Professional cards tested against gaming GPUs

I REALLY want to know how and what Epson uses to clean all the old ink from the printer heads on refurbs. Please let me know if you can find this answer as it will save my $1700 Epson 3000 networked printer. Can anyone help our reader Roger Harris?

Tweaktown tests 5GB Pocket size and 400GB External Firewire External HDD. The reviewer was pleasantly surprised with the Firewire storage which proved to be almost as quick as an internal PATA drive with 2GB of data copied in one minute. Plus there's some goodies like style, automatic backup on the external drive and excellent performance for both units.

Overclockersonline gets a chance with the Spire KestrelKing VI Cooler - an AMD64 performance CPU cooler. Spire is known for its cheap and nasty range of fans and coolers. Nothing flashy here and very easy installation but cooling could be better with a better base seen as mediocre by OO.

Hardwarecentral puts the PowerSpec MCE410 and the Winbook LC32 LCD HDTV to the test. HWC loves it to bits. You get a superb Windows XP MCE system with a DVD burner, PVR capabilities and a TV Tuner in a DVD player like setup and a 32-inch widescreen LCD with a full set of digital and analog IOs, all for a mere $2098. Plus they have the first review of the IBM, errr, Lenovo X41 laptop. It is a sublaptop that should please all business travellers: 3.3 Lbs, 12-inch TFT screen, Pentium M LV processor etc. HC is an outstanding product but should watch its back for cheaper competitors' products.

Here's one of our reader's benchmark tests of the Nuendo, Cubase SX, Sonar and other software for various Sub-systems - DAWs or rather Digital Audio Workstations. The reviewers compare the X2 4400+, Dual Xeons, Dual Opterons, Dual Core opterons, the Athlon 3500+ and theP4 3.2GHz. Rather than pure benchmarks, CPU usage is measured.

Mistik tests the Iwill DN800 which is a Dual Xeon workstation board with support for PCI-e X16. A hell lot of features, including support for SLI. The reviewer has the good idea to compare a pair of high end Geforce 6800 Ultra in SLI mode, a FireG: V3100, a Quadro FX1300, a 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm 800 card. Professional benchmarks will prove an unsurmontable challenge even for the latest graphics GPU.

The MSI K8N Neo4 and the ECS KN1 Extreme motherboards are put at loggerhead even if they differ substantially in price and do not normally belong to the same category. GDhardware says of the ECS that it is the Poor man's ABIT. Find out why now.

The X800XL might soon lose its great value etiquette with the arrival of new GPU but this didn't prevent PCStats of consideraing a great value. It can be overclocked nicely - close to X800XT - plus it comes with some superb performance compared to contemporary cards. Even DOOM III does not frighten an ATI card anymore. µ