Shuttle has been a well respected OEM in the SFF barebone space for quite a while. Their systems generally have exactly the right look for a certain type of HTPC (read nice looking cubes :)). If a Skylake based SFF is in your future, and you don’t mind a proprietary motherboard (which could limit future upgrades), have a look at […]
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BenQ does an excellent job of proving you don’t have to break the bank to have a proper “theater room” with a big screen projector. We’ve had one of their higher-end models in for review a while back, but if your budget is a bit smaller (around $1000) it looks like the HT3050 would be the one. Of course, there’s […]
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If you have been computing long enough, eventually you will end up with a pile of old hard drives (HDD) and USB drives that are not useful anymore, but still work. The problem of course is that at one point they held potentially sensitive data, so while you could just format them and hope for the best it really is […]
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When I go motherboard shopping, there is one thing that makes it first on the list of must-haves – Intel NIC. So it was awesome to see that the ASUS B150 Pro Gaming/Aura for Intel Skylake CPUs includes the I219-V. The price is right @ $129 and there’s lots of good stuff like M.2, USB Type-C and DDR4 support, but […]
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I’m beginning to wonder if Roku is cherry picking review units, or if the vocal folk out on the Interwebs complaining about fan noise are in a small (but obviously loud) minority. It is always curious when the actual experience doesn’t mirror (at least roughly) what is available from the media. I do recommend checking out the review, I learned […]
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Stress is difficult. Sometime almost impossible to deal with, and when that happens you’re forced to break, or bend, if you happen to be a CPU. Thankfully there doesn’t appear to be a “gate” associated with what is turning out to be quite an issue for some third-party HSF suppliers (see the Ars article for more detail and links). With […]
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I’m not completely sold on the idea of a touchscreen router. Mostly because of its impact on BOM. While it can be easier to do the first-run, most of the time after first-run users simply never interact with the device again – besides rebooting it when the cable company is looking for someone else to blame after their network goes […]
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I notice ASUS’s RT-AC88U a while ago, but back then the exact specifications (beyond AC3100 and eight, yes eight, Gigabit Ethernet ports) weren’t really available on the [probably unintentionally published] product page. There have been a few more tidbits since, but nothing that goes as in-depth as this YouTube video, which not only discusses the router, but provides a useful […]
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NETGEAR recently introduced the ReadyNAS 2xx family of network attached storage (NAS) devices running 1.4GHz Cortex ARM A-15 SoC. Having just reviewed the ReadyNAS 202, the introduction of the 212 (and 214) bumping the spec from two to four cores, but not the price – still $330 (diskless), came as a surprise. With all of the great features of the […]
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I cannot tell you how many times I’ve almost bought this, or one of the innumerable other Foscam IP cameras that look exactly like it (and TBH, who can tell the difference). I’ve never quite been able to pull the trigger though. I think it’s the name, “FI9821P” (et. al.) just isn’t interesting enough. C’mon Foscam – put some effort […]
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