ComputerDumb.com

Posts Tagged ‘thin’

There are more and more people joining the ranks of FarmVille on Facebook every day. No one can get enough of this game and there are plenty of reasons why. In FarmVille, you can get away from the noise and stress of everyday life. Just relax, plant some seeds, harvest some crops – not a bad way to spend an evening. And as you do this, you’ll naturally advance in levels over time.

There may come a time, though, when you want to get a little more out of the game. Every time you move up a level, you unlock … [Read More...]

Hexa-core system has its way with our benchmarks

When we introduced our new system benchmarks last month, we thought it might be at least six months before review machines began stomping the holy crap out of them. Unfortunately for us, Digital Storm couldn’t wait to pile it on. The company has unleashed a rig so damned powerful that we’re wondering if our new benchmarks and zero-point system aren’t already obsolete.

But what would you expect of a rig named HailStorm Black Ops Edition that’s equipped with Intel’s new hexa-core Core i7-980X CPU? The Core i7-980X normally clocks in at 3.33GHz, … [Read More...]

Built Fortress tough, with a Silverstone price tag

Going on name alone, one would expect the Silverstone Fortress FT02 to be an updated version of our Best of the Best mid-tower case, last year’s Fortress FT01. And while it shares a few of the FT01’s traits (like a unibody aluminum frame, acoustic padding, and some stylistic cues like black metal mesh), the vast majority of its DNA comes from the Raven RV02. In fact, it’s the homo sapiens to the RV02’s chimpanzee.

The rotated motherboard placement and right-panel window mean the Fortress FT02, like the Raven RV02, looks strange at … [Read More...]

Powermat Wireless Charging

by Legitreviews.com

The holiday season is in full effect and Christmas is right around the corner. If you haven’t gotten a gift yet, you already know that you are in a bad position. That Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader sold out last month and the arrival date for one is February 1st! Most vacation packages aren’t nearly as discounted as they were a few months ago and gift cards have gotten a bad reputation as being insincere. Time is running out to top off all that bad news, as this past weekend was the last shopping … [Read More...]

Corsair’s first chassis wins our hearts

Go big or go home. That’s a lesson Corsair apparently took to heart for its first chassis, a 24x24x9-inch full-size enclosure that rivals Cooler Master’s ATCS 840 in size. Corsair’s Obsidian 800D is all black, from its matte steel frame and side panels to its brushed-aluminum front bezel, from motherboard tray to front-panel cables, from screws to standoffs. And the goodness is more than skin deep—the 800D has everything you’d expect from a premium case: quick-swap SATA bays, thermally isolated compartments, plenty of cable-routing cutouts, and more. In fact, it’s one of the best … [Read More...]

Now with fins!

Evaluating successive generations of HP’s TouchSmart series reminds us of shopping for a new car. If you fall in love and buy this year’s model, you must never, ever visit the showroom to look at next year’s model or you’ll be hit with a bout of buyer’s remorse faster than you can say “planned obsolescence.”

We’re not suggesting that HP is intentionally designing these machines to have a shorter-than-normal useful life or that it’s been adding frivolous features to new models; it’s just that the company’s engineers keep making design improvements that are significant enough for us … [Read More...]

Too bad looks aren’t everything

Thermaltake’s first SpinQ cooler (reviewed February 2009) had style for sure—it looked like a blue-lit stack of bike gears with a fan in the middle, mounted sideways. The SpinQ VT adopts the same basic formfactor—the stack of circular aluminum fins mounted around an 8cm fan—but stands the stack upright, and uses red LEDs instead of blue. Other than that, it’s more of the same—from the variable fan speed to the so-so performance.

The SpinQ VT (we still want to pronounce it “spink”) stands 6.2 inches from base to top, and the fin stack is 4.7 … [Read More...]

I’ve recently hopped aboard the Windows 7 train, using Microsoft’s latest OS on a new PC build. Right away I found that the day I’ve long feared has arrived: Microsoft has removed all features allowing for a toolbar you can dock to the side of your screen.

I hate the start menu. It takes 3 clicks (on average) to launch any application. To say nothing of the time you spend scrolling or searching your start menu for the thing you want to launch. The desktop is better, but everybody knows the mess you can cause by stashing shortcuts there (though … [Read More...]

If you are looking to make your own media center computer and are still up in the air about which software/OS you should use, an article well worth the time to read is: Which Media Center Is Right for You: Boxee, XBMC, and Windows Media Center Compared.

While there are lots more choices out there, the ones covered by this article among the most popular. Outside of the obligatory master “yes/no” feature comparison, each OS has it’s own writeup with the respective strengths and weaknesses outlined. In addition to the article itself, the comments are rather insightful and worth looking … [Read More...]

If you have the need for a dedicated file server and have some old equipment laying around, turn it into a fully functional file server with FreeNAS.

FreeNAS is an embedded open source NAS (Network-Attached Storage) distribution based on FreeBSD, supporting the following protocols: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, TFTP, AFP, RSYNC, Unison, iSCSI (initiator and target) and UPnP.

It supports Software RAID (0,1,5), ZFS, disk encryption, S.M.A.R.T/email monitoring with a WEB configuration interface (from m0n0wall).

FreeNAS can be installed on Compact Flash/USB key, hard drive or booted from LiveCD.

One of the great things about FreeNAS is that is supports … [Read More...]