The Briskie mouse is designed for prolonged, ambidextrous use. The ergonomic shape offers an excellent grip and control. The mouse is also equipped with a DPI adjustment button, giving you four adjustable resolutions (800/1000/1200/1600 dpi). For easy portability, a wireless receiver can be snapped into the bottom of the mouse.  We will be putting the combo through the paces and see how well it does when we are finished playing with it.

Packaging:

Specifications and Features:

Next: The Enermax Briskie, Usage, and Conclusion.

Packaging:

Specifications:

Next: A look at the Cooler Master Notepal X-Slim

Genuis is a Taiwanese company created in 1983 specializing in PC peripherals. These peripherals include mice, keyboards, tablets, gaming headsets, and speakers. Today we will be looking at one of Genuis’s latest audio products designed for use with portable devices, the SP-i400 Magnetic Portable Music Player Speaker.

The speaker itself is a third party audio output option for items ranging from laptops, mobile phones, MP3 players etc. What’s interesting about this speaker is it can also play music  off  SD cards without needing to keep the speaker plugged into a wall socket, or a USB port for power. This particular product is not aimed towards audio enthusiasts, but rather geared towards the casual user who just wants an alternative to the built-in speakers of their preferred portable device. Without further delay, let’s take a look at what the speakers offer up.

Presentation: What’s Inside

The speaker itself is protected by a hard plastic casing while resting in a silver box with the Genuis logo on the top, and a laser sticker of the Genuis logo on the bottom. On the back of the box are pictures of the speaker, showing the different mounting options available. This includes the ability of placing the speakers on surfaces such as a refrigerator, or a laptop via the speaker’s magnetic underside, or utilizing its Stick-N-Go attachment. Granted, most users should frown on placing anything magnetic on, or even close to their laptops, but Genuis seems to imply that their product is safe to do so. [Editor's Note: We don't care what the illustration suggests, if you put a magnet on your computer, you're going to screw something important and possibly expensive up, and we are going to laugh at you.]

Opening the box, you find the SP-i400 speaker itself, a Y cable, a traveling bag, and a multilingual instruction manual. Please note that Genuis seemed to have gone out of their way to include every known language within the instructions.

The Y cable itself is comprised of a USB cable, a mini USB cable, and a 3.5mm audio jack.  The standard USB  cable is used to charge the speaker from any USB port.  The mini USB cable makes it possible to link Genuis speakers to one another for simultaneous usage. There seems to be no limit to the number of speakers that can be daisy-chained together at one time [Editor's Note: someone with a lot of free time, desk space, and USB ports could probably have a lot of fun with this feature]. The 3.5mm audio jack is used to connect the speaker to your device’s audio output port.

The speaker also comes with a travel bag which seems to be made of a black velvet like material with the Genuis logo on it. The bag closes via draw strings.  While most people don’t carry their speakers in a travel bag, the bag itself is a nice touch, and can protect the speaker from unwanted scratches, dirt etc. when it is not in use, and is being transported.

Next: Speaker Features

The LapAir was designed with easy access to the fan, making cleaning simple and quick. A wire management groove has been cut along its backside (insert your own “groove in the backside” joke [here]) to help keep the USB wire that powers it protected and out of the way. The LapAir also features a USB port extender so that you will not have to worry about losing a valuable USB connection in order to use the cooler. We will be tossing the NotePal LapAir on our test bench lap to see just how well it performs.

Packaging:

Specifications & Features:

Next: The Cooler Master NotePal LapAir

It works! Thank god... I mean *COUGH* I knew I could do it!

The full screen

Please excuse the hearts...

As you can see in the picture above I did this on a table with hearts on it. Haters gonna hate. But you might also be able to see that the glass and pieces of the digitizer are stuck to packing tape. A good trick for taking out the old cracked screen is to put packing tape on the one side and press really hard on the opposite side. All that is holding the digitizer in place is some black adhesive. After wards you will probably have to do what I did and pick off the little pieces at the top and bottom that stayed on.

Inception

There you can see the old cracked screen on the new screen.

If you look really close in the following pictures you can see the one thing that was bugging me after I fixed it. The adhesive tape I used seems to be a little too thick and allows the screen to pop up just a bit on the edges. After a few days of use I can say that no one notices it when I show them and it doesn’t make it any less fun to use. I do NOT recommend using anything but adhesive tape… but if you can find something thinner then the kind I used then that would be for the best.

There appears to be some dust... Didn't I just clean this?

