Hardware Bytes

Zygo writes "Hey everyone Merry Christmas! (Yes I'm a bit too late) Here's some Hardware & Modding news! : At WinHQ the Xoxide X450 Case, Some pretty Cold Cathode lights over here, nice MX mouses at LANParty, At ClubOC the Swiftech MCX462+T, Some shocking Shockwave Fangrills over at ExtensionTech, Playing Mp3 with the iRock 530 here, a Big cooler here, OCIA brings you the Solarism LM-1711 17" LCD screen, Vantecs Fan Controller at ExtremeMHz, and a 8x GF4 Ti4200 at Viper's Lair"

Comments

Google already reported this

[slycer9]

Just look under the 'results' file under searches for the aforementioned parts. Seriously tho', I know this'll likely be modded down as flamebait, but I fail to see how this qualifies as 'news'...advertisements yes, news, no.

hmmm ...

[SuperDuG]

Okay maybe it's just me, but I've always been a firm believer with it's what's on the inside that counts. You can put a pretty case on anything, but if you don't know how to use the damned thing, then what's the point.

This isn't reserved for case modders only ...

Works for the following:
- Signifigant others (would you like someone with wonderful qualities that complement you, or do you want someone all your friends are going to be trying to get in the pants of)
- Cars (Just because you throw a sticker on a car with some fart can exhaust pipe doesn't make it fast! The fast and the furious (get this ...) it was a movie!)
- Homes (Adding cool rock gardens or other landscaping won't change your neighborhood or your massive termite problem)

I have always been a firm believer of judge what's inside as looks can always be deceiving. But here we are, promoting outer beauty yet again.

... obviously even geeks love the five minuntes of fame and to be looked up to, even if it is only by their peers for a paint job ...

Re:hmmm ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Signifigant others (would you like someone with wonderful qualities that complement you, or do you want someone all your friends are going to be trying to get in the pants of)

This example is a little abstract, but personally I'd like a girl with both qualities. A nice plain-looking girl does about the same for me as a sexy airhead that you can't talk to for five minutes.

Cars (Just because you throw a sticker on a car with some fart can exhaust pipe doesn't make it fast! The fast and the furious (get this ...) it was a movie!)

Nothing wrong with a nice-looking car, since most of them all do the same thing in the same way. I'm not talking about Type-R rice-rockets here, but there's nothing wrong with choosing your car by its looks or making some changes to suit your personality.

Homes (Adding cool rock gardens or other landscaping won't change your neighborhood or your massive termite problem)

A beautiful place to live makes you a happier person. There's not much in life as intimately entangled with your being as the places you spend your time in. Since most of us work in shitty ugly buildings, the home is even more important. I'd love to have a rock garden and nice landscaping. Who cares about the neighbors. But yeah, get that termite problem fixed before buying any rocks.

Really, case modding is cool, and although most of them are pointless, every once in a while I see one that makes me go "wow.. I wish I had that on my desk, just so I could look at it each day".

Time for a 'casemodding' section.

[Brightest Light]

Im pretty sure my karma is going to take a dive for this one, but i dont think im the only person to think that its time to put stuff like this off in another category. I think it would be safe to say that the majority of slashdotters are tired of seeing 'articles' that are basically advertisements for casemod stuff. I, for one, would like to be able to block this out, i dont believe that cold cathode lights qualify as 'hardware', really.

*kisses karma goodbye* just my 2 cents

Quickies (off topic)

[brejc8]

What happened to the quickies?
I want them back.
They were great news and cool stuff nibbits.

hardware review sites are practically scams

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop accepting stories that link to these 'review sites'- they're nothing more than mouthpieces for the companies hawking all sorts of trash. Just witness insights such as:

"Generally, CPU nowadays generates bigger and faster cycle-speed."

Direct quote there, folks. Most of these sites seem to have reviewers equipped with the grammar skills of a middle school student.

Notice also the banners advertising products from the same company(Zalman); hardware review sites are totally shameless when it comes to advertising and even selling what they review. The term "journalistic integrity" is not even in their (limited) vocabulary.

Even if they don't sell advertising for the product(or the product itself), they blatantly suck up to companies, just like certain digital camera review sites. Why? Because there are 5 billion review sites, and if they don't gloat about the product, the manufacturer won't ever send them a product again(nor is another manufacturer likely to take the risk.) If they don't get sent products to review, they don't HAVE anything to review because none of the "sites"(ie, some teenager and his 4 friends, or some unemployed guy) have money.

If they don't have anything to review(or, if they don't have the latest/hottest item), they don't get visits to their sites. That means no ad revenue...and that means they go out of "business".

