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Motorola TX500 Bluetooth…

The Motorola TX500 Bluetooth In-Car Speakerphone is extremely easy to pair with a smart phone and has…

Bose SoundLink II Mobile…

The Bose SoundLink II mobile Bluetooth speaker sounds very good, is extremely easy to use and feels…

The KitchenAid 5-Speed…

At 3 am in the morning during an all night edit session nothing hits the spot like a good smoothie. The…

Sanyo eneloop Rechargeable AA…

Sanyo eneloop AA rechargeable batteries are good a place to start when investing in rechargeable batteries.…

HitFilm 2 Ultimate Review

HitFilm 2 Ultimate is an easy to use effects and compositing tool that offers outstanding value under $400.…

iPad mini Versus Kindle Fire…

The Kindle Fire HD is an appealing product and a great choice if you consider it a media consumption device…

The Roku 2 XS Review

The Roku 2 XS is a great gift for anyone with a high speed Internet connection that wants to get into…

funkyfresh computers and accessories

Motorola SB6120 Extreme Cable Modem Review

Computers and Accessories
Tuesday, 04 May 2010 21:32
The Motorola SB6120 cable modem is the next generation DOCSIS 3.0 compatible modem which provides a 4x speed improvement over DOCSIS 2.0 cable modems such as the original Surfboard series from Motorola. We replaced a Motorola Surfboard SB5101 for this test. On the SB6120 Motorola moved the status lights to the side of the modem so when it’s placed in a wiring closet of a house it’s easy to check if it’s online or not without removing it. The older SB5101 requires you to remove it to check the status and the reset button could easiy be accidentally pressed. The SB6120 is a boxier design but only takes up slightly more space than the SB5101. It’s pretty much a straight swap although the SB5101 was easier to slide into tight spaces because of its wedge like shape. The Initial setup took a bit longer than anticipated. The Motorola Extreme SB6120 takes longer to restart and get online but once it’s up and running is rock solid. The control panel and status indicators are very similar to previous designs. Basically, get it up and running and forget it. At lower service speeds the improvement over the SB5101 is marginal. Of course, the real reason to upgrade the modem is to take advantage of the upper tiered Internet service offered by Comcast and others. After we had Comcast turn up the speed the SB6120 came to life. If you frequently move large files via FTP, like to stream HD video, or have lots of data on your systems you’re backing up via an online service such as Mozy than the SB6120 combined with a faster level of access is certainly worth considering. For general web use, email and sending the occasional photo…etc., you won’t see that much benefit. Visit Motorola for more information.

Hawking HWREN1 Hi-Gain Wireless-300N Range Extender Review

Computers and Accessories
Monday, 15 March 2010 07:31
The Hawking HWREN1 Hi-Gain Wireless-300N Range Extender works well to eliminate wireless dead zones in a home. Let’s say you have a wireless access point located centrally in your home but the signal strength is weak to some corners of the building such as the garage. We tested the HWREN1 in an average size home and were impressed with the results. Systems that previously showed low quality connections before installing the HWREN1 reported good to excellent connectivity. FTP, audio/video streaming and sharing files on the network approached the performance and throughput of wired systems on the network. Can’t ask for much more than that. Setup requires the included CD and is easy enough but there should have been more information about wireless channel selection and strategy when extending a wireless network. Having a quality wireless card in each PC accessing the network makes a big difference as well. We found dramatically different results with several cards so like anything else your wireless network is only as good as your weakest link. The WHREN1 looks and feels very cheap but once it’s installed and out of sight you’ll quickly forget about that. It’s a good option for improving the wireless access in your home without a lot of cost. Visit Hawking Technologies for more information.

Corsair P256 SSD Review

Computers and Accessories
Thursday, 04 March 2010 07:25
The Corsair P256 SSD is a SATA-II compatible 2.5 inch drive. Like other SSDs it offers faster performance and potentially better endurance. However, unlike high performance hard drives that include a 5 year warranty the P256 only includes a 2 year warranty which we found odd considering “toughness” is one of the selling points of SSDs in general. Unwrapping the P256 is a bit like unwrapping air. SSDs are deceiving in that they don’t feel like much, just a little brick of silicon with some connectors. But in this case the featherweight is actually the heavyweight. The Corsair P256 SSD has all of the performance minus the bulk, noise, power consumption and heat of a traditional high performance drive. Of course, it’s a lot more expensive and offers only a fraction of the capacity but its responsive and stable performance will be attractive to many. When we received the Corsair Performance Series P256 SSD we decided to test it a couple of ways. First as a dedicated drive for HD video editing and second as a system drive with OS and apps. What would have a bigger impact? What would we notice more? What would we simply enjoy more? First we swamped out a Hitachi 7200 RPM 1TB drive we were using for video storage. We copied over 1 hour of HD footage and resumed editing a project to see if the response would be any different with the P256. We also repeated the process with a Western Digital VelociRaptor 10K RPM drive. These are real world tests where we use the product versus running arbitrary benchmarks. The P256 was noticeable improvement over the 7200 RPM hard drive but not so much with the 10K RPM VelociRaptor. However, the P256 did reduce the noise in the editing room with one less hard drive spinning. Next we cloned the VelociRaptor system drive and replaced it with the P256. Our boot up and shut down times weren’t noticeably different. However, opening and closing applications was snappier. Lean apps like Saw Studio were truly instant on while chubbier apps such as Sony Vegas still take some time. Firefox and Fireworks were instant on. So it depends on the app but in general we noticed the improvement even compared to a very fast 2.5 inch version of Western Digital’s 10k RPM VelociRaptor. Some changes were dramatic in unexpected ways. For example, we often experienced a several second delay opening Winamp. With the P256 it was instant. The Corsair P256 is an excellent way to add performance and stability to a system that’s a couple of years old or to use as the foundation for a new high performance system. The most noticeable improvement for us was when we installed it as the main system drive. It made the system feel more like hardware and less like software. Is it worth the premium over the 2.5 inch VelciRaptor? It absolutely is for a work system where uptime is critical. For a home system with an online backup system such as Mozy in place, it’s hard to justify. In the last several years we’ve seen hard drives fail in our systems after only 1 year of use and usually at the worst possible moment. Yes, SSDs are very expensive but we’re getting very close to the price point where that extra performance and piece of mind will be worth the premium. It’s very early in this game but it’s easy to imagine a near silent PC with almost no moving parts besides a few fans whirring inside. 2010 is shaping up to be the year where the silent SSD starts making some serious noise. Visit Corsair for more information.

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