Content and news by Rob Williams

“The Flexiglow xRaider Gaming Mouse and xRaider Keyboard are both good components although the obvious star of the show here is the Gaming Mouse. In the looks department it is pretty good, although I do think that perhaps the rear cycling LED should have a switch of some kind to dictate a singular colour or the cycling of the colour; it can get a bit tiresome/distracting to the eyes now and then. That said, there is a good chance you will have the palm of your hand covering it anyway.”

Viper Lair.

“First. This work only took a short while and was very easy. Even easier if you are starting from scratch whereas we had to remove the cooler radiators from the Thermaltake Kandalf computer case.”

Check it out at A1 Electronics.

“PCI EXPRESS IS undoubtedly the future of PC peripherals, and with even budget motherboards hopping on the PCI-E train, upgrading to support the new standard doesn’t have to be an expensive proposition. Gigabyte’s new GA-K8VT890-9 carries a suggested retail price of only $82—30-120% less than other PCI Express Athlon 64 platforms we’ve reviewed. $82 obviously doesn’t buy a peripheral-packed board loaded with extra goodies, but if you’re looking for a no-frills package at a budget price, the GA-K8VT890-9’s intelligent spec might just be good enough. Read on to see what the board has to offer and how it compares with more expensive Athlon 64 platforms.”

Check it out at Tech Report.

“LED case fans are a great modding product. They provide cooling and as well
as case lighting. There are hundreds of types of LED fans on the market. To
make themselves different, manufacturers must redesign this simple concept.
Sunbeam introduces their new line of Anodized LED fans, a different look
than their generic clear LED fans. This review will take a look at both
lines.”

Check it out at A True Review.

“The NGO NVIDIA Optimized Driver is a tweaked version of the nVidia Forceware driver. The main purpose is to satisfy the users with a better performance and better image quality. The Driver has support for all Geforce cards.

Changes since v0.6:
• Updated base to ForceWare beta 76.41
• Removed support for the Go Series (Temporary)

Notes:
• The author is not responsible for any damage.
• This driver is not supported by NVIDIA Corporation.
• Please report bugs! It means so much to us.”

Check out the drivers on the NGOHQ site.

“PCstats is testing out one such HomePNA solution from Actiontec, called the HomePlug Ethernet adaptor kit. The kit uses the HomePlug 14Mbps technology and comes with a pair of 14Mbps power plug Ethernet adaptors, allowing users to network two PCs together, or connect a single PC to a wired router or Internet gateway some distance away over standard 120V AC power lines.”

Check out the full article at PC Stats.

“At the tip of the current chipset ice berg is the Intel 925XE, and motherboards like the Albatron PX925XE Pro-R which are built upon its foundations. The 925XE chipset is a fickle one, supporting only Socket 775 Pentium 4 processors compatible with an 800 MHz or 1066 MHz FSB. Its four dual channel DDR-2 memory sockets will accommodate up to 4GB of non-ECC unbuffered DDR2 memory. Considering that the 925XE is ideally suited for use with ‘1066FSB’ Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPUs, as a killer gaming rig, we’d recommend using at least 2GB of system memory for the best benefit.”

Check it out at PC Stats.

“Stratics is pleased to announce our House of Commons this week: * with the developers of Ultima Online on March 29th at 5pm pst / 8pm est, and * with the developers of Gods & Heroes on March 30th at 4pm pst / 7pm est Join us in the #StraticsHoC channel on Comment (0) -->

“http://www.insanetek.com/reviews/psu/XGbox%20Vortec%20600W/Images/06%20Back%20view_small.JPG” align=”left”>”Today we test their strongest power supply, the Vortec 600 watt power supply. Will this 600 watt power supply be a power house, a flash in the pan, or just flashy? We’ll see if the Vortec 600w can “push the limits of your system”, as XG describes it.”

Check it out at InsaneTek.

“At the tip of the current chipset ice berg is the Intel 925XE, and motherboards like the Albatron PX925XE Pro-R which are built upon its foundations. The 925XE chipset is a fickle one, supporting only Socket 775 Pentium 4 processors compatible with an 800 MHz or 1066 MHz FSB. Its four dual channel DDR-2 memory sockets will accommodate up to 4GB of non-ECC unbuffered DDR2 memory. Considering that the 925XE is ideally suited for use with ‘1066FSB’ Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPUs, as a killer gaming rig, we’d recommend using at least 2GB of system memory for the best benefit.”

Check it out at PC Stats.

“One of our readers sent in this How-To guide to speed up FireFox. We gave it a try ourselves and found the performance gave us a huge gain on download speeds bringing up web-pages. Thank Doug Shapero for his quick guide.”

I tested this out as well, and it does seem to improve on the page reads. Check it out for yourself at IPKonfig.

“Sporting a black shell, blue LEDs, and an 18cm antenna, this is definitely one of the most unique routers we’ve seen here at Phoronix. Not only is its appearance a head turner, but also the 4-port Gigabit connectivity and 108Mbps 802.11g WiFi support. But will the D-Link DGL-4300 Gaming Router be worth the hefty $170 USD price tag?”

Ouch! $170? Check it out at Phoronix.

“MICROSOFT will tackle the growing fear of identity theft in its upcoming version of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, with a technology it calls ‘info-cards’, the Wall Street Journal reported today.”

This will require you hand over your personal data, including Credit Card numbers to trusted companies. Read more about it at The Inquirer.

“Look ma, no fans!!! Well apart from the two silent 120mm adda fans that is. Today we are checking out the WaterChill KT12AT-L30 with a Black Ice Pro Dual radiator. Its also our first attempt to implement a watercooling systeem, woooo ;-) The KT12AT-L30 represents the most outstanding water cooling solution available on the market today. Extreme performance, low noise and 100 % stability characterizes this kit. Installing this kit in a PC will make it a dream machine – no more no less!”

Check out the full review at HardwareXL.

“Sony has been ordered by a U.S. court to pay about $90 million in damages and to halt game console sales in the United States in a patent infringement case against Immersion, the company’s game unit said Monday.”

The infrigment has to do with the PS1 and PS2, as well as accessories and 47 games. Check it out at News.com.

“GeIL Value Series GE5123200B 512MB x 2 achieved a highest frequency of
221MHz at a timing of 2.5-3-3-5. The GE5123200B series actually suffers
from a more relaxed timing of 3-3-4-8 which is rather surprising, as a
it often leads to a higher clock. All in all, I am satisfied with GeIL
value series’ performance at 2.5-3-3-5, especially when it costs just a
bit more than the random brands that you get off the street. It would be
a good choice for people who are thinking of lightly overclock their AMD
machines.”

Check out the full article at Overclockers NZ.

“NVIDIA STILL has the lead on the SLI front despite ATI galloping up in the graphics version of the Desperation Derby, but the graphics jockeys have more tricks up their sleeves. It seems that Nvidia SLI can work with more than just two cards. It’s possible to make four cards work together.”

At this months CeBIT, Gigabyte showed off a card that had 2 6800U GPU’s on it.. only problem was, that it’s HUGE. Definitely a big idea.. crazy to think about actually. Maybe 20,000 in 3D Mark ’05? Check it out at The Inquirer.

Whew, this is the big one. This case will decide whether P2P Networks like Grokster and Streamcast [As others], will be responisble for copyright violations occuring through their networks.

Fuhrman is worried. On Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether file-swapping software companies Grokster and StreamCast Networks should be held responsible for the widespread copyright infringement on their networks, and he’s afraid his company, Interact-TV, could be affected too.

Check out the full article at New.com. It’s going to be quite interesting to see how this turns out.. it may change the face of P2P..

“EPoX is a long time and well known supporter of the enthusiast crowd. They have sometimes been at the forefront of the enthusiast community, and other times not, with their innovative board designs and power packed BIOS implementations. The nForce4 chipset offers a chance for them to shine once again.”

Check out the review at Hard|OCP.

This is Johns first blog update since December, called “Cell Phone Adventures”.

I’m not a cell phone guy. I resisted getting one at all for years, and even now I rarely carry it. To a first approximation, I don’t really like talking to most people, so I don’t go out of my way to enable people to call me. However, a little while ago I misplaced the old phone I usually take to Armadillo, and my wife picked up a more modern one for me. It had a nice color screen and a bunch of bad java game demos on it. The bad java games did it.

Check it out at his site.