"It may seem like a given that personal data should be kept secure, and for the most part, achieving that goal on a home PC isn't too difficult. But, what about a thumb drive? Kingston's DataTraveler Locker+ is designed in such a way that if someone ever finds your thumb drive, they'll never be able to access the data. Ever."

"On Friday, Prevx, a maker of antivirus software, attributed some of these black screen crashes to a recent Window operating system change that locked down Windows registry keys.

But Microsoft insists that's just wrong.

"Microsoft has investigated reports that its November security updates made changes to permissions in the registry that that are resulting in system issues for some customers," said Christopher Budd, Microsoft security response communications lead, in an e-mailed statement. "The company has found those reports to be inaccurate and our comprehensive investigation has shown that none of the recently released updates are related to the behavior described in the reports. While we were not contacted by the organization [that] originally made these reports, we have proactively contacted them with our findings.""

"The Xigmatek Balder SD1283 is an HDT tower that features stunning aesthetics with polished finishes, along with a great price. It is also Socket LGA1156-capable for your new Core i5/i7, as well as LGA1366, and AMD AM2/AM3 compatible. That is a very attractive combination for consumers, so let's take a closer look at the Xigmatek Balder and see how well it performs during testing."

"Robust storage is starting to become a hot item. Just recently Cameron tested the A-DATA SH93, a water and shock proof external USB drive. Many years ago I was the first to test Corsair’s Flash Voyager and while testing I boiled the drive in water on my stove and then froze the USB thumb drive in the freezer. I can’t claim that I have ever ran into a situation where I found myself in below freezing temperatures for an extended period of time, or in a hot tub with my portable storage, but at least I am prepared for when the time comes.

Today we are taking a look at the SimpleTOUGH from Hitachi, an external USB drive enclosure that is made to handle the abuse power users, rock climbers and friends over to play some Modern Warfare."

"The lack of a Northbridge means the elimination of the hottest chip on the motherboard and the need for cooling that chip, along with the associated traces, etc, which means building a P55 motherboard costs less. Apparently the motherboard manufacturers have passed those savings along to the consumer, the average price of a P55 board is about $100 less than the average price of an X58 board. The processors are less expensive too, the release price of the LGA 1156 Core i7 860 was a little less than $100 below the release price of the LGA 1366 Core i7 920. And its given that a dual channel memory kit will cost less than a triple channel kit with the same specifications, so expect to save $200-$250 when building a new LGA 1156 rig as compared with a new LGA 1366 rig in the early part of this year. Today I will be looking at one of Asus new P55 motherboards, the P7P55D EVO. It is in their EVO family of motherboards, sporting the EVO look and Asus TurboV EVO overclocking. It has tons of other features, after all, it is an Asus board. Read on to check out the Asus P7P55D EVO Motherboard!"

"In this review I will test a CPU cooler from Blacknoise, which is compatible with multiple sockets and will see how well it handles stress on both X58, P55 platforms. Its issues and interesting design will be explained later in the review."

"Amacrox is a new player on the power supply market, with its products being manufactured by FSP. Will their Free Style 650 W (a.k.a. AX650-80EP) unit survive our tests?"

"DiRT2 is one of the biggest games of the year for ATI with it being a major DirectX 11 launch title for the company. With the red team raving about it, we take the time to find out how the game runs. We're not just going to have a look at how the game handles the Radeon HD 5970 and HD 5870, we're going to go through the whole HD 5000 series starting at the HD 5750 to see what's going on with these new DirectX 11 video cards and DiRT2.

The next page will tell you the test system we're using and will also give you a bit more detail on the exact video cards we'll be using today. We'll then get stuck into benchmarking the game at a number of resolutions to see how each video card performs at different resolutions. So let's not delay, jump over to the next page and see what's going on with DiRT2."

"The ROCCAT Sota is the second product to be released under ROCCAT's notorious SDMS (Smart Desktop Management System) and combines the properties of both a hard and soft pad into an interesting new surface solution."

"Thecus brings a lot to the table with the N0503 Combo NAS. You have the choice of using up to five 2.5” drives or up to three 3.5” drives for storage, and the new, more polished AJAX-based web interface is a step in the right direction. All the familiar features are here too including the media server, print server, web server, and a myriad of other functions that are all customizable for your particular needs."

"With music becoming increasingly centred around the home computer, a decent set of PC-compatible speakers has become almost a necessity. Even leaving aside the tendency towards downloading - legal or otherwise - keeping your CD collection on a hard-drive is now common-place and provides many benefits. It's easier to organise, retrieve and backup media stored to disk than hundreds (or even thousands) of CDs, tapes, LPs, mini-dics, and such.

