|
|
|
ReviewsReviews for computer hardware |
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
I have no intention of bothering anybody with the mother of all reviews, using all sorts of tools to check, verify, perform, execute and conclude how a certain piece of hardware behaves. I just publish what I feel about things I bought, and some tricks I learned.
Logitech X530Logitech X530 are low priced consumer speakers which work great for me. They are the 5.1 type of speakers. I am very pleased that I bought them! They are supposed to have some uber-drooper technology which makes the sound field uniform. Whether this actually works, I have no idea, but it does sound great. I am amazed what deep sound can come out from those small speakers. The sound is very good for pop music and games, but not for classical music. Both good and bad is the subwoofer. It's very powerful! Now, that's good to make the windows shake, the walls to tremble, and to get a nice headache. I've turned my subwoofer's volume to minimum from both hardware and software. Actually, I keep it at about 15% from software, but you can still feel it pounding. For some reason, I can't use the digital output. If I select it from my sound board's option, all I here is nasty cracks, although I put the cables in the right position. Anyway, even without this, all speakers are working properly and ACC3 files work too, so I don't know exactly what happens. And now the totally, ultimate super cool trick! There is a trick I've found by accident, although it's actually related to the sound board: Creative Audigy. They have this tool called "Creative Audio Console". Now, if it didn't come with your bundled software, you'll have to download the software from their website. Start this tool and go to the "CMSS" tab. Set the "CMSS Mode" to something other than off and be ready to be blown away! The depth of the sound is simply stunning. New sound drivers provide improved sound and the CMSS may have different effects depending on whether the sound output is through the speakers or headphones. Anyway, try all CMSS options (including the "Off" value). Be sure to do this for both you speakers and your headphones, if you have, because the settings are stored separately. Also make sure you select the right type of speakers (or else, the sound will be poor).
Sony MDR CD780Sony MDR CD 780 are high priced consumer headphones. They cost me as much as the Logitech X530 speakers. Although I am not as impressed by them as I am by the speakers, these headphones are of high quality. Their sound is excruciatingly clear, which is bad when listening to less than perfectly recorded / compressed songs. The CMSS trick works great. But I don't know... I guess they're just headphones. They're big and heavy. They have some neat material (polyurethane) for the ear support, but the ears get hot after some listening. I had some problems plugging in the cord because there are no instructions to guide; the cord can be detached from the headphones. Initially I thought they might be broken because the sound was horrible, but I found that I had to push hard the jack in it's place (but not in the wrong socket!!!). I prefer to listen to the speakers, but when I want to feel my brain pounding, I put the headphones on 'cause the beat is... unbeatable. Oh, and the sound is great only if the sound card is configured to output headphones signal. Unlike low quality output devices, when you can't hear any difference, both the speakers and headphones need specific configuration. The sound in Windows Vista is processed differently than before and provides superb quality. This way I can really appreciate the quality of the headphones.
Canon A610Canon A610 is a medium priced consumer digital camera. It's not an ultra-compact camera, but it is compact and thus doesn't fit in a pocket. It's on the heavy side, with 235 g. I have searched a lot before I bought this model and one of the main reasons I chose this was because it had a swivel display. The nice thing about such a display is that you can take photos from really odd angles and with virtually no stress on the neck. You can even take photos of yourself and still see yourself in the display (because it can be rotated forward). Other reasons for choosing this model were the good manual control, though it's not as good as I want. For instance, in the manual mode, the shutter speed can't be less than 1/1250; for the rest down to 1/2500 it's necessary to move to another mode where it's not possible to set the aperture. I chose this model over the A620 because that model was 50% more expensive, and because this model has fewer pixel at the same sensor size, that is, each pixel receives more light (which means better quality, at least in theory). The four original alkaline batteries lasted about 200 photos (with virtually no flash), several minutes of movie, and my first experience with a digital camera (that is, the display was on a lot of time). The purchased set, lasted about 450 photos because I learned to minimize consumption. The quality of the camera is visible in the few ultra-sharp images, where the small shutter speed was compensated by sheer luck of catching the "frozen" moment. Macro pictures are very good, but the others are just ordinary. I prefer to shoot pictures underexposed (when there is not enough light around) because it allows me to decrease the shutter speed. Here you can see the pictures I took with it. I exchanged my A610 with a A620. There is no visible difference in image quality between the two models.
Pretect BulletproofPretec Bulletproof is the most practical portable memory I have seen.
The main reason why I bought it was its practical side, the fact that it can be used as a key chain. The model I bought has 2 GB of memory. It can be connected to the computer by USB 1 or 2. It's transfer rate for big files is good enough: it can write with about 4 MB/s and read with about 15 MB/s. But for small files (less than several MB) it's pathetic: about 0.8 MB/s. Still, for me it's great. Windows Vista allows to format memory sticks with NTFS, which improves the performance. One interesting thing is that the memory is bulletproof and waterproof. I don't care about bulletproof, but this means that it should resist being dropped or walked over.
AverMedia TV tunerI wanted to make some space in my room, so I moved some furniture around and got rid of the CRT TV in the process. To replace it, I've bought an external TV tuner, AverMedia Box9, which works with the computer display, but without the computer. The tuner has all the sockets and cables which are necessary to re-route both image and sound from the computer and tuner to the display. This means that you can connect the video and audio cables coming from the computer into the tuner, and then the tuner to the display and speakers, and with the push of a button you can either work on your computer or watch TV. Image degradation due to the re-route of the video signal is barely visible, and simply using the "auto" function of the display makes the degradation invisible. The tuner is very small and light, and can sit
either vertically (it has a stand) or horizontally (and keep it
like this because it's more stable). It can be used with or
without the computer, reason for which I bought it instead of an
internal version. The remote control has effect in just about any direction and is very practical. An interesting thing is the PIP with the TV image which can be displayed while working on your computer, although only people with very large displays (at least 24" diagonal) will actually use it. Much better is the function which allows you to listen to the TV station, so that you can know when the TV ads end and the movie / show resumes. There is a preview function which allows you to see what happens on 13 channels at the same time, but it's useless because of its low speed. Basically, it takes too much time for the tuner to tune into all 13 channels to display their image. The tuner has some annoying things, like the fact that in order to change the channel to a single digit channel identifier, you need to press twice the 0 key and the channel's digit; you can press just the single digit, but then you have to wait 2 or 3 seconds so that the tuner would known that you don't want to type a two digit channel identifier. The power-on led is very bright, and this is annoying in a dark room, but it can be covered. The most bothersome thing is the way TV channels are ordered, which literally sucks. The easiest thing in TVs is too interchange the current channel with another. But in this tuner you need to change the identifiers of two channels, one of which is an internal channel number, and the other which will be overwritten (not interchanged). Even worse, you can't tune-in a single channel, but only all channels at once (which breaks your nicely ordered channels). So, if by mistake you overwrite a channel, you need to do everything again. However, if you remember the internal channel number, you can use that directly because reordering only changes the indexing visible to the user, it doesn't actually overwrite the stored channel frequency. Note that the tuner has no audio amplification, so you need active speakers (speakers with volume control). I prefer to use the cable from the headphones to connect to audio signal from the computer to either the headphones or the tuner, instead of connecting to tuner to the computer, the speakers to the tuner, and the headphones to the speakers. This way I can listen to music without any audio degradation, and believe me, the difference is dramatic. As a conclusion, using it is very pleasant, but only after the TV channels are ordered (after the inevitable swearing). |
||||
|
|
||||
