Content and news by Rob Williams

“The H320 lasted for more than 15 hours of continuous use. 15 hours is very impressive. People will most likely use the screen for much, much longer, which will significantly shorten battery life. On one particular trip from San Francisco to LA and back again by car, the iRiver went 9 hours, including about 2 hours from the day before, providing us with constant music for the entire drive. On average, you can expect yourself to be oblivious to the outside world for at least 11 hours. That’s not too shabby, now is it?”

Check out the full review at Guru 3D.

“Oh yes, you can rely on us to bring you the good stuff. Over here at CeBIT, the mighty (and rather impressive) XFX stand is showing off the very latest in GFX grunt.. a very sexy SLi set up using two 6800Ultra 512megs!”

Wow, that XFX Booth is niiice. Nothing more to say, just check it out at Hexus.

“HANNOVER, Germany — March 9, 2005 — It´s now more affordable than ever for notebook PC users to own and use a VGA-quality webcam made by Logitech (SWX: LOGN) (NASDAQ: LOGI), the world´s leading manufacturer of webcams. Today at CeBIT, the company unveiled two new extremely portable cameras designed specifically for the growing notebook PC market: the QuickCam® for Notebooks Deluxe webcam and the QuickCam® for Notebooks webcam.”

You can check out the full Press Release with images here.

“In this review, PCstats is testing out a pair of sleek 10,000 RPM Western Digital WD740 Raptors. These are the first SATA drives we’ve seen that reach 10,000 RPM, and we’re going to be testing them both singly and in a RAID stripe and mirror to see what kind of performance implications we can expect to a standard PC system. The Western Digital 74GB Raptors are also going to form the basis of PCstats’ updated hardware test platform, so expect to see a lot more of these drives in our future reviews.”

Check out the review at PC Stats.

Greetings from the Central Wastelands! Just a quick little note to let you know that we updated the Auto Assault website today. In this week’s Recon feature update, we have introduced information about Infantry. In addition to the ripples of sheer maniacal pleasure people get while playing Auto Assault and blasting buildings Comment (0) -->

Last week, we reviewed the Janus case from Logisys Computer. But what if that case is too much for you? What about a somewhat normal case that’s not beige? That’s where the Case-51 case comes in. It offers a standard case, with some flair, and for a good price. Let’s check to see how it made out in our review!

“REDMOND, Wash., and HANNOVER, Germany— March 9, 2005 — MSN and Logitech today announced at CeBIT 2005 an extension of their global relationship, through which MSN will launch a high-quality, integrated video and audio service powered by Logitech that enables customers to see and talk to friends and family over the Internet. The new service will be available when it is released this spring to MSN® Messenger 7.0 customers.”

You can check out the full Press Release at the Logitech site here.

“ou can sort out sponsorship deals for the club, give post match interviews and try and poach promising players from other clubs. If you’re particularly nasty, you could give a whining player the boot, putting them up for transfer… In fact, short of getting your captain to bunk off with a princess, there’s not much here you can’t do.”

Check out the full review at Hexus.

“As you may have guessed by now, the 6600GT is indeed Sparkles midrange performance card. It is almost text book Nvidia reference design. The only differences being: no dual DVI outputs, a custom graphic covering the heatsink and a nice blue PCB. If you look just below the Sparkle graphic, you will see a large silver heatsink. This is cooling the PCI-e to AGP bridge chip I mentioned earlier.”

You don’t see too many Sparkle card reviews around! Check it out at Pure Overclock.

“A few weeks back we had the opportunity to check out the Icemat Siberia headset. In this review, we have a new pair of headphones from LTB (Listen To Believe), the LTB-USB-M True 5.1 6 channel surround sound headphones. These headphones are a bit different than what we are used to seeing, as it offers 5.1 surround sound audio and a USB interface.”

USB Headphones! Another use for that wonderful port. Check out the full review at Phoronix.

“The XG Vortex 500W Power Supply performs very well and looks stunning with its all-aluminum construction and two windows. It comes with two blue LED fans (120mm & 80mm) which can be easily adjusted in speed. There are plenty of sleeved leads which increase airflow inside your case. In addition, the sleeving and all the connectors are UV reactive. You’ll be hard pressed to find a better overall PSU. Watch the Video to find out more…”

Check out the full video review at 3D Gameman.

“Thermaltake has taken many people by surprise with their new line of heatsinks. Recently at InsaneTek, we reviewed the Thermaltake Big Typhoon. It was a huge heatsink, but it performed well and was quiet. Looks wasn’t really a part of the Big Typhoon, but that’ll change with the heatsink up for review today: The Thermaltake Beetle. This heatsink has a retail price of $56.99 and provides modding enthusiasts with something special in their case.”

This is a seriously good looking cooler. Check to see how it made out at InsaneTek.

“The pad is made up of three layers. The top is a combination of cloth and plastic (hence the Hybrid name) – that is all we know. It actually feels like it too: it’s a lot slicker than a pure cloth pad but not as rigid or tough on the palms as a plastic one. In the middle is thick foam used for padding. The bottom is Sure Grip rubber backing. Even this is an improvement over the rubber backing found on Xtrac’s all-cloth pads.”

If only my desk had room for this type of mousepad! Check out the review at Mikhailtech.

“One can only wonder how well it would cool if it had even a slightly more powerful fan fitted to it. Very well we suspect from the top quality manufacture and design of this EEA67B4.

If you are looking for a very quiet and compact air cooled light weight CPU cooler with decent cooling performance then you will have to look a long way to better this Speeze EEA67B4.”

Check out this ‘cool’ product over at A1 Electronics!

“How about sending a brief film clip of you by the fountain in Rome? Or perhaps a picture snapped of the Eiffel Tower with an image quality so fine it could be blown up and put in a 10×14-inch (25×35-centimeter) frame.”

No more crappy, small resolution pictures. Now camera phones can be useful.

More..

“Every tech company out there seems to be producing some variation of the portable video player theme. The idea is simple. Take a hard disk MP3 player, add an LCD screen and video decoding/playback hardware, shake well and release into the wild. MSI’s take on the video player comes a couple of years into the game, so they’ve presumably had time to watch other companies make mistakes. The Megaview 561 sports a 3.5 inch LCD, a 20GB hard disk, TV out and A/V recording capabilities, FM radio playback and recording, DivX and MPEG4 support, a full featured photo viewer, USB 2.0 and much more, making it one of the most capable multimedia video players on the market.”

Very cool looking product. Check it out at PC Stats.

Turbine Entertainment has added a FAQ on their website on the process of buying and pre-ordering AC: ToD. Q: When will the Asheron’s Call: Throne of Destiny pre-order box be available for retail purchase? A: By 4/11/2005. Some retailers will likely stock it earlier, but we do not have control over that Comment (0) -->

“Many of today’s best-selling games present constantly changing scenes that require lightning fast moves in one instant, but in the next ask for pixel precision. Logitech has created the perfect weapon for adjusting to these scenarios on-the-fly: the Logitech® MX518 Gaming-Grade Optical Mouse. This new mouse puts quick-shift controls at gamers’ fingertips – with one click, gamers can instantly increase and decrease mouse resolution from as high as 1600 dots per inch (dpi) to as low as 400 dpi. Software is not required but once installed, allows gamers to program specific intervals as opposed to the 1600, 800 and 400 dpi default setting. The mouse will be available in April and has a suggested retail price of $49.99 in the U.S.”

This mouse looks extremely hopefuly; I hope to try one out in the future. The only downside is that it’s not Cordless, but that’s livable. Going to be very interesting to see how this mouse handles in FPS and other games. You can check out more product info on the Logitech site.

“A market filled with a seemingly unlimited number of ugly computer cases have flourished. We would be appreciative if theses cases were delightfully modded with professionalism and fine workmanship, but it seems like the pre-modded case industry has turned upside down in the recent years. Our question to these companies would be – what exactly happened? Were they not satisfied with the sales figures or was this innovation part of a new strategy to experiment with new designs in hopes of tapping into a new market segment?”

They don’t have picture samples of ugly cases, but it’s still a great read. Check it out at Cool Tech Zone.

“This is really an extensive review of the Shuttle P series chassis as well as the SN25P in particular. The SB81P and SB95P use the same basic setup, only with different motherboards and chipsets. We will be referring back to this article when we look at those two SFFs in the future.”

If you are looking to enter the SFF field, check out the very detailed article at AnandTech.