Oh god what the hell is that!?!?

It's kicking up dust everywhere!

Here is a video of me playing with the fixed phone a bit.

Cracked screen HTC droid incredible – Fixed

And here are some more pictures:

Shiny

Yea it's a custom rom, so what?

Still HTC sense based

Excuse me...

Game dev story is cool until you get power outages...

I have to say I am a little disappointed with the adhesive I ordered. It is supposedly specially designed for this kind of repair. But the thickness of the adhesive seems to be a very very very tiny bit too much. Not very noticeable at all unless your trying to look for it, but I could have done a better job with another type of adhesive I think.

The eBay store I ordered the screen from are quite frankly… disorganized, and I mean that in the best way possible. The first screen they sent me had the ribbon cable broken off of it. I was FURIOUS and sent them an email demanding they overnight me a new one (that was a bit unreasonable). They promptly responded by saying that they would need me to take a picture of it and send it to them and then send back the broken screen so they could send me a new one. I told them I would do it but that this was a bit of a waste of my time. The next day I came home and there was a new screen. I emailed them and thanked them for sending me a new one so soon. Apparently they have no records of sending me a new screen and asked me to check the address. It was the same. I checked all my stuff to make sure I wasn’t double charged or something. It appears they just accidently sent me a new screen. Woot?

My next blog will be a bit of a guide on how to do the repair… but I mostly will just be linking you to the tools I used and the youtube videos of people who dissemble the droid Incredible. There are a few times when I was taking the thing apart and doing the installation that I had to just use my best judgement or read forum posts to make sure I wasn’t about to screw something up. I hope I can help someone in the future who attempts this repair (or maybe on a phone similar to it since this phone isn’t exactly new anymore).

Exactly how to do it: Coming soon.

Shiny

But no one really wants to look at the back of the phone… lets flip it over and see that sexy 3.7 inch screen with 480×800 resolution and with the HTC sense UI… oh here we g…..OH MY GOSH?!? WHAT IS WRONG WITH IT?!?!

Despite the severely cracked screen it functions just like a brand new one would.

I just acquired this HTC Droid Incredible from a friend of mine. For some reason he didn’t want it anymore and replaced it with a brand new phone.

As you can see it still powers on, now can I unlock it?

Oh yay, I can. But can I play angry birds?

Cracked screen HTC droid incredible – demonstration

Well yes I can!

But even though this phone is still fun to use in its current state… it still would be way better if the cracks didn’t get in the way of text and the blades of glass did not get stuck in my fingers. So I am going to attempt a repair!

It should be pretty easy, I just ordered a replacement screen off of eBay and it should be here any day now. But will the repair be as easy as it looks? Will I get a cool new smartphone without paying for a data plan? Will I just drop it after I fix it and have to start all over again?

Stay tuned.

Overall, the Coolermaster suite had a lot of nice hardware ready for the marketplace. The private room that showed some “special” products was great! However, as these were all under NDA, we sadly can not elaborate anymore than that about them. Stay tuned for further updates and information, along with product reviews from Coolermaster.

The two speakers at today’s conference were the CEO of Corsair and the second, Vice President Ruben Mookerjee of the new component division. Corsair recently split into two divisions, one being memory and one being components to help provide better serve the customer.

Corsair Special Edition Graphite 600T

The special edition case was nicknamed the “Storm Trooper” for obvious reasons. It was nice to see Corsair get away from the all black, even if it is only for a little while.

Obsidian 650D Mid Tower

The 650D is obviously the little brother of the 7 and 800d. It has a few minor tweaks to it, which will help it stand out on its own in the marketplace.

Hydro H60 CPU Cooler

The H60 is slotted directly below the H70 and not intended to replace it.

Corsair Gaming Headphones Audio Series HS1A

The HS1A also comes with interchangeable ear pads, one is synthetic leather and the other is cloth.

Corsair Gaming Audio Series – SP2500 and SP2200

SP2500

The 2500’s will not be for everyone with their steep price tag (MSRP $259.99), but if you can afford them, they will make a great addition to your computer setup.

SP2200

The 2200’s are geared toward the more budget conscious gamers out there with the middle range price tag of $99.99.

Corsair Vengeance Memory and Performance 3 series SSD

Corsair Link Software:

Corsair Link software was made to connect all your corsair hardware into one program to give you complete control over everything Corsair in your system.

Overall, Corsair has some exciting products available and on the horizon.

]]> http://www.techreaction.net/2011/01/06/corsair-ces-new-products-more/feed/ 0 http://www.techreaction.net/2010/12/26/arctic-nc/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=arctic-nc http://www.techreaction.net/2010/12/26/arctic-nc/#comments Mon, 27 Dec 2010 03:01:03 +0000 The Duke http://www.techreaction.net/?p=13860 Introduction

The ARCTIC NC is geared toward cooling any laptops between 12” and 19” with two 60mm fans that blow cool air down the bottom of the laptop. Unlike other plate-design coolers, heat can be dissipated from the sides of the laptop easily to achieve maximum cooling performance. With the custom fan speed turn, you can adjust the fan speed to the most suitable level for your needs. A 4-port USB hub which is built into the ARCTIC NC also helps add more USB 2.0 connections to you laptop as well.

Packaging:

Specifications and Features:

Next: Installation, Usage and Conclusion

Advances in NAND storage technology have improved the speed at which solid state memory devices can transfer data, along with a new faster bus to handle the capabilities it brings to storage technology.  The ADATA Nobility N005 USB 3.0 (Or Super Speed USB) advertises a Sustained Read rate of 85MBps with writes of up to 55MBps.  This is nearly 3x the throughput of a standard “fast” USB 2.0 flash drive.  From ADATA’s website:

Lightning Speed Powered by USB 3.0
The ADATA N005 USB flash drive features USB 3.0, the next generation high-speed connection standard, which offers transfer speeds 4 times faster than USB 2.0. Boasting read and write speeds up to 85 MB/s and 55 MB/s, respectively, you’ll spend much less time waiting for the transfer of large video or audio files.

We will compare both the 16GB and 32GB models of the Nobility N005 series to a 120X USB 2.0 “Sport” drive.

Full Speed, High Speed and Super Speed USB

These are the names of the current three types of USB available on most electronic devices.  They represent USB 1.1, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 technologies respectively. Each successive technology is backwards compatible with its predecessor. Although USB 3.0 devices may have compatibility issues on USB 1.1 ports, the marketing for the ADATA USB 3.0 drive proclaims 1.1 compatibility. It should only take about 3 hours theoretically to read all 16GB of information through a 1.1 port. (This reviewer has no desire to test that out)  Aside from the names however, what makes them different?

• USB 1.1 or Full Speed USB – theoretical maximum bandwidth of 1.5 MBps. (12 Megabits per second)
• USB 2.0 or High Speed USB – theoretical maximum bandwidth of 60 MBps  (480 Megabits per second)
• USB 3.0 or Super Speed USB – theoretical maximum bandwidth of 625MBps (5 Gigabits per second).

In practice however, much like ethernet, effective speeds are often significantly lower.  This is due to a variety of reasons, the biggest of those being protocol overhead.  The whys and wherefores get very complicated and are far past the intent of this review.  A rough estimate of 35-40% is what one should expect when using any USB device.  This brings the maximum effective bandwidth of the technologies down to approximately 35MBps for USB 2.0 and 400MBps for USB 3.0.

Physical differences between 1.1/2.0 and 3.0 are in the number of signaling wires used to transmit data, as well as the difference between half and full duplex operation. USB 1.1 and 2.0 rely on one twisted pair signaling cable that is only capable of half-duplex speeds. This means that it only has full throughput in one direction at a time.  USB 3.0 offers full duplex speed as well as two additional pairs of signaling cables.  At first glance, it would appear that assuming identical memory properties, we can expect 3x the effective performance when connected to a USB 3.0 port as well as a smaller performance hit when reading and writing to the flash memory simultaneously.

The Test Subjects

The review samples 16GB and 32GB Nobility N005 (lovingly referred to by this reviewer as “noob drives”) are pictured below as well as the retail sample 8GB Sport.  Packaging is standard fare for small lightweight electronic devices that need no more than minimal protection. Blister packs to keep out moisture and keep merchandise and accessories bundled together.  Also pictured is a size comparison between the three drives.

All three USB sticks are large enough to make the paired USB ports on the backs (or fronts) of most PC’s useless.  The Nobility comes in slightly more slender than the Sport in the middle, but is about 30% longer as well. It has a brushed aluminum shell with slip-on cap and a dark brown exterior with black accents.  Round out the exterior touches is “A-DATA n005″ printed in white lettering on the top.  USB ports have not changed much in design over the last decade, but as demand increases for ever larger storage capacities, something must give.

Continue to page 2 for testing and conclusion.