EEE goes the PC

THE EEE PC has made some decent headlines for ASUS lately. It’s not in the same camp as an OLPC, nor a Tablet for that matter, but Anandtech tries to get to the bottom of it all. They turn an EEE PC inside out and look at what the engineers at ASUS have been toiling for the past months. All in all it's a streamlined, intuitive Linux installation with a lot of out-of-the-box configuration features on top of a basic Intel platform. For $400 we’d rather pick up a PS3.

If you’re looking for a new high performance USB stick check out All-round PC’s review of the new OCZ ATV Turbo (click here for English). Blazing fast write speeds (for a stick), and a “construction site ruggedized” look for about €69.

Expreview takes an in-depth look at NVIDIA’s first entry-level graphics card on the 65nm process – the G98 powered 8400GS. This new 8400GS card provides very entry level performance, but (almost) full HD decoding, bringing HD video to your entry-level PC. Sucky 3D, though.

Extremetech has made their own contribution to the on-going Phenom derby. Facing off the Phenom 9600 and Intel Q6600 in a barrage of benchamarks, the reviewer’s believes the Phenom is late to market and still very much a work in progress.

Zepto is a European laptop vendor, selling the Znote brand of laptops. TrustedReviews.com gave the Znote 6225WD a once over, comparing it against some powerhouses like Rock’s X770 and Tosh’s G40-10E. Decent performance and results overall, and not a bad price tag to boot. The hi-res screen is a definite selling point, but it doesn’t seem they liked the design.

PCStats fawns over a Samsung Syncmaster 971P. This 19” LCD is targeted at the higher-end of the size-class and has pretty good specs. Gifted with a high contrast ratio and a wide viewing angle the only fault they can find is the software package (we’d mention the 1280x1024 resolution, but that’s just us). Pricey too...

TechARP provides answers to one subject on people’s minds: laptop gaming. TechARP reviews the NVIDIA 8600M GT based on the G84 core, as you would expect, but clocked lower than the desktop counterpart. To add a bit of spice to the mix, they benchmark the chip against a range of desktop solutions. TechARP recognizes that the 8600M GT looks better on paper than in real life and that gaming above 1024x768 is a no-no with this chip. Avoid Dell’s solution in particular.

Over there at OverClockersClub, they take a look at Antec’s NSK3480 microATX case. They liked what they tested, but the odd hard drive positioning isn’t the ideal for the thermal performance. It has a very efficient 380W PSU, which can allow you to set up a decent LAN box. µ