Hardware

I was the ultimate PC Guy.  Being an avid PC enthusiast, as I am a motorcycle enthusiast, I believed that Apple and Harley Davidson were simply brilliant marketing schemes that sold millions on the belief that brand ownership was more important than product build. That was then. Three days ago I received a new Ivy Bridge Mac Air, locked myself …

The most confusing thing to me is why Samsung,  a company that makes one of the top SSDs on the market, would venture elsewhere to supply SSDs for their own Ultrabook, an Ultra that is arguably the best on the market in many respects. Our report today will be an overview of the new Samsung Series 9 15″ Ivy Bridge …

As an SSD guy, it isn’t often that a computer chassis catches my attention and an even a further chance that one as compact as a mini-ITX compatible would turn my eye but such is the case with the new BitFenix Prodigy. This little beauty was their reigning product for Computex 2012 and it definitely wasn’t the result of the …

If good looking and powerful are what you are looking for in the worlds lightest ultrabook, hold your seats because Gigabyte is about to wow the world with their new carbon fiber X11 Ultra and we have the goods at Computex 2012. To quote this ultra as attractive is an understatement as our pictures can’t  do this machine justice.  As …

Released last year by BitFenix, the Shinobi became an instant hit in the chassis market, winning multiple awards in the process. Remakes are typically not as good as the originals, hence there was a sense of foreboding when BitFenix released the larger version of its mid-tower case; the Shinobi XL. Instead of a new design, the engineers at BitFenix boldly …

External drives have given rise to NAS (Network-Attached Storage). Accessing and accumulating data at one central location has become all the rage, as HTPC, media streaming, and HDTV-ready devices and technologies have become more affordable, and thus have made the push into the homes of consumers. Our report today will examine the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Home Network Storage System and, …

If you thought the most exciting improvements with OCZ’s new Vertex 4 firmware were reserved for the 256GB and 512GB models, you’d be wrong. As it happens, the most interesting and substantial performance improvements are to be had with the 128GB Vertex 4. We happen to have a 128GB Vertex 4 on our bench in order to find out what makes …

Our detailed analysis of the Intel 910 Series PCI Express 800GB SSD marks the beginning of Intel’s push into the PCIe SSD enterprise storage market. If the difficulty experienced reviewing this SSD is any indication of it’s caliber, the world is in for a pleasant shock as it was rather difficult to get the 910 to settle into it’s Steady …

This report covers the TeleCommunication Systems (TCS) Galatea line of ultra-rugged SLC SSDs. Adhering to the MIL-STD-810 military specifications governing a multitude of ultra-ruggedized requirements, this SSD is designed for ultimate reliability in the harshest of environments. Designed and tested with the most hostile environments imaginable in mind, these SSDs are surely amongst the toughest storage mediums available. INTRODUCTION This …

LSI, maker of silicon for storage and communications infrastructure, has released a new PowerPC based processor aimed at the cloud storage market. The Axxia processor is based on a dual core IBM PowerPC processor manufactured for the express purpose of enabling high bandwidth, high traffic cloud computing environments to handle processing for servers and networking infrastructure. The Axxia will be available …