Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Daily mailbox: Designtechnica, TweakTown, OCW, EOC, TrustedReviews, Bjorn3D, FiringSquad, etc. — Cormac @ 18:37 

Designtechnica reviews the InFocue X1 projector

"The X-1, introduced by INFOCUS in late 2002, is aimed primarily at the business projector market. It features an excellent Faroudja DCDi de-interlacing chip and is combined with a Pixelworks scalar chipset used for scaling and other functions. It is an SVGA resolution DLP (Digital Light Processing) projector (800x600 native resolution) that utilizes a single chip display with a rotating color wheel, but the picture quality belies the numbers. Not surprisingly, shortly after its introduction it was discovered by home theater enthusiasts and quickly became the entry level standard for that market. When INFOCUS dropped the MSRP from $1500 to $999, it took off in popularity as the low cost ticket to front projection home theaters.
While it suffers minor deficiencies when compared to projectors costing three to four times as much, as a first home theater projector (or business display projector) it is unparalleled. Once it is seen it in the proper environment, anyone will be impressed by the picture quality that a projector under $1000 can deliver."

Read more at Designtechnica.

Toshiba e750 Pocket PC – Personal Computing on the Run @ TweakTown

"If you´re the type of person who needs to have permanent computer access at all times, you need to look into Pocket PC´s such as the e750 Pocket PC — the latest PDA device from Toshiba with Windows Mobile 2003."

Read more at TweakTown.

OCW Exclusive Review : SiS 755 Ref board Socket 754

"SiS 755 is probably the second chipset that features a South Bridge supporting SATA RAID 0/1/JBOD through SiS 964. The board fully complies to HTT of 16 bits up/down at 800MHz. In this review, we compared it to various boards using ALi M1687 Ref board, VIA K8T800, NF3 150 boards."

Read more at OCW.

Asetek WaterChill Water Cooling Kit @ EOC

"Asetek is well known for their vapor phase cooling solution dubbed VapoChill. Not long ago, Asetek entered the water-cooling market with the WaterChill. Most of you know the benefits of using water-cooling. They run quieter than air-cooled systems and have the capability to provide much better temperatures. Water-cooling is becoming more and more popular, especially with enthusiasts. They are neat to use and can aid a lot in overclocking."

Read more at EOC.

Psion Teklogix NetBook Pro @ TrustedReviews

"Psion comes back from the dead in the form of Psion Teklogix. The new Netbook Pro looks just as impressive now as the original Netbook did a couple of years ago, especially if lightweight and long battery life are paramount."

Read more at TrustedReviews.

Antec Minuet Case Review @ Bjorn3D

"That’s right, this case only accepts half height expansion cards. That said, integrated video and audio might be something to look for when buying your hardware. The computer industry seems to be offering more compact and full featured components (such as motherboards), so it’s not out of the question to have a decent computer crammed into this case."

Read more at Bjorn3D.

VL System L.I.S VFD Blue Platinum Front Panel Display Review @ TweakTown

"There are a lot of front panel display products on the market which spit out all sorts of interesting information. However, have you ever seen one which spits out as much as the funky-looking L.I.S VFD Blue Platinum from VL System? Read on and find out!"

Read more at TweakTown.

I4U News: New Small All-In-One MP3 Player (FM, Line-In, Speaker,Voice,...)

"Hong Kong´s FancyLogic offers now a very "tricked-out" small MP3 Player. The FancyLogic Compact 280 and the Compact 290 features include: MP3 Player, LCD Display, Folder Based Menue, Equalizer, Digital FM Tuner, Voice Recorder, Line In Direct Recording, Telephone Recording, Built-in Speaker, 2 sets of headsets (standard and sports strap) and more. The MP3 Player comes in 128MB (Price: $189.50) and 256MB ($$229.99).
Interesting accessory is the phone plug. It lets you connect directly between the phone headset and connect it to the line-in of the MP3 Player for direct recording of a phone conversation.
These no-name and low-cost asian electronics manufactures are really putting out competitive products now, forcing the big guys like Sony and Samsung to hopefully invent faster and drop prices. The only thing those new manfactures do not have is marketing and brand awareness."

Read more at I4U.

Adding Extra RAM Can Decrease Performance — Stage II: Building a High-End Gaming Workstation @ FiringSquad

"By the time you´re done reading this article, you´ll be thinking twice before adding extra RAM that goes unused. In one real-world application, "upgrading" a P4 from 1GB (2x512MB) to 2GB (4x512MB) resulted in a performance drop of 60%!"
And this is where they address the memory issue, but the article contains more than just the RAM issue.

Read more at FiringSquad.