Daily Reviews Summary 02/21/11

Today for review I’ve got another keyboard from Koribo called the Leira. It’s a wireless keyboard that features a laptop style touchpad and a full set of multi-media keys. It’s made to be used with an HTPC, but you can use it for your desktop computer of course, but with an HTPC is where it shines surely. With the Leira you’ve got full control of your computer from a distance and quick access to all of the multi-media functions right at your fingertips.

Most people reading this would either have seen or know someone who owns a set of Russian matryoshka dolls. For those of you who don't know, they are the dolls that come in different sizes and stack into each other. Looking at these dolls on paper, you wouldn't think they would turn into a fantastic game concept, but the team at Double Fine have managed to produce one of the most unique and interesting games on the Xbox Live Arcade service by using these very dolls. Stacking is an adventure puzzle game that reminds us that in a world dominated by shooting games, there is still room for creativity.

In Stacking you play as Charlie Blackmore, the smallest child of a family living in the depression era where industrialists ruled and child labor was rife. Charlie's dad is offered a promotion at his workplace, but is never heard from again until the Barons cronies come and take the rest of the family to work to pay off a debt. All except Charlie who is deemed too small to be useful and is left alone.

The Dominator GT series is Corsairs flagship. As soon as you take a closer look at the specifications you'll see that they are very serious. Accordingly the DIMMs need only 1.5 Volt to operate at 2133 MHz with 9-10-9-27 timings.

Palit submitted their GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic, a product that comes with a nice factory overclock and a rather silent cooler. It comes factory clocked at 900 MHz on the primary GPU core and 4200 MHz on the memory at default. All factors combined deliver a product onto the market that is quite interesting performance and features wise, a product that is noiseless and has a power consumption level we can all life with.

Sapphire's Vapor-X series of graphics cards have long been praised for their ability to deliver superb cooling with the help of an efficient cooler, and not surprisingly, the HD 6800 series isn't without such a model. We're taking a look at the company's Radeon HD 6870 1GB variant, and see if its $10 price premium is worthy.

With the Big Bang Marshal, MSI presents its absolute high-end motherboard for Intels latest Sandy Bridge processors. Therefore it comes for example with a truly sophisticated power design as well as eight PCI-Express x16 slots and numerous other features.

The GTX 560 Ti is a killer card and at launch we saw some companies do some fantastic things with the model when it came to overclocks. This is great for you the consumer, but for AMD and its partners, not so great. The HD 6950 offers great performance, but with 2GB of GDDR5 the price of the card is higher than the GTX 560 Ti which carries with it only 1GB of GDDR5. Personally, I thought it was a mistake for AMD to push 2GB models of the card, as it means prices are higher and if the past has told us anything, it brings little gains when compared to its 1GB counterparts.

Instead of dropping the price on the model, though, they've decided to halve the memory which helps bring the overall cost down. The question we ask, is it enough for AMD? We've got the Sapphire version of the HD 6950 1GB on hand and we're going to find out exactly what halving the memory does not just to performance, but price. First, though, let's check out the package.

Every now and then something comes around that is particularly eye catching and the world of SSDs is no different. The Viking Modular SATADIMM is just one of those things and we thought we might venture outside the box just a bit and put a 25GB SLC version of the SATADIMM to the test. It can be described as a wolf in sheeps clothing because, although it does look like a typical RAM module, it is really anything but.

The Viking Modular 25GB slc SATADIMM SSD is an enterprise solid state drive that simply fits into a DDR3 DIMM socket and is powered by the socket itself. It is connected by the SATA 2.0 connector from the motherboard and it's benefit in the enterprise environment cannot be understated given respect to the vast number of configurations that it can be situated in.

Over the past few years In Win has been designing a lot of different cases to stir up the competition with larger manufactures. Their latest Full Tower Case, the In Win Dragon Rider is no exception to In Win’s quality products. The Dragon Rider has advanced features such as a CPU backplate cooling fan, two USB 3.0 easy access ports and support for E-ATX motherboards. The case also includes 4 fans and has support of up to 10 fans to go along with its already cool and quiet design. Let’s take a closer look.

The PowerColor HD6970 PCS+ comes with its core and memory clocks cranked up to 940 and 1425MHz respectively. The PowerColor HD6970 PCS+ uses a custom 4-pipe heatsink and dual-fan solution, not only to keep temperatures in check but also lowers the fan noise during gameplay. The PowerColor HD6970 PCS+ also comes with a key code for Modern Warfare 2 so users can test their newly purchased hardware immediately after opening. The PowerColor HD6970 PCS+ has 2GB of GDDR5 memory, a dual-link and a single-link DVI port, HDMI 1.4 and two mini-display ports that can run AMD's Eyefinity Technology for a truly immersive gaming experience.

Powerline ethernet adapters are theoretically the perfect approach to retrofitting an existing building with wired ethernet. The premise of being able to simply plug two adapters in to the existing power outlets and instantly have a wired network covering several hundred feet has a great appeal. The Trendnet TPL-401E2K Powerline AV Adapter Kit is a product that looks to provide this functionality and at the same time promises speeds of up to 500Mbps. We take a quick look after the break.

Veebeam is a company that I met at last year’s Pepcom trade show and they were kind enough to send us a sample of their Veebeam HD. This device works by streaming high definition video via Wireless USB. Not to be confused with AppleTV, GoogleTV or Roku; it’s not so much a media center as a media streamer.

Corsair have a well earned reputation for producing quality products, regardless of the market they are targeting. Last summer they released their USB HS1 gaming headset which offered built in USB processing and quality audio output, all for a reasonable asking price of £70. Today we are looking at the followup, the analogue oriented ‘HS1A’.

The Corsair HS1A is created for gamers who want higher quality audio output from their own sound card. As many of us know, gaming headsets are often adjusted to deal with compressed audio, making them less than ideal for listening to quality media files.

Today’s review item is a notebook-carrying sleeve from Speck called the TuckPack. It appears to be a cross between a messenger bag and a laptop sleeve. The TuckPack is designed to fit notebooks up to 13”. It comes in two styles, which are familiar to those who have or looked at Speck’s CorePack Fly bags.