Review Horizon

We were fortunate enough to get on of the CoolerMaster’s best looking cases for a review – the CM Storm Trooper, a high grade full tower gaming case with an ambitious design and a price to match ($189.99 retail). On paper, CM Storm Trooper has everything a serious gamer would ever dream to have – a really spacious interior capable of accommodating 8 to 13 drives depending of the chosen configuration, an advanced cooling system, enough space for ATX XL size motherboards and the heftiest graphic cards available plus a well designed cable management system so everything looks nice and clean. Can it provide all it promises? Let’s get into some details in Review Horizon’s CoolerMaster CM Storm Trooper Review. Read More…

RAIDMAX has been on a roll recently launching a plethora of good looking cases on a budget (check our Raidmax Helios Review) and their latest addition, Seiran (MSRP $79.99) is even more ambitious than the other members of the family, at least in terms of specifications. Beside the good looks though, more important is the provided space, ventilation system, motherboard form factors that it can accommodate, overall sturdiness and the degree of finishing, etc. We’ll try to cover all these questions and more in our Raidmax Seiran Review and help you make an informed decision, so read along. Read More…

Today’s computer run faster and faster and with the speed comes increased heat dissipation. The latest CPUs featuring 4, 6 or more cores are power hogs and, especially if you overclock them, the need to keep them happy and cool is stringent. Our latest review will get into details about one of the most popular CPU Coolers on the market today – the Hyper 212 Evo by Cooler Master.

Cooler Master is a name well known to the aftermarket connoisseurs earning numerous design awards for their products. One of their newest products, Hyper 212 Evo is part of the Cooler Master’s 212 series of CPU that have quite a history, with the first member of the family to surface about 4 years ago. While the initial design sporting heatpipes is still followed, the new Hyper 212 EVO model is quite improved in both cooling capabilities and mounting design. How does it perform in the real word? Let’s proceed with the review: Read More…

As the number of mobile devices in our house increased, our reliance on them also increased. Both me and my wife barely touch our PCs anymore (maybe when we do a quick Age of Empires III showdown on our home network, but with two kids, those days are fewer and long in between).

Our family also cut the cable cord quite a while ago, when the Dish Network wanted to increase our bill yet again. While we don’t have a full fledged cable subscription anymore, having Internet service from Time Warner comes with some perks, most notable the free included digital local channels (clear QAM), PBS and a bunch of other free channels as well including NBC sports.As part of my TV watching setup, I am using my Windows Media Center 7 as a local DVR, a number of XBOX 360 consoles as DVR clients to access the live/recorded TV around the house and the only thing missing would be the access of the same channels live and mobile, both from around the house and during my daily 1.5 hours train commute, via my tablet/smartphone over a 3G connections. What to do?

Well, let me tell you I have long searched for a cheap/good software only streaming solution since I already have my MCE server chugging quietly 24/7. I tried ORB and several other solutions that claim to be able to stream Live TV over the internet, but all the solutions found share one major caveat – they don’t work with digital TV tuners. Why? I have no idea, but that’s the way it is. I started to look around and the only reasonable priced solution came from Sling Media (now belonging to Dish Network) and their Slingbox Pro-HD SB300-100, their only model with an embedded ATSC/NTSC/QAM tuner. I built an entire ecosystem around it, streaming to PC, notebooks, iPhone / iPad / Nook Color / HP TouchPad running Android CM7, HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket both on my home network and away, and the result of this comprehensive experience is detailed in this review.

1. Slingbox Pro-HD box content

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Introduction

With the introduction of its innovative motion controller, Nintendo Wii changed forever the way we interact with our games (until the launch of Kinect, that is). It didn’t took that long until accessories producers copied the concept hoping to also copy the success Nintendo had. Probably the most well known PC motion sensor controller is the Genius Wizard Stick manufactured by Genius and based on the AIWI software platform, controller that makes the object of today’s review.

