Content and news by Rob Williams

As more and more of us fill our hard drives with huge music and video collections, and massive galleries of digital images, we fast find ourselves running out of disk space. Also, many of us are growing tired of then having to be in close proximity of their PC to enjoy their collections. Freecom has an answer to these problems, in the form of their Mediaplayer-3, a portable USB multimedia hard drive with built in photo viewer, DivX video player and MP3 music player, allowing you to simply pick it up and plug it straight into your TV or hi-fi. It even comes with remote control for true armchair viewing/listening pleasure.

This is a great looking setup, but does it perform? Check out the review at Cache-Community!

The modestly priced ML100/101 from Optorite proves itself to be worth every penny invested. Throughout the course of the review, numerous hours of gaming and various other tasks were thrown at it and it held the pace with invariable reliability. Its fluidity of motion and flawless tracking prove to exceed my expectations of its performance for the price. Compared to other higher priced laser mice, the ML100/101 provides great value and return on the investment.

Head on over to 3D Xtreme for the full review!

OCZ has certainly lived up to its name as this is some the best
performing DDR memory in the market. Period. While DDR600 at 1:1 is an
impressive feat; it’s the fact that we could hit 670 MHz with so much ease
and stability. OCZ has certainly blown my socks off with these modules that
every enthusiast will want in their machine.

Now these are some amazing sticks! As if DDR600 wasn’t good enough, they managed a DDR670 overclock! They may be expensive sticks, but they scream performance. Check out the full review at Overclockers Online.

The Evercool WC-202 kit is a reasonably good silent kit as long as you set the fan speed at low. I mean, it just does the job well enough and can take a reasonable amount of overclocking. Being able to cool both the CPU and GPU at the same time helps keep noise at bay. Installation can be described as a piece of cake, making it perfect for novice users. Overall, the Evercool WC-202 kit is a perfect kit for the general user, although it’s just not for the high-end hardcore overclocker. But still, the best thing is you get all these at just USD 95, which I must say is very good value for money!

Check out the full review at PC Modding Malaysia.

It looks as if Microsoft is going to release numerous versions of Vista, making the end users decision even more difficult.

If you’ve been wondering why Windows Vista has taken a long time to reach Beta 1, we can now tell you why: there are seven separate editions of Vista headed your way. OK, that’s not the reason for the delay, but how else do you introduce that many OS versions, without invoking Snow White & friends? Join me know as I romp through the various editions, many of which you’ll see are just barely differentiated.

I can only imagine how much the Ultimate Edition will cost. Check out the very interesting article at Ars Technica.

Simplicity was extravagantly designed into the Swing with modernly stylish piano-coating front panel design that reflects class and curve. Inside the chassis users will find wide range of thoughtful features from ten drive bays for maximum expandability to a 120mm Thermaltake Silent Fan located in the rear of the chassis for high-efficiency ventilation to support even the most advanced CPU, Graphics Card. Additionally, users have the option to install an additional 120mm fan onto the provided fan holder in the front of the chassis for high air flow volume…

Check out the full review at HardwareXL!

For many newbies, Linux is an exciting but daunting operating system to learn. So flexible and powerful but yet alien to a new generation pampered by graphical user interfaces. In that light, we present the first part of our Linux Noob Guide. Let djspinnet guide you on your first step in Linux!

Check out the guide at Rojak Pot.

Logitech, I’m sure all of you out there have heard of them. Well today we will be looking at one of their latest offerings, the MX 3000 Laser. This combines the ease of use of a cordless mouse, with world-class comfort of their Zero-Degree Tilt keyboard design. This keyboard has so many great features that normal keyboard’s do not have. Some of them you might even miss, so let’s get into this review to check them all out!

Head on over to Think Computers for the full review!

Unlike most weeks, the past few days were filled with
prominent open-source software releases. All of the hype had begun with
the release of GNOME 2.12, which was accompanied by the GNOME-based
Foresight, GNOPPIX, and Ubuntu (5.10 Preview) releases. Next up, the
Firefox 1.5 Beta 1, which encompassed a great deal of improvements,
welcomed Mozilla fans and following the browser release, Mozilla
Thunderbird 1.5 Beta 1 became available for download. Among the various
improvements, the Thunderbird mail client now supports inline spell
checking, phising detector, Podcasting and RSS improvements, and
integration with server side spam filtering. Today, we have our usual
slew of new snapshots from Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 Beta 1 to visually
document some of these many updates.

Check out the pictorial over at Phoronix.

Every year, the IBC exhibition is where the movers and shakers of the television world get together to strut their stuff. Most are trying to sell their products or services to fellow exhibitors or visitors, of course, or, at very least, impress the hell out of them (especially if they’re competitors)

Check out this story and a lot more from the IBC over at Hexus.

The RAM chips used are Hynix 256M-bit, 500MHz (DDR) chips. 4 on each side of the PCB gives 256MB of RAM. While these are rated for only 500MHz, the same series of RAM will run up to 700MHz when the voltage is increased to 2.8V, so I can see a volt-mod coming on.

Check out the full review at Xtreme Computing.

Performance like this doesn’t come cheap, but you get what you pay for. In this case, the Albatron 7800 GTX will provide lightning quick performance with the image quality to match. The bundle is nothing to boast about, but nobody usually cares about that anyway.

Albatron is not a name we hear of everyday, or at least me. It’s good to see reviews of the lesser known card manufacturers, especially of kick ass cards. Check out the review over at Viper Lair.

If you’re looking for a PCIE video card but are not willing to pay $500+ for the latest & greatest video card then consider this product. It has three major pluses; it’s affordable, offers great performance, and has the latest features which support the current games. Without a doubt this product has major bang for the buck. Watch the Video to find out more…

Check out the full review over at 3D Gameman.

Currently most of the Nokia latest smart phones are using the MMC mobile card. Sooner or later more smart phones will use these type of low voltage MMC mobile card since it help the phone battery to last longer. It will be good if your phone support the low voltage MMC mobile card so you will have lesser battery running out problems.

Check out the full review at PC Modding Malaysia!

Thermaltake’s Aquabay M3 watercooling reservoir is mounted in one 5.25″ drive bay. It has a water level indicator and comes with all accessories required for installation. It was designed to go with Thermaltake’s watercooling, but works with other systems as well. Its incredible price of about $25 makes it a great accessory for watercooling owners.

Check out the full review at techPowerUp!

In our efforts to support those affected by Hurricane Katrina, EVGA is donating 100% of the proceeds from this auction to the American Red Cross. In addition, EVGA will double the final auction amount and add to the total donation.

It’s great to see companies pitching in to help, and this is a fantastic card you will receive in the process. At time of writing, the current bid is just over $50,000! eVGA will also take the final bid and double it to give to the Red Cross. If you are filthy rich and want to help a great cause, check out the auction here.

Edit: Apparently that $50K bid was a spoof. It’s been removed.

MSI 7800GTX offers one of the top-notch bundles in this roundup, with all the necessary cables, converters and a newly released game. The included game is based on Doom3’s engine and will tap 7800GTX’s full potential. From our past experiences, MSI always offers a hefty bundle with its VGA cards. Overall, I am quite pleased with MSI 7800GTX for its bundled package and a reasonable street price.

Check it out at Overclockers New Zealand.

OCZ Technology recently surprised the industry by introducing a flash drive, named Rally, to its product lineup. The majority of us couldn’t have expected such a product from OCZ especially considering that the market is already soaked with flash drives from numerous manufacturers. Manufacturing a flash drive is apparently so effortless that any company with a mediocre sense of flash drives can produce thousands of units almost instantly. Plus, the cost of manufacturing a flash drive isn’t too high either, so it makes sense for smaller companies to reveal such a product.

It’s a small interview, but worth reading. Check it out at CoolTechZone.

It’s nice but Canon rather pretentiously calls it a “Perpetual Curve Design.” An industrial design icon from Raymond Loewy it certainly isn’t but it’s better than usual slab of plastic and metal foisted on the public and is much more attractive the previous ELPHs. Measuring a mere 3.5 x 2.2 x 1 (WHD, in inches) and weighing 6 ounces without the battery, this ELPH is about as tiny as you’d like it to get.

Check out the review at Design Technica.

Today, we’re looking at Leadtek’s Dual GeForce 6600 GT incarnation, which is said to be slightly more flexible than Gigabyte’s 3D1 card. Again, this is two GeForce 6600 GT’s located on a single PCB. It’s been given a speed bump from the default 500/1000MHz up to 525/1120MHz – a reasonable increase in clock speed over the default GeForce 6600 GT PCI-Express clock speeds.

Head on over to Bit-Tech for the full review!