Turion laptop leather for the laydees

Meanwhile, in Cyberspace, Bit tech runs a rare review of an EQS motherboard. The M56K9-MLF is based on the Radeon Xpress 200G chipset, AKA RS480, which integrates an X300 graphic chip, equivalent to a 9550ish, and which uses both system and its own dedicated memory.

Laptoplogic sends us a review of the Asus V6V laptop. Asus claims this Centrino-based model is the thinnest and the lightest of the 15-inchers. It is made of magnesium and features a Pentium M 750 CPU coupled to a Radeon X600 and with two cases, two-year warranty and a DVD writer - costs less than £1000.

Also on board, a new Tulip E-Go laptop with interchangeable leather covers aimed to appeal to the laydees. Under the hood, you get a Turion 64MT, 1GB DDR memory, a 100GB HDD, a DVD writer and the Xpress 200M chipset. Very impressive.

Eweek checks the new Sun Microsystems V40Z server which is a quad socket machine, eight core opteron 875 system. The system will set you back a cool $38995, not that much for eight cores and some GB of memory. Sadly though, there is no benchmark on eweek's website.

BIOSmagazine churns out more reviews than many big guns out there. They sent us three of their latest. The first one is the Antec Phantom 350 which is a completely silent power supply. It may be pricey and have a low wattage but this PSU is not is silent and features a range of features not found on cheaper ones. The second one is the Trust SP-6300P 5.1 speaker set which comes with basic features and fortunately good sound to match the looks. No remote or digital IOs though. Then there is one on the Roxio Easy Media creator 7.5 which tries to combine the kitchen sink with the coffee machine. In a nutshell you get everything. DVD player, Disc Image, MyBackup, Video Cerator, Photosuite etc.

Daniel from Dansdata tests the Deck Keyboard. What makes it so special is that it is a notebook-like keyboard which illumininates itself: 84 leds in all for all keys. Its damn cheap though at $99 and you won't go unnoticed at your next LAN. µ

Problem Page: I bought a USB-to IDE converter and tried to connect my DVD writer to my computer using it. Though it correctly detects my DVD writer, a Pioneer A05, as soon as I put any disc - DVD or CD - in it, Windows XP detects it as a CD Drive and I am not be able to access it. I changed the jumpers and checked both the reader and the adaptor. I was able to read and write to an old 2.1GB HDD - but with no avail. Any hints from anyone? System is a Toshiba Tecra P3-600, USB port, Windows XP Pro SP2.