Vole Arc Mouse gets a hands-on

MICROSOFT’S ARC MOUSE saw the light of the day at I4U. The mousey is pretty much an ongoing experiment in design that’s now reached " retail" stage. It’s wireless, uses AAA batteries (no advanced recharge tech), and the arch-like design folds in half for storage. The USB dongle is tiny and actually stores on the underside. Lots of neat features but will take some getting used to... right here.

Olin at Benchmark Reviews is testing a Honeywell Altura MLX HDTV. There’s a reason for this, there’s only 90 days left until the yanks transition to full digital TV broadcasts. Honeywell, is a brand less known in Europe, but Soyo, who actually makes the kit, is a much more familiar name in this field. Give it a look-see, over here.

Biostar and Gigabyte have been making some headway into the full-featured-yet-reasonably-priced market. ChileHardware has two prime examples of this on review, the TPower i45 and the EP45 Extreme. Luis thinks they’re great if you don’t like the fuss of an overly-complicated BIOS for overclocking. Here in Spanish, here in Googlenglish.

Adrian at TechARP has compiled some interesting numbers on Core i7 three channel integrated memory controller. You’ll see noticeable performance gains when going from one to two memory channels, but the third really isn’t adding much to the performance... in real world apps, not synthetic benchmarks. