most of Corsairs flash drives in the past and they have = performed very well and been able to take a beating in our tests. Today we have a 32 GB version, yes a 32 GB version of their popular Flash Voyager drive family = that we are going to take a look at. Will the bigger memory slow the drive = down, and is it more sensitive to beating than the older 8 GB versions we have = looked at?

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The Piranha is Razer's newest effort to conquer the budget gaming headset market. It features a noise canceling microphone and a lot of other neat features that add to the value of the product which is sold at a mere $79.99.

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Last week AMD introduced the ATI Radeon HD 3400 and 3600 series, which are the new low-end graphics processors compared to the Radeon HD 3800 series. These budget graphics cards are branded as the Radeon HD 3450, 3470, and 3650 and are all available for under $100 USD. While they may be cheap, they are the first graphics cards to introduce support for DisplayPort. DisplayPort is the newest digital display interface standard, backed by VESA, and is direct competition to HDMI. DisplayPort has yet to be fully supported by the available Linux display drivers, but the Catalyst Linux driver already supports these new ATI graphics cards and there will be open-source support through the RadeonHD driver in the coming days. At hand today we have the Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB graphics card as we deliver the first Linux benchmarks for this RV635 GPU.

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The advantage with a NAS-enclosure is that not only do you get the ability to share it easily over a network and can set up permissions for separate users; you often also get access to features like a media server, an html-server and a built-in bittorrent client. A lot of companies have started to release NAS-enclosures. We have tested a few before from Qnap and Synology but today I am reviewing a NAS-enclosure from a company more known for their cases and power supplies: Thermaltake.

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With the exception of the size and the overly bright indicator LEDs, this is a very sound product. To spice up the pot a bit more, the price is also very reasonable for a high quality optical mouse. If you are used to large mice and want more of the same then don't hesitate to give the Ikari a look. It is a very solid and comfortable mouse to use, and a sheer joy to game with.

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Quote: This Cryo LX definitely takes inspiration from some of NZXT's cases, and incorporates quality materials and a well thought out design into a cooler capable of handling 17 (and even 19) notebook computers. Constructed mostly of thick Aluminum, and sporting three 120mm fans, this isn't just an oversized version of the typical notebook cooler.

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Origen S21T is a high-end aluminum Home Theatre PC enclosure featuring a unique 12.1 inch motorized TFT touch screen for the utmost enthusiasts in Home Theatre experience; such feature can only be found in some server rooms. Armed with 120mm exhaust together with two 92mm internal fans, it accommodates both ATX and micro boards.

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While we see a fair few ECS motherboards here at TweakTown, graphics cards tend to be few and far between from the company. It seems though that the wait may have been worth it with the release of a passively cooled 8800GT. Passive cards have always been popular but it was something that was always limited to lower end cards. With the smaller design on cores these days we find that we're able to get passive cooled solutions on higher end offerings.

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Legit Reviews has a brand spanking new ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card on hold for us to give away! Yup, one lucky site member will be smiling from ear to ear in fourteen days when they hear they won this Drawing! Be sure to check out the rules and sign up for your chance to win the latest and greatest video card from AMD. Online retailers are selling this tough flash drive for $449.99 plus shipping, so this is your chance to win a $450+ kick ass prize!

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AutumnWave Solution's OnAir HDTV-GT USB tuner can receive ATSC, NTSC, an unencrypted QAM (commonly known as digital cable) signals and, when combined with the included software, can turn a Windows-based computer into a TV and DVR. It's powered via USB and includes a neat remote and antenna to take advantage of digital and analog over-the-air broadcasts. Read on for the review.

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Quote: Unlike satellite or cable HD, OTA HD is fully uncompressed. What this means is the picture quality should be better than subscription based HD. The downside of uncompressed HD is that if you have plans of recording this type of video, be prepared to have a lot of disk space used. the included OnAir software, a mere 10 second capture used up 25MB of disk space, 30 seconds eating up 57.3MB. For a 60 minute show, you'll probably use up about 9GB of space. However, the picture quality is simply amazing. Let's just say with LOST premiering tomorrow night, it's going to be quite an experience.