Daily Reviews Summary 06/03/07

MSI NX8600GT Series include nVIDIA PureVideo technology and Hardware Decode Acceleration, H.264, VC-1, WMV, MPEG-2 HD and SD movies. Supports dual QXGA displays with ultra-high refresh rates-up to 2048x1536@85Hz. MSI NX8600GT comes overclocked (core at 580MHz and memory at 1600MHz), and comes with a single slot cooler.

USB thumbdrives are very popular, the main reason is their portability, they make it extremely easy to transport data from one place to another without having to carry a CD or DVD with you. One of the best things about USB thumbdrives is that they can be re-used over and over again, unlike a CD or DVD, unless of course you get the RW variety, still though Cds/DVDs are big and bulky to carry with you, as are external hard drives. Capacities for thumbdrives are growing constantly, as is the speed at which they transfer data,now with Vista here, there is even more use for these with ReadyBoost. Today for review I have the fastest USB drive I have tested or owned, it is from Super Talent, makers of numerous memory solutions, so read on to check it out...

Just over a year ago, Diceman reviewed the original Q-pack from Aspire. Well, this time around we get to review the second generation of the Q-pack, called the X-Qpack2. It's from the same company, but they also have a new name, which is Apevia. The X-Qpack2 is a micro size aluminum enclosure that comes in a rainbow of colors: black, silver, blue, green, red, and yellow. These cases have the three sided windows; however, they also offer a non-windowed version, and those come in silver and black. The one offered up for review is the X-QPACK2-BL/500, which is the blue front with the windowed panels. So, with a nice choice of colors and styles, it's now time to see if the second generation enclosure measures up to it's first generation.

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Fedora 7 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

Allegedly, somebody at Intel had a bit too much spare time on his hands and an urgent itch to build a humble desktop system from components readily available off the shelf .... On the way to the nearest computer store, the same innocent person walked by a grocery store where a robbery was in progress and, in the process, got hit with a bottle of V8, or so the story goes.

Whether it is true or not, what we got from Intel is based on the X5000 chipset, using two 3.0GHz Xeon X5365 quad core CPUs and an entire battery of FBDIMMs clocked at a docile 667 MHz data rate. Arguably not a gaming system, the US$ 3400 in hardware can handle even applications as hog-ful as Microsoft's new Office 2007 suite running under Vista - without crashing. And then there were all kinds of other applications in the general fields of content creation. And Scott Wasson beat me to the punchline: "here's a Hint, it's fast" (or something like that)

Still using one of those old-fashioned 802.11b wireless routers? While this format is probably the most common, its smaller bandwidth and transfer speeds are beginning to show their age, especially if you are streaming any video content over the network. Today weÂ’ll be looking at one such upgrade option offered by that popular online retailer Geeks.com: the Netgear WGR614 Wireless 802.11g Router. Have they finally made wireless routers plug-in-play, or will you need to mess around a bunch of connection settings or extra computer parts? WeÂ’re here to answer that question in this review.

Fedora 7, a.k.a. "Moonshine," released on May 31, is an odd duck. On the one hand, it's hugely popular. If you need to be convinced of that, take a look at the number of people viewing the officially-sanctioned FedoraForum.org at any given time - as I write this, it's almost 7,000 people. Visit your local Barnes Noble Booksellers (that's a big bookstore chain in the U.S.) and you'll see quite a few books about Fedora on the shelves. (This, by itself, is a big plus for Linux newbies — Fedora may be the best-documented distro available).

On the other hand, these days, there seems to be an emphasis on being user-friendly (think "Ubuntu"). But Fedora's creators have consciously limited what it can do out of the box. For example:

Because Fedora includes only software with "free/libre" licenses, the user will not find such popular software such as the Adobe Flash plugin, support for proprietary streaming audio and video drivers, or Microsoft Web fonts in the Fedora repositories.
Because Fedora includes only software they deem to be free of patent encumbrances, the user will not find MP3 support or support for watching commercial DVDs in the Fedora repositories. Fedora doesn't even include support for read-only access to NTFS partitions.