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Techconnect Review Round-up 10/3/10
CPU & Motherboard
- ASUS M4A89GTD Pro @ AnandTech
Memory
- G.Skill PC3-18400 (2300MHz) PI Series 4GB Kit @ TweakTown
Storage
OCZ intros the $99 32GB Onyx solid state drive
Taking on Kingston's 30GB SSDNow (which is actually an Intel SSD), OCZ has developed and now announced the Onyx series 32GB solid state drive equipped with the Indilinx Amigos controller. This new and affordable 2.5-inch SSD features MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory chips, a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, 64MB of cache, TRIM support, a MTBF of 1.5 million hours and maximum read and write speeds of 125 MB/s and 70 MB/s, respectively.
A-Data's CH94 portable HDDs go on sale in Europe
Announced in January, the colorful CH94 portable hard drives from A-Data have begun to start shipping in Europe and are thus available for those who need more storage on the move. The new HDDs come in black, white, pink and aqua blue, they measure 130.6 (L) x 86.8 (W) x 14.5 (H) mm and weight 172 grams, have USB 2.0/1.1 connectivity, 8MB of cache, a working speed of 5400 RPM, and are bundled with colored adhesive letters and stickers for personalization and easy labeling.
Yahoo! Mail menus get tweaked
This week Yahoo(!) has started to roll out an update to its well-known email service that includes a few changes to the menu system. The biggest changes include the movement of certain items under the Actions menu, and the addition of a 'Show' drop-down menu.
Under Actions, Yahoo! Mail users can now find the 'Select' and 'Sort by' choices as well as the 'Print Email' (previously 'Print Message'), 'Filter Emails Like This...' and 'View Full Header' items, while via the Show button, they can choose to only view emails only from Contacts or Connections.
Buffalo readies new portable hard drive family
Buffalo has today revealed its new HD-PVRU2 series of portable hard drives which includes 320GB and 500GB models set for a release later this month. The upcoming drives measure 81 (W) x 16 (H) x 130 (D) mm and weight 190 grams, have a USB 2.0 interface, the Turbo USB technology to boost transfer speed, and the eco Manager software which enables them to spin down their platters when idle in order to save power.
The 320GB and 500GB HD-PVRU2 HDDs will be available in Japan late this month @ $100 and $150, respectively.
Pentax 645D 40MP DSLR camera goes official
Pentax has today finally made an official announcement regarding its more or less long-awaited 645D medium-format DSLR camera. This still upcoming model measures 156 x 117 x 119 mm, weights 1.4kg without the D-LI90 rechargeable battery, has a magnesium-steel alloy chassis, and packs a 40 megapixel CCD sensor made by Kodak, a PRIME (PENTAX Real Image Engine) II image processor, a 14-bit A/D converter, a DR (Dust Removal) II mechanism to keep the lenses clean, a 11-point wide-frame AF sensor, and two SD/SDHC memory card slot.
ArcSoft Sim3D adds 3D to you movies and photos
ArcSoft will be taking the spotlight at CP+ 2010 in Japan (March 11-14) to showcase its latest creation, the Sim3D patent-pending technology which enables users to take 2D movies and photos and simulate them in 3D. Sim3D, which will come as a plug-in for the TotalMedia Theatre 3 software, has support for stereoscopic 3D as well as for Page flip, Line Interleave, Checker Board, Anaglyph 3D formats, utilizes Nvidia CUDA or ATI Stream (when available) for GPU processing and provides easy 2D/3D mode runtime switching.
OWC expands its Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini external drive line
Apple-friendly firm Other World Computing has just updated the Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini family of quad-interface external drives with some higher-capacity HDDs and SandForce-based SSDs. Listed below, the Mercury series HDDs/SSDs come in a shock resistant 2.5-inch brushed aluminum enclosure, are backed by a three-year warranty and provide four connectivity options - USB 2.0, FireWire 400/800 and eSATA.
The Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini drives are listed here and cost:
Asus presents the Cine5 5-channel soundbar
Asus has this week revealed the Cine5, a 5-channel soundbar which aims to bring surround sound to users with limited space (for speakers). The new peripheral measures 373 x 100 x 80 mm, has a total power of 15W RMS, a black glossy finish, and makes use of the 'EmbracingSound Theatre HD' technology which is claimed to deliver high-fidelity, multi-channel sound, for both gaming or movie sessions.
Red Flag Linux-loaded EeeBox nettop available in the US
Asus seems to be enjoying its Eee experiments since it is currently shipping in the US an EeeBox nettop that runs Red Flag Linux, the Windows-resembling Linux distribution developed by Red Flag Software mostly for the Chinese market. The machine using this special flavor of Linux is dubbed EeeBox EBXB202-BLK-E0037 and it features a 1.6 GHz Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of RAM, GMA 950 integrated graphics, a 160GB hard drive, Gigabit Ethernet, and WiFi.
