Tuesday Reviews

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The Samsung K5 really delivers in a small package; it is very attractive, comes with excellent earphones, and the speakers are not bad because its size versus quality ratio is above average.

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ASUS has been showing a number of innovations at CES. For example their XG Station which is the first external video card for notebooks. The 7900 GS class card lets you play modern games on your ultra portable business notebook. Another show highlight was the W5Fe notebook which is the first to use a secondary display for Microsoft Windows Vista Sidekick technology.

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Quote: XFX raises the bar in gaming performance with their overclocked 8800 GTX XXX Edition video card. With an extra speed boost over the standard GTX you can be sure you're getting the absolute best gaming experience any single video card can provide today. With the launch of the GeForce 8800 GTX XXX Edition, XFX delivers an 8800 GTX with obscene performance worthy of the title XXX...

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When I first received my NOIDpad, I was immediately impressed with the packaging, NOIDpads come in a cardboard tube, which effectively eliminates getting your NOIDpad totally mangled by the mail system. Sure packaging really plays no part in the performance of a mousepad, but its nice to see they thought about packaging a little, and its nice to have a tube that you can throw your mousepad back in when your headed to the next Lan Party.

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Quote: Last week we looked at the top ten new features in Vista, but how about the top ten reasons to actually upgrade to it? Windows Vista is the next generation OS produced by Microsoft, and an interesting fact here is that it has been five years since the release of its predecessor, Windows XP, making it the longest time span between major releases.

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While not the most compact webcam available, the Cyber Snipa Spotter takes pretty nice photos and video and is a good value for anyone who frequently uses Skype, Netmeeting, or any other application that warrants using a webcam. Like other Cyber Snipa products this is not a typical looking PC peripheral but to me that's a plus.

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Once considered to be way too complicated for the newer Linux user, HDTV on a 'Nix box often times felt just out of reach for many. Then we found that hardware designed for Linux specifically was in the works. The card is known simply as the HD-5500.

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As the sale of laptops continue to rise and desktop PC users migrate, they find it hard to switch over to the touch pad that every laptop has. The touch pad is OK for those times when no room for a mouse is available, but nothing beats the usage of a mouse. Logitech knows this and has come out with the VX Revolution.

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On the last day of the show I headed up the Corsair's suite at the Bellagio. I really was not sure what to expect other than just some new memory, but Corsair has some really cool new products coming out this year that you should definitely know about. I was very impressed with Corsair's new flash memory products, so let's take a look!

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At CES this year VIA took over the Lunch at Piero's event and despite being off-campus from the rest of the show, there were still a few cool things being shown off. It looks like VIA is finally interested in getting something going, so it might just be an exciting year for fans of small form factor computing.

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Under the spotlight were the Cowon Q5, D2 and A3. The Q5 and D2 are both portable media players with impressive 5 and 4 screens, respectively. Each houses a 30 GB hard drive and a host of video playback formats. Rich and I played around with some of the movies they had pre-loaded and for the most part they looked pretty good. One of the A3s had a bit of a problem displaying Spiderman 2 and was quite jittery, but that could have been the file itself as other A3 displays had no problems.

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Even though CES has come and gone, our coverage still goes on. We ran into so many cool gadgets that we just didn't have time to write about them all. Check out our Extended CES Coverage for even more cool toys such as Cowon's new iAudio digial media players including the Q5, D2 and A3, Logitech's latest Harmony remote, the Harmony 1000, Altec Lansings new audio products and more.

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We have checked out a handful of cases from Thermaltake here are Bjorn3D. Each review brought up interesting points and facts about Tt products. Mid tower enclosures are still the big thing for the market. Customers appreciate reasonable dimensions, cool interior, useful features and definitely unique look. Thermaltake is all about satisfying your needs. The company makes wonderful PC cases, not to mention cooling solutions and accessories. Before we start off, I want you to take a look at our previous reviews: Thermaltake Mozart TX, Thermaltake Armor Jr and its bigger brother, Armor.

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Well, today we will bring to you the fourth Asrock motherboard to be reviewed here. The Conroe945G-DVI offers a world of options and features for a good dollar value. Boasting a DVI add-on card and support for the market leading processor, the Intel Core2 Duo, this board is poised to be the ultimate HTPC/SFF motherboard out there today.

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As mentioned, these modules certainly showed that they are not just all show and no go. The overclocking results on both my AM2 and C2D systems really impressed. The DDR1280 achieved on my P5B-Dlx is by far the fastest that motherboard has ever run memory and I don't expect many kits to match that frequency any time soon. For high frequency operation, this is definitely one of the kits to have. If you are in the market for memory that runs tighter timings at lower frequencies, don't run the other way, the OCZ PC2-9200 FlexXLCs held their own at 3-3-3-8 and 4-4-4-8 respectively.

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The ATI Theater 650 is easily the most advanced dedicated TV tuner we've had the chance to look at. Image quality is excellent and the product is extremely easy to install. Setup under Windows XP is about a couple minutes, and after a reboot you're almost ready to go. It takes some configuration depending on your video feed, but we did not have any installation quirks under XP or MCE. Those of you eyeing Vista on the horizon will be happy to know the card is fully supported by the upcoming OS.

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Crucial Technology has a long tradition in producing quality memory = modules for all categories of users. Crucial as many hardware = enthusiasts know is the retail arm of the Micron who actually makes many = of the RAM chips used by other manufacturers such as OCZ. Crucial has = been known as reliable partner, a company which is stable and pushed the = bar in terms of enthusiast memory modules. Recently Crucial has a new = high performance memory product line, which goes by the name of = Ballistix. The Ballistix products are offered at faster speeds and lower = latencies, and comes with the same limited lifetime warranty and award = winning support you expect from Crucial.

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With the official release of the NVIDIA G80 based high end video cards in November last year, it is only a matter of months before we see new mid-range mayhem released for every budget minded gamer out there. At the very last moment XFX decided to satisfy gamers with one of the last G70 based video cards, their 7600GT Fatal1ty edition features passive cooling and faster clock speeds at a competitive price. How much faster? We find out.

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Asus has long been a major player in the motherboard market in every segment you can think of. Their name has long been a favorite with the enthusiast crowd. Can they continue the trend with this motherboard? Can the ASUS P5N-E SLI motherboard compete with the top 680i SLI boards that are out? ASUS claims that the P5N-E SLI has the best cost versus performance ratio of all dual VGA motherboards on the market. Read on and find out if they are right!