Archive for the ‘Product Reviews’ Category
WordTracker is a useful tool for webmasters. WordTracker tells you what searchers are looking for on the web.
Occasionally, WordTracker will surprise you with an insight into something interesting going on in the world. Here’s a WordTracker result I just found:
| Search Term |
Number of Searches |
| iphone |
9,423 |
| iPhone Complaints |
3,321 |
| Apple iPhone |
1,149 |
What this tells us is that “iPhone Complaints” is the second most popular search term which ordinary web searches use to find information about the Apple iPhone.
It looks as if there are plenty of unhappy iPhone customers on the Internet!
iPhone Complaints
Common iPhone complaints include:
- No support for custom ringtones
- Battery life shorter than promised
- Sound volume insufficient
- Lack of Flash support in the web browser
- Built-in GPS is not user accessible
- Built-in Bluetooth cannot be used for data transfer
- Built-in camera has no ability to be adjusted
- Lack of useful applications (SSH, SFTP, VNC, Remote Desktop)
- No games
- No voice dialing
- Keyboard is very difficult to use
A lot of Apple/AT&T customers have already returned their iPhones for more mature devices such as the RIM BlackBerry.
I recently purchased an iRobot Roomba. I tested it out and the results were good, so I purchased two more. I know have one of the mad little robots wandering every floor of my home.
I had avoided purchasing a Roomba because I could not imagine that a vacuum that small could be powerful enough to be useful — especially as this is the home of two long-haired cats and one long-haired wife.
I have been very pleasantly surprised by the power of the Roomba. It hasn’t had any trouble with the hair. It’s also much easier to clean than our large vacuum.
I purchased the “Roomba Scheduler Vacuuming Robot with Intelli-Bin.” The scheduler allows the Roomba to start automatically while we are sleeping or away from the house. Intelli-Bin tells me when the Roomba’s dust bin needs to be emptied.
Surprisingly, I haven’t made much use of either feature. I’ve been starting the Roomba manually and I’ve been emptying the dust bin before I start it.
This may be a result of how amusing it is to watch the Roomba work. The Roomba has no proximity sensor. It detects walls and other obstructions by bumping into them. Watching the Roombas work is somewhat akin to watching the Three Stooges. Plus, the Roomba’s will occasionally get themselves stuck on an obstruction — usually a cable that I have left carelessly laying around.
I’ve recently purchased the upgraded brushes specifically for pet hair. They do not appear to be noticeably improved over the basic brushes. However, there really is nothing at all wrong with the basic brushes.
In summary, I highly recommend the Roomba but you will be well served by purchasing the base model for significantly less money.
I recently took a look at Flash MP3 players by Apple, archos, Creative, iriver, and SanDisk.
I discarded the archos and iriver models immediately, as they top out at 4GB and I wanted a minimum capacity of 6GB.
That left me looking at three options:
- iPod Nano
- Creative Zen V Plus
- SanDisk Sansa e280
Features
The Zen V Plus and the Sansa both include an integrated FM tuner. That’s a plus that the Nano doesn’t offer.
The Zen V Plus and the Sansa both include an integrated voice recorder — another plus that the Nano doesn’t offer.
The Sansa provides a micro SD card slot for expansion, which is a plus that neither the iPod nor the Zen V Plus offers.
The Sansa also offers a larger screen (1.8″) than either the iPod or the Zen V Plus (1.5″).
The Sansa e280 appears to be the clear winner of the features comparison.
Price
The SanDisk Sansa is also the winner in the price department. Here are the current prices on Amazon.com:
The DFI LAN Party UT nF4 SLI-DR Expert is the current motherboard of choice for serious PC enthusiasts.
For the very basics, the motherboard features an AMD Socket-939 to support an AMD Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, or Athlon 64 X2 processor.
Data integrity is provided by an on-board SATA RAID controller. The Silicon Image Sil3114 chip supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, and RAID 5.
System reliability is further enhanced by the magnetically levitated fan which is present on the heatsink.
Also featured on the motherboard are dual gigabit Ethernet ports.
For graphics, this motherboard sports a plethora of excellent features, including a 16x PCI Express bus and support for dual nVidia SLI-ready video cards.
In the audio department, the Karajan Audio audio system provides theater like 7.1/8ch sound.
DFI LAN Party UT nF4 SLI-DR Expert Specifications
CPU
AMD Athlon 64 X2 / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 / Sempron
Socket 939
Front Side Bus
2000MT/s HyperTransport interface
Chipset
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI
- Supports NVIDIA SLI (Scalable Link Interface)
Memory
Four 184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMM sockets
Supports dual channel (128-bit wide) memory interface
Supports up to 4GB system memory
Supports PC2100 (DDR266), PC2700 (DDR333) and PC3200 (DDR400) DDR SDRAM DIMM
SLI / Single VGA Mode
SLI mode
- Use 2 SLI-ready PCI Express x16 graphics cards (use identical cards) on the PCI Express x16 slots.
- Each x16 slot operates at x8 bandwidth. When the graphics cards are connected via the SLI bridge, the total bandwidth of the two graphics cards is x16.
Single VGA mode
- 1 PCI Express graphics card on the PCIE1 slot operates at x16 bandwidth.
- The other PCI Express x16 slot (PCIE4) operates at x2 bandwidth.
Expansion Slots
2 PCI Express x16 slots
1 PCI Express x1 slot
1 PCI Express x4 slot
3 PCI slots
BIOS
Award BIOS
CMOS Reloaded
CPU/DRAM overclocking
CPU/DRAM/Chipset overvoltage
4Mbit flash memory
Power Management
Supports ACPI STR (Suspend to RAM) function
Wake-On-Events include:
- Wake-On-PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse
- Wake-On-USB Keyboard/Mouse
- Wake-On-LAN
- RTC timer to power-on the system
AC power failure recovery
Hardware Monitor
Monitors CPU/system/chipset temperature
Monitors 12V/5V/3.3V/Vcore/Vbat/5Vsb/Vchipset/Vdram voltages
Monitors the speed of the CPU fan, Fan 2 and Fan 3 fan
CPU Overheat Protection function monitors CPU temperature during system boot-up
Audio
Karajan audio module
- Realtek ALC850 8-channel AC’97 audio CODEC
- 6 audio jacks
- 1 CD-in connector
- 1 front audio connector
True stereo line level outputs
S/PDIF-in/out interface
LAN
Dual Gigabit LAN - Vitesse VSC8201 Gigabit Phy and Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit PCI
Fully compliant to IEEE 802.3 (10BASE-T), 802.3u (100BASE-TX) and 802.3ab (1000BASE-T) standards
IDE
Supports two IDE connectors that allows connecting up to four Ultra DMA 133Mbps hard drives
nVIDIA RAID allows RAID arrays spanning across Serial ATA and Parallel ATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and JBOD
Serial ATA with RAID
Four Serial ATA ports supported by the nForce4 SLI chip
- SATA speed up to 3Gb/s
- RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and JBOD
- NVIDIA RAID allows RAID arrays spanning across Serial ATA and Parallel ATA
Four Serial ATA ports supported by the Silicon Image Sil 3114 chip
- SATA speed up to 1.5Gb/s
- RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 5
IEEE 1394
VIA VT6307
Supports two 100/200/400 Mb/sec ports
Rear Panel I/O Ports
1 mini-DIN-6 PS/2 mouse port
1 mini-DIN-6 PS/2 keyboard port
2 S/PDIF RCA jacks (S/PDIF-in and S/PDIF-out)
Karajan audio module (6 audio jacks)
1 IEEE 1394 port
2 RJ-45 LAN ports
6 USB 2.0/1.1 ports
I/O Connectors
2 connectors for 4 additional external USB 2.0/1.1 ports
1 connector for 1 external IEEE 1394 port
1 connector for 1 external serial port
1 connector for the Karajan audio module
1 front audio connector for external line-out and mic-in jacks (on the Karajan audio module)
1 CD-in internal audio connector (on the Karajan audio module)
1 S/PDIF connector for optical cable connection
1 IrDA connector
8 Serial ATA connectors
2 IDE connectors
1 floppy connector
1 24-pin ATX power connector
1 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
1 4-pin 5V/12V power connector (FDD type)
1 front panel connector
5 fan connectors
4 diagnostic LEDs
EZ touch switches (power switch and reset switch)
PCB
ATX form factor
24cm (9.45″) x 30.5cm (12″)
I recently purchased a Buffalo Terastation HS.
I bought the 1GB model, which contains four 250MB ATA drives. I configured them as a RAID 5 array, which gave me a total of 750MB of disk space.
I’ve downloaded replacement firmware for the device from the dedicated fans at Terastation.org. This firmware adds the ability to telnet to the device. Once you do that, you can access the embedded Linux upon which the device operates.
Theoretically, I could replace the 4 250GB disks with larger drives, but 750GB fits my storage needs — today.
The real downside to the device is performance. The unit is CPU bound and that limits the speed at which you can copy data to and from the device.
Performance of a NAS device will never quite equal performance of DASD. I chose to go with a NAS solution because I wanted RAID 5 and I wanted a central storage device which would not be reliant on any of our computers.
The best feature of this NAS solution is the price. This is an awesome price for a home of SMB NAS solution.
If you don’t need high-performance file copies, this device is highly recommended.
Product Features
- Four operational modes: Standard, Spanning, Mirroring and RAID 5
- Removable hard drive rack allows quick swapping of hard drives should a drive fail
- 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet port and Jumbo Frame capability for higher transfer speeds
- Four USB 2.0 ports, allowing 4 simultaneous USB connections
- Built-in print server for sharing and managing a USB printer on the network.
Technical Details
- Model: HS-D1.0TGL/R5
- Item Package Quantity: 1
- Hardware Platform: PC
- Device Type: NAS server
- Form Factor: External
- Interface: USB 2.0
- Number of Ports: 4
- Data Transmission Speed: 480 Mbps (HS Mode), 12 Mbps (FS Mode)
- Storage Capacity Maximum: 1 TB
- Raid Level: RAID 1, RAID 5
- Number of Hard Drives: 4
- Hard Disk Size: 250 GB
- Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM
- LAN Standards Compliance: IEEE802.3u (100 Base-TX), IEEE802.3 (10 Base-T)
- Transmission Speed: 10/100/1000 Mbps
- Transmission Encoding Method: 1000 BASE-T: 8B1Q4, PAM5
- Access Method: CSMA/CD
- WAN/LAN Port Connector: RJ-45
- Transmission Distance: 328 feet
- Operating Temperature: 32 to 95 degrees F
- Height: 9.5 inches
- Width: 6.6
- Depth: 8.7 inches
- Weight: 15.9 pounds
- System Requirements: Windows XP/2000/Me/NT 4.0/98 SE, Linux (SMB)
