Reviews 51911 Published by

Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

10 Unique Ways To Use Microsoft OneNote
Corsair Graphite 780T Tower PC Case Review
EVGA X99 Classified Motherboard Review
History of the Personal Computer, Part 1: Foundations
HP 255 G2 Review
iOS 8 review: Some overdue updates, but well worth the wait
iPhone 6 and 6 Plus review: bigger and better, but with stiffer competition
Micron's M600 SSD accelerates writes with dynamic SLC cache
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900 Series Preview
OpenMediaVault 1.0 Review
Palit GeForce GTX 750 Ti KalmX Review
Return of the Athlon: AMD Brings Kabini to the desktop
Rosewill Apollo RK-9100 & RGB80 Mechanical Keyboards Capsule Review
SanDisk Ultra II (240GB) SSD Review
The Samsung vs Apple War Continues (Or is that Apple vs Samsung)
Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate 360mm Liquid CPU Cooler Review



10 Unique Ways To Use Microsoft OneNote

OneNote is one of Microsofts most underrated apps. Not only can you jot down notes or keep to do lists, you can use a stylus to do it, convert handwritten notes to text or organise your recipe collection. OneNote is available on almost every platform, making this ridiculously useful app even more relevant. Although OneNote is available with good functionality on mobile devices, the tips below are mainly intended for running OneNote 2013 on Windows and Mac OS X.

Read full article @ MakeUseOf

Corsair Graphite 780T Tower PC Case Review

On September 10th Corsair released what they consider the true successor of the 600T, the 780T. This new full tower uses the same curved design as the 600T and includes a large side panel window. However, being a full tower chassis the 780T can mount dual 360mm radiators on the front and top panels, up to nine 120mm case fans or a mixture of 120 and 140 with up to five 140mm fans. Fully filtered intakes keep the interior clean and the top panel features a three speed fan controller along with a fully lit I/O panel. In this article, Benchmark Reviews inspects the new Corsair Graphite 780T full-tower computer case.

Read full article @ Benchmark Reviews

EVGA X99 Classified Motherboard Review

EVGA has been known as some of the best components out there for some time now. Today I have the opportunity to look at the flagship motherboard from their Intel X99 product stack. The EVGA X99 Classified motherboard (151-HE-E999-KR) is hitting the shelves with a retail price of only $399.99! The EVGA X99 Classified isn't geared for the casual overclockers, it's built for those that want to push the Intel core i7-5960X to the extreme speeds using liquid nitrogen and other sub-ambient cooling methods. Read on to see how this board performs!

Read full article @ Legit Reviews

History of the Personal Computer, Part 1: Foundations

The personal computing business as we know it owes itself to an environment of enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and happenstance. The invention of the microprocessor, DRAM, and EPROM integrated circuits would help bring computing to the mainstream. This is the first in a five-part series exploring the history of the microprocessor and personal computing, from the invention of the transistor to modern day chips powering our connected devices.

Read full article @ Techspot

HP 255 G2 Review

It goes without saying that the HP 255 G2 isn't a computer intended for any kind of heavy use. Sporting a particularly low-power (and inexpensive) processor, AMD's quad-core E2-3800, HP has designed a laptop that will have precisely zero appeal to anyone who wants a computer for tasks such as heavy design work, gaming, video editing, graphic design or any other demanding computing activity.But it's a 15-inch laptop that costs as little £226 ($365, AU$407), and it's enough for the simplest tasks, such as web browsing and word processing. There are a lot of potential customers for inexpensive computers in both education and businesses with limited IT budgets, not to mention plenty of people who don't need a particularly capable computer, and want to spend as little as possible on it.

Read full article @ Techradar

iOS 8 review: Some overdue updates, but well worth the wait

Out with the old, in with the new. That was the theme of last year's iOS update, known as iOS 7, which ushered in a flat new design. Although Apple threw in some new functionality as well, it was clear the company was mainly focused on giving its mobile OS a face-lift and setting the stage for future updates -- the first of which is coming out tomorrow. iOS 8 builds on last year's software with a plethora of new features, including third-party keyboards, camera controls, widgets, home automation, health and fitness tools and the ability to interact with other apps. (Yes, it's hard to believe these are just arriving on iOS.) Here's what to expect.

Read full article @ Engadget

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus review: bigger and better, but with stiffer competition

To say that Apple's doing things differently would be an understatement. With the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus, the company introduced two new high-end phones at the same time, both with a complete redesign and a much larger.

Read full article @ Engadget

Micron's M600 SSD accelerates writes with dynamic SLC cache

Micron's new M600 SSD can flip its NAND cells between SLC and MLC modes on the fly, enabling a dynamic write cache that scales with the drive's unused capacity. We've outlined how this dynamic write acceleration is supposed to impact performance, power consumption, and endurance.

Read full article @ The Tech Report

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900 Series Preview

NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 900 series graphics cards will be launching this week and we wanted to give you a preview of what to expect from NVIDIA’s latest graphics cards. Both the GeForce GTX 980 and GeForce GTX 970 will be based off NVIDIA’s GM204 silicon. We have already seen the Maxwell architecture on NVIDIA’s entry-level GM107 based cards, the GeForce GTX 750 Ti and GeForce GTX 750. Now it is time for the performance segment cards, which will include the GTX 980 and GTX 970 to start with the GTX 960 to come later down the line. We have compiled all of the information we know about both cards in this article. We will keep this article updated as more information comes available.