Same thing happens in the automotive world, the consumer electronics world(ever notice stereo review magazine writers seem to have a LOT of VERY expensive toys that they own?), movie reviews, etc. It's all just a game to see who can do the best job of sucking up to the biggest audience to get the best perks from the companies.

I haven't trusted reviewers for about 4 years now...

Re:hardware review sites are practically scams

[Ponty]

Thank you! What is it about hardware review sites that are written by people who sound like they're struggling to present each sentence. I know a lot of them are written by people for whom English isn't their native language, and this is not directed at them. I'm bitching about the people who are just plain dumb. This quote is from the LCD panel review:

"Image quality was excellent using the analog cable, which lead me to believe things could only get better with DVI. Sadly enough, I was wrong. I had the opportunity to test the monitor using a Radeon 7500 that supported both analog and DVI. Using the analog with the 7500, the overall picture quality was poor at best. Switching to DVI fixed this, giving image quality equal to that of the GF3 using the analog cable. This confused me greatly. I was under the impression that DVI was a step above analog."

Uh...unless I'm reading this totally incorrectly, this guy is a moron. That and it sounds like he's trying very very hard to sound intelligent. I have absolutely no faith in this guy's ability to come up with a single thing worth reading about an LCD display.

Logitech leaving out us Lefties!

[thesolo]

That new Logitech MX 500 Optical mouse looks beautiful, but I won't be buying one. Unfortunately (and this isn't just logitech), us lefties are left out of the mouse market, no pun intended! Mice that are designed for right-handed users are just shy of worthless for us.

What's the point of having quick launch thumb buttons, when the mouse is designed for a right-handed user? Those buttons would be worthless to me, and the mouse becomes counter-intuitive to use. There seems to also be more of a push towards right hand contoured mice; I can barely even find decent symmetrical optical mice anymore (besides Logitech's low-quality offerings)!

I'm sick of this! Does anyone know of any good optical mice that are either symmetrical or come in a left-handed model?

Re:Logitech leaving out us Lefties!

[thesolo]

ambidextrous... what?!

seriously, adapt. i can use a mouse either righty or lefty. not as good lefty, but if i made myself do it all the time i am sure it would not be long before there was little difference.

Actually, I am ambidextrous. However, I choose to use my mouse with my left hand mainly for ergonomics; the distance from the left side home row of the keyboard to the mouse is far less than that from the right side home row to the mouse; you don't have to move past the arrow keys & numeric keypad on the left!

Re:Logitech leaving out us Lefties!

[phillymjs]

Have you thought of the logistics involved in this? Mfg's would have two designs for each model of mouse that supports this.

It is not a logistical nightmare, it's been done before. Logitech used to have most if not all of their "-handed" mice in versions for lefties and righties-- up until the early to mid 1990's. I don't remember if they did this, but I would think just an "R" or "L" somewhere in the part number would take care of the problem of telling them apart for inventory management.

A nice, obvious "LEFT HANDED" or "RIGHT HANDED" sticker on the box should take care of most of the retarded-customer issues (but there will always be a few lunkheads who don't notice the sticker).

Since lefties are about 10% of the population, vendors would simply order about 1/10 as many lefty mice as righty, and everyone would be happy.

I would imagine Logitech doesn't make two version of their mice anymore for the same reason you can't find a [Logitech-made] OS X driver for any of their webcams... they've gotten cheap and lazy and don't want to serve everyone-- just the lowest common denominator (righties and Windows users).

~Philly

LANParty...

[Kunta Kinte]

Kunta's rule to partying...

If it doesn't have chicks and beer, then it's not a party.

"LANGathering" maybe, or "LANGet-together" why not, but I'm sorry it's not a party.

The geek subculture is cool and all but still.

Although strictly speaking it is a "party" I'd say the name should be changed lest some poor soul wonders into one of those things expecting to get laid.

Not true for all reviewers

[The Tyro]

I've said it before on this forum; Consumer Reports

The only problem with them (probably only a problem to slashdotters) is that they don't do in-depth computer hardware reviews; general computer reviews are about all you get.

and no... I'm not affiliated with them in any way, aside from being a happy subscriber. They accept no advertisements at all, and are entirely member-supported. If something sucks, they say so... an invaluable service for those of you that don't like throwing your money away.

There's this other problem

[RayChuang]

Too many buttons. =(

I've actually held and tried the Logitech MX500 mouse and frankly, there are just too many buttons on the mouse to press, which can cause no end of confusion unless you have a really good idea how to use the supplied Mouseware software. Does anyone remember Logitech's bizzare Marble F/X trackball mouse? That thing confused the heck out of me figuring out how to use it correctly. (frown)

One thing I like about Microsoft's and Logitech's lesser optical mouse pointers is that you only have the scroll wheel and two buttons to deal with, which makes acclimating yourself to the pointer much easier.