Unpacking

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Introduction

Let’s face it, even if you are not a gamer, you know that modern PCs need more and more power as the CPU frequencies are higher and more computer cores become available for general use. While certainly not destined for an average system, RAIDMAX’s new RX-1200AE 1200W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply is one of the most powerful PC power supplies available on the market and comes with all the bell and whistles you might expect including high efficiency, multiple PCI-E connectors in case you want to build a SLI system (and why else would you need a 1200W power supply?) and modular cables to help reduce the clutter. Read More…

If you want to receive clear QAM or over the air ATSC 8VSB TV channels with your computer, the cheapest solution I could find was a small USB stick produced by MyGica (actually based on the drivers, the tuner is produced generically somewhere in China and MyGica is packaging / branding / selling it in North America). I was initially skeptical to its quality, especially considering the very low price (under $30 shipped) but I bought one anyway and I will review it so you can make an informed decision.

Unpacking:

MyGica A680 comes packaged in a small box containing the USB stick itself, an infrared remote control (compatible with Windows Media Center), a mini antenna, a mini RF to F connector converter and the software CD containing the driver and a somewhat old software, Total Media 3.5. Read More…

When you are looking to get DVR functionality for your home, you have several options: Get a cable box, a satellite box, a TIVO or build your own. If you are reading this review, you are probably thinking about building your own and we’ll gladly lend you a hand.

One of the most popular tuners for the last couple of years are coming from a company called SiliconDust. They are the manufacturer for the wildly successful line of network connected TV tuners called HDHomeRun. The main selling point compared with let’s say a PCI-E capture card is the capability to share it over the home network between several computers at the same time. Just plug-it in on your switch and it should be available to any computer on your network. What is even better, several units can be added to increase the available units pool, they are automatically allocated on demand to the computers on your network and it is fully compatible with a large number of DVR / media packages available on Windows, Linux and MAC machines and, also compatible with XBOX 360 when used as an extender to Windows Media Center.

HDHomeRun is now at Revision 3 codename HDHR3 and it is smaller, lighter and even cheaper, all while Read More…

1. Introduction

Bamboo Touch made by Wacom (model CTT460) is a cheap way (probably the cheapest at under $50) to add Multi-Touch input functionality to any computer that has an USB port and it also enables hand gestures like scrolling, zoom (pinch and zoom), rotate, forward and back. While modern notebooks started to have multi-touch trackpads, they are still small, limited obviously by the notebook small size and relatively awckward to use. In today’s review we put Bamboo Touch to the test and see how it installs, performs in day to day use.

Among the test we’ll perform is how well it works when using it for tasks suited for gestures / multi-touch input as just moving around the desktop, surfing the Internet, scrolling through the documents, through photos (including zooming / rotating the photos), etc..

2. Wacom Bamboo Touch Unpacking

The box contains a small manual, the software CD and the Wacom Bamboo Touch tablet itself. The included CD only contains the drivers, no free software is included. However, by registering online with Wacom, you’ll be able to get discounts to popular drawing / animation software suites if interested. Read More…

1. Introduction

If you want to carry a lot of files around, there are many ways to do it nowadays, with storage units as large in capacity (and small in physical size) as modern USB drives have become. There are various solutions for all budget and needs. Several days ago, we reviewed the Patriot Exporter Magnum 128GB USB flash drive, one of the largest USB flash drives on the market. Really fast, but since it currently sells  for over $200, it might not be for everyone. However, pocket 2.5 inches notebook hard-drives embedded in an USB enclosure  might be a better sollution for most, especially since you can now carry 1 TB of storage in your pocket for around $100.

One of these 1 TB pocket drives is Western Digital’s WD MyPassport Essential SE 1TB drive model WDBACX0010BBK-NESN, and also one of the first to feature an USB 3.0 port. Let’s proceed and see how it performs.

2. WD MyPassport Essential SE 1 TB Unpacking

The WD MyPassport Essential SE 1 TB USB hard-drive ships in a tiny and attractive light green box (which you’ll discard – so why am I talking about it?) which contains the hard drive itself, an USB 3.0 cable, a small brochure and the Read More…