Even when recorded in one of the many loss less audio formats - FLAC, True Audio (TTA), Apple Loss less, MPEG-4 ALS, etc - a hard-drive the size of a paperback could store many hundreds of CDs, thus making it an extremely efficient use of space. Since we'll all be living in Tokyo-style pods soon anyway, larger media will probably become obsolete eventually, if not merely at an excessive premium. The thirst for a clear and precise rendering of all that binary finery is quite palpable, but perhaps Speedlink can satisfy it?"

"TechwareLabs reviews the X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro, a sound card aimed at the hardcore gamer. Take a look with us as we see if this card can bring the thunder."

"Recently I looked at my first dual channel kit for the P55 platform. Today we're going to get stuck into the second one. The first thing that I have to mention about this kit from G.Skill is the name. I'm not sure what it is, but the name Ripjaws just sounds so cool. I've got my fingers crossed that it doesn't just stop there and hopefully we can slot the kit into our P55 test system and find ourselves getting excited about what the new series is able to offer us.

The kit we're looking at today from G.Skill is a little faster than the PC3-15000 kit we looked at from OCZ recently. Instead we're moving to that PC3-16000 number which has become the main number for overclockers wanting a kit that's going to offer a bit more power."

"If you're looking for a brand new, high performance PC for Christmas, but don't fancy building a system from scratch and overclocking it yourself, then chances are you'll want to go to a respected system builder to do the job at the right price for you. This is where Cryo PC comes into the equation, offering up a range of heavily overclocked, performance-oriented systems to suit a wide range of budgets. Today, we take a look at one of their Cryo Quad parts to see how both this system and Cryo's system building philosophy stack up in the market for factory overclocked PCs."

"SQL Server 2008 R2 is the product codenamed Kilimanjaro. Microsoft released earlier this month a new test build of the R2 update, and announced it would be adding a few new high-end SKUs to its SQL Server product list when the final bits are available.

May 2010 might end up a busy month for Microsoft. Company execs told Microsoft partners this past summer that Office 2010 would launch in the May/June 2010 timeframe. As one of my readers noted recently, Microsoft’s Office 2010 beta download site mentions a June 2010 final due date for Microsoft’s next-generation Office release."

"Microsoft's latest round of security patches appears to be causing some PCs to seize up and display a black screen, rending the computer useless.

The problem affects Microsoft products including Windows 7, Vista and XP operating systems, said Mel Morris , the CEO and CTO for the U.K. security company Prevx.

Prevx was alerted to the problem by users of its security software last week, Morris said. Microsoft apparently made changes to the Access Control List (ACL), a list of permissions for a logged-on user. The ACL interacts with registry keys, creating visible desktop features such as a sidebar."

"We tested this unit by dropping it from a 1m table and then submerged it in a bowl of water that is normally reserved for my wife's culinary adventures."

"ASUS shows with the P7P55D-E Premium its first mainboard that features USB 3.0 as well as 6 GB/s SATA. Furthermore they seem to litterally wait for extreme overclockers to set new world records due to the massive 32 phases power design."

"Mythological naming schemes are nothing new in the PC community as of late. A few companies have taken to this and are trying to continue building a virtual “cooling army” of mythological warriors and beasts. Titan is just one of those companies. And my last look at one of their products was when they had sampled the Fenrir CPU cooler. As I said then, I felt that Titan had hit the nail on the head with the Fenrir and did a great job of cooling my T.E.C.C. test bench.

Titan has again allowed me to sample another in their lineup, this time a cooler designed with the LGA1156 i5 and i7 processors in mind. The goal was to keep all the best attributes of the Fenrir cooler and reduce its overall size. The naming of this new cooler is based off the Old Norse name of Sköll. Depending on which myth you read, the name refers to either the wolf who chases the horse, which tows the chariot containing the sun across the sky. In another, the name refers to both Fenrir and or his son. Quite appropriate naming of the newest edition."

"Last October Nvidia released a brand new graphics card aimed at the budget market, the GeForce GT 220, and unlike the shady GTS 250 this was actually a new product that deserved to be part of the 200 series. Built using a last generation manufacturing process and given the codename GT216, you'd be forgiven to be unaware of all this, as the 40nm GeForce GT 220 turned out to be a dud.

In terms of performance we were disappointed to find the theoretical bandwidth of 25.3GB/s placed this card alongside the old GeForce 9500 GT. Not everyone can afford a high-end graphics card, of course, so we welcomed the addition for the sake of competition. But this is where things got even more ridiculous. Nvidia decided to slap an $80 price tag on the GT 220, even when the far superior Radeon HD 4670 from ATI had been retailing for less for quite some time.

