Reviews
Independent write-ups after weeks of end-user experiences and testing.
You may often find indispensible advice here and a no-nonsense attitude to evaluating the products.
We don’t go for the bits-and-bytes approach but aim to address the core factor: value-for-money for the average end-user.
Written by Joe Baker | 06 January 2010
Posted in Reviews - PC Hardware
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| WD VelociRaptor 300GB |
The VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB has higher performance than that of the previous generation, WD3000GLFS 300GB and the designers have also changed the fining arrangement to horizontal rather than vertical as shown in the GLFS model.
Following the successful tried and proven build lines of previous WD Raptors with the 3 GB/s interface, we found that with the 16 MB cache the 3.5-inch SATA Hard Drive Raptors can deliver staggering performance. They are approximately 35% faster than the older models but with a commensurate percentage drop in power requirements.
I guess the name “Raptors” came from the prehistoric carnivore that could out run anything on the planet and just hunt the prey down. Well these hard drives are fast, spinning at 10,000 rpm, so it’s little wonder that they benchmark so well. It’s obvious that the VelociRaptor has retained a lot of the performance based on its 10,000 rpm spindle speed.
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Written by Joe Baker | 05 January 2010
Posted in Reviews - Memory
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| Silicon Power Class 10 SDHC |
Well good as their word www.Tasco.com.au the Australian Silicon Power distributor sent us a 16GB Class 10 SDHC to try. Mind you the word around the traps was that this new card should solve all our memory card access problems in our High Definition Sanyo Xacti VPC-FH1 Camcorder,
Anyway lets see how it went!.
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Written by Martin Regtien | 04 January 2010
Posted in Reviews - PC Hardware
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| Edubook |
Sometimes the real surprising things in life come in small packages. Particularly when they combine innovation, usefulness and amazing value for money.
I'm talking about the Norhtec Gecko Edubook. This is a netbook aimed at a specific market: the same market as the OLPC which aims to bring a laptop to every child in the developing world.
While that is a laudable goal and an immense market by itself, I think the market for this little beauty is even bigger!
I can feel a big review coming on which is sort of ridiculous given the low cost of this product but there is so much to tell about the Edubook which has gotten me excited all right, so hang on!
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Written by Paul Moons | 02 January 2010
Posted in Reviews - Miscellaneous
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| Madcatz WGA |
While Microsoft have released their own official 802.11n wireless adapter for XBOX 360, MadCatz have quite literally built a bridge and
got over it.
Read on for our review of the MadCatz 802.11n Wireless Gaming Adapter.
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Written by Paul Moons | 30 December 2009
Posted in Reviews - Video
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| Brinno GardenWatchCam |
The GardenWatchCam is a portable, weather resistant camera that takes 1.3 Megapixel time lapse photographs and seamlessly stitches them together to create time lapse videos of your Garden growing. Green thumbs rejoice!
Read on for our review.
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Written by Paul Moons | 28 December 2009
Posted in Reviews - Video
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| Contour HD |
There's no denying it: Rugged, wearable video cameras are cool. As for rugged, wearable High Definition video cameras, well that's just a whole new level of cool.
Read on for our review of the very cool VHoldR ContourHD.
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Written by Joe Baker | 18 December 2009
Posted in Reviews - Digital Cameras
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| Sanyo Xacti VPC FH-1 Camcorder |
You know, it’s hard to “future proof” anything these days and we seem to see electronic goods becoming pretty well redundant within six months, so we thought we would pick through an online store known for its multitude of products in this field and see if we could pick something out that would have all the “bells and whistles” to stay current for a while.
We wanted a high end digital camera and also a digital camcorder that was top of the tree in high video definition i.e. 1920 x 1080i and if possible 1920 x 1080p, with a high frame rate so that we would have the best available quality when using the video recorder on new downstream products with Full High Definition capabilities.
With an overriding condition that we didn’t want to pay “arms and a leg” in $’s, we believe that in the dual camera, Sanyo Xacti VPC-FH1 we have selected a reasonably priced product that based on specifications we thought could be outstanding for its operational future proofing and potential capabilities.
We didn’t allow the people at “Gibbscamerahouse” to have any input so we knew we would be entirely free from any well intentioned possible bias.
Boldly we made our own selection.
So did we “stuff it up” or what??
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Written by Martin Regtien | 16 December 2009
Posted in Reviews - Mobile Devices
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| Jabra SP200 Bluetooth Speakerphone |
Having a Bluetooth speaker phone these days is almost essential if you want to comply with the laws that prohibit you holding a hand-held phone while driving. And fortunately, there is plenty of choice on the market. Today we are reviewing the Jabra SP200 speakerphone which is a rather basic unit, simple to use and inexpensive. For most people an ideal choice. So let's check out the features, the sound quality and ease of use.
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