Read full article @ ThinkComputers.org

OpenMediaVault 1.0 Review

OpenMediaVault is a NAS/SAN Linux distribution that I first wrote about on this site back in January 2013. That was when the version 0.4.11 was released. The latest version, a milestone release, is OpenMediaVault 1.0. It is based on Debian 7 and uses that distributions ncurses installer, just like Ubuntu server.

Read full article @ LinuxBSDos.com

Palit GeForce GTX 750 Ti KalmX Review

In this review we take the Palit GeForce GTX 750 Ti KalmX. Palit's offering is the most silent of them all, as it uses passive cooling. That's right, just a big heatsink is being used. The KalmX runs reference clock frequencies and is based on a customized PCB with that new model cooler that will keep the product nicely inaudible.

Maxwell is in town, Nvidia is now slowly moving away from Kepler. The first Maxwell GPU released is the GM107, which has been baked and plastered onto the GeForce GTX 750 and 750 Ti graphics cards. Maxwell makes use of a 28nm node manufacturing process, later models however should move down to a 20nm manufacturing process. Nvidia launches two initial products today, the GeForce GTX 750 and 750 Ti. Both hover on the entry-level to mainstream level segment. As such the GeForce GTX 750 Ti will get 640 CUDA cores, 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs. These cards will be equipped with 2GB GDDR5 memory bound over a rather narrow 128-bit interface. In terms of clock frequencies, depending on brand/oem 1020 MHz will be the baseline target for the main clock frequency on the GPU while the cards can boost towards 1084 MHz. The 'standard' GeForce GTX 750 will get 512 CUDA cores, 32 TMUs and 16 ROPs, with just 1GB graphics memory though. Overall the GeForce GTX 750 and 750 Ti, as we'll demonstrate, will provide enough horsepower to step into the DX11 gaming arena at up-to 1920x1080 (Full HD) resolution. Now that doesn't mean that all modern titles will be playable with good image quality settings, let's just say that dated titles with a resolution of 1920x1080/1200 will be playable. And if you can forfeit to medium quality settings in a game and don't do any crazy stuff anti-aliasing wise, it's definitely possible to play games really nicely at FullHD with acceptable framerates.

Palit offers this 750 Ti as the factory clocked KalmX edition. As such, the core clock frequency of both products run at 1020 Mhz with the memory being factory clocked at 5400 MHz (effective data-rate). On top of the custom PCB you will spot a KalmX series cooler. Basically a big passive cooler with two nickel plated heat pipes heading towards many nickel plated fins. Heck, the card doesn't even require external power.

Read full article @ Guru3D

Return of the Athlon: AMD Brings Kabini to the desktop

The Athlon brand holds a very special place in the tech industry, as it was the first processor to reach 1 GHz. Back in its days, the Athlon CPUs give the Intel Pentium processors some serious competitions. AMD has kept the Athlon brand for almost a decade where it has gone through a numerous of architectural changes, double and quadruple the core counts and gained 64-bit support. Eventually, the brand was replaced when AMD launched Phenom platform in 2010.

The old is suddenly new again. Like the Volkswagen brought back the Beetle, the Athlon brand has risen back from retirement with the recent launch of the desktop Kabini. AMD hopes that the success it has enjoyed with the original Athlon can be repeated once again with its latest low power CPU.

Read full article @ Bjorn3D

Rosewill Apollo RK-9100 & RGB80 Mechanical Keyboards Capsule Review

Today we're looking at the two latest mechanical keyboards from Rosewill, the Apollo RK-9100 and the ten-keyless RGB80. Each targets a different group of users, but both have been designed with value in mind. Can they hold their own against the relentless competition? We'll find out in this review.

Read full article @ Anandtech

SanDisk Ultra II (240GB) SSD Review

For nearly two years Samsung was the only manufacturer with an SSD that utilized TLC NAND. Most of the other manufacturers had talked about TLC SSDs in one way or another, but nobody had come up with anything retail worthy until now. A month ago SanDisk took the stage and unveiled the Ultra II, the company's first TLC SSD and the first TLC SSD that is not by Samsung. Read on for our full review.

Read full article @ Anandtech

The Samsung vs Apple War Continues (Or is that Apple vs Samsung)

Just when Apple lovers thought it was safe to show their face once again with the new Apple releases, Samsung deals some great videos to raise the bar once again. There is no need to refresh all on the Apple vs Samsung history but, it is rather amusing when we think of the former CEO and late Steve Jobs statement when asked about Samsung’s newest Galaxy Note 2 some time back, “No one is ever going to buy a big phone“.

Read full article @ TechnologyX

Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate 360mm Liquid CPU Cooler Review

There are always constraints in product development and what is actually possible. While many times, an idea may be profound, it may not be physically possible in the real world. First and foremost, the actual materials to make the idea work need to exist. The idea of a floating transportation board that is non-powered since it is made of a gravity defying element that can bear weight and will not float away may sound great. This idea falls apart when you take into account that an element doesn’t exist. Other times, your idea may step on a patent and may not be legally viable as a result, or at least not financially viable after paying royalties to the patent holder.

Over the last year, we have seen the legalese stunting of development in the CLC market. Since one manufacturer now owns the rights to the “pump on the block” concept, and vaguely on the concept of closed loop in general, we have been watching a one-horse race. Companies marketing these CLCs have had to work within the scope of what the patent holder (and OEM) is producing. With the same basic set of parts to work with, differentiation in the marketplace is becoming more difficult, and differentiation in performance even more difficult. There is only so much difference you can make by changing one 100 cfm fan to another 100 cfm fan, and the RGB LEDs may be a nice touch, but they aren’t helping cool anything.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion