Affordable dual core sub-laptop reviewed

BIGBRUIN reviews the OCZ Technology PC 3200 DDR Special OPS Edition memory kit. It is a 2GB module, with a specially designed heatsink with a very peculiar camouflage look. It comes with lifetime warranty and a propensity to overclocking. Some will be disappointed that it is only a 400MHz DDR but this mature technology still has some juice before giving way to DDR2. It proves to be a good buy if you are looking for a quality, not so expensive part to upgrade your rig. Plus if looks could win, this one would be high up there.

Boxgods tests the Lian-Li PC 9300 which is a budget friendly HTPC case. Now there's two paradoxes in one. Budget HTPC cases and Budget Lian li cases are quite rare and getting all three in one product is something exceptional. D I mention that it costs $107 with a 235w mATX PSU? It is silver in colour has four drive bays, can accommodate four expansion cards, has two 60mm fans and is made up of aluminium. Not many issues, although you will have to be careful about how to put things in there.

GamePC's newest article starts with the words, Top to bottom. They could also have been used to describe the path AMD went during the last few hours as far as desktop performance is concerned. GamePC reports on the whole Socket AM2 family just before the launch of the Conroe platform. Gamepc likes the fact that AMD's family is now simpler to interpret. Unexceptional is the first word that springs to mind when pure performance is analysed. The delta between the previous socket 939 platform and the AM2 is insignificant but the AM2 opens the way to a fresher AMD offer.

Techreport tested the Super Talent 2.5-inch IDE 8GB flash disk drive. The drive is pin compatible with the drive interface found in laptops. The drive is much lighter than a normal 2.5-inch mobile hard drive. Since it is a Flash based drive, it is sturdier, includes internal ECC logic and can retain data for at least 10 years. Plus more importantly, it is rated at more than 1 million write/erase cycles. Performancewise, it all depends on what software you are actually using. Reads are much faster than writes and shows clearly that Flash is still behind conventional HDDs in some fields. Still, IDE flash drives costs are low enough to envision using them in some vertical sectors.

Virtual Hideout reports on the Revoltec Lightboard Advanced keyboard. It is made up of black/silver plastic with white keys, a change from anthracite or grey keys. One more thing that will strike you is the fact that it has a small frame and no separate arrow keys, which means that it is not only much smaller than most keyboards, but it is also thinner and hence lighter. The main thing differentiating it from other input devices though is the fact that it has a lighting feature that can be activated at night.

BIOSmagazine tests the wonderful Acer Aspire 9410 laptop. It is a big 17-inch, 3.6Kg laptop that won't win prizes for design. Capable of WXGA+, the screen uses the CrystalBrite technology to improve clarity and the laptop comes with a number of likable features like WLAN, Acer's Signal UP, Intel Core Duo processor, 1GB memory, a 120GB hard drive with 8MB cache, a DVD writer plus the icing on the top, a Geforce Go 7300 with 64MB dedicated memory. The chassis itself is common amongst the rest of the Acer family, except that this one also has a keypad. µ