Prices have dropped slightly since then, but our opinion on it hasn't changed much. Needless to say our expectations for the new GeForce GT 240 are underwhelming, but that's not to say we won't give it a fair go. The card is said to be considerably more powerful than the GT 220, though in terms of performance it should still sit well below the GeForce 9800 GT. We really hope the tweaked version from Gainward that we are reviewing today can surprise us, so let's check it out in more detail."

"We have seen in our past testing that Kingston modules typically offer great performance, and we can tell you right now that this trend has not changed with this set of HyperX 4GB DDR3-1600 sticks on the test bench today. In fact, you will be shocked at how far these Kingston modules can be pushed. Without tipping our hand just yet, let's just say these sticks can run toe-to-toe with industry flagship 2133MHz modules with ease, and at less than half the price. How's that for special? Read on to find out just how far they go."

"Given the performance and efficiency of large fan coolers we should anticipate seeing more products adopt this design. One such product is the Thermaltake Massive23 CS gaming laptop cooler (manufacturer model CLN0008). The Massive23 CS builds around one large central fan to provide all cooling needs. But good cooling requires more than just a big fan. Benchmark Reviews has tested similar products and unveiled some of those factors. In this review we can see some of those factors at play by testing the performance of the CLN0008."

"When it comes to external hard drive enclosures the 2.5-inch market is not that popular. Mainly because so many people use older 3.5-inch drives with 3.5-inch enclosures. The thing about 3.5-inch enclosures is that they are large and not easy to carry with you. The MB668U-1SB 2.5-inch enclosure from ICY DOCK is not only small and light it also allows you to install a hard drive with no tools at all. Another interesting thing about this enclosure is that not only does it have a USB connection it has an eSATA connection as well."

"Today on the Bigbruin.com test bench we have the TrickleStar PC TrickleSaver. The concept is pretty straight forward... Plug the unit into the wall, attach a power strip, plug "stuff" into the strip, and attach the USB cable to your PC or Mac. When you turn you computer off, the "stuff" doesn't consume any electricity. Seems simple enough."

"I must say ThermalTake has added yet another impressive case to its Element Series lineup. It contends with the competition in performance and is even able to support some server motherboards through support of EATX which is a nice bonus. The case is also still expandable by adding on another top 200mm fan. It also supports a large amount of whatever combinations of 3.5" and 5.25" devices you want to throw at it."

"Whether you're loading up with home movies or you're looking for a better way to enjoy the digital content that you download from the Internet, it is certainly more appealing to bring that multimedia goodness into your living room. This is where we find ourselves with the Patriot Box Office PCMPBO25 Media Player. This relatively simple device looks like a set top box for your television, but it does so much more."

"The SteelSeries Ikari was released last year, and is their first gaming mouse. They are typically known for furnishing the gaming community with pro gaming headsets and other peripherals. The Ikari comes in two flavours, laser or optical. Today we have the laser edition of this mouse. Being their first mouse, it will be interesting to see how the Ikari turns out."

"AMD's excellent upgrade paths mean the Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H motherboard will support AMD Athlon II, Phenom II processors in socket AM2/AM2+/AM3 flavours. The GA-MA785GMT-UD2H is equipped with four DDR3 memory slots that can accommodate up to 16GB of DDR3-1066/1333/1666(OC) MHz memory when paired with a 64-bit operating environment. Beyond broad CPU compatibility, the real power of the Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H is the AMD 785G chipset and Radeon HD 4200 integrated graphics."

"NZXT has taken the Tempest chassis and updated it with numerous small and large improvements. Now called the Tempest EVO it does not only feature design updates but new additions in fuctionality as well. All this, while keeping the same introductory MSRP as the original."

"In Win’s Maelstrom chassis has a lot to recommend it. The outstanding cooling performance is probably its greatest asset, and the fact that this cooling comes at such a low noise penalty is just icing on the cake. A roomy interior that will mount just about any hardware you would want to throw at it is a big plus as well."

"Today we are going to look at the SteelSeries Xai Laser Gaming Mouse that fits in at the top of their range above the Ikari Laser Gaming Mouse one of the finest mice we have ever tested and a personal favourite within the Heaven Media staff circles."

"Consumer DSLRs with HD video capabilities are becoming more and more prevalent these days. As a result, manufacturers are constantly battling to find ways to differentiate themselves and their products from the others. Nikon's D5000 offers a few features that help set it apart from other options in the company's line as well as from the models offered by other manufacturers.

Like many DSLRs today, the D5000 offers Live View mode. It also has HD movie recording capabilities with the ability to capture up to 720p HD video at 24fps. While some cameras such as the Canon EOS Rebel T1i focus on a large, high-resolution display on the back of the camera, Nikon has gone a slightly different route and has opted to feature an articulating screen on the back of the D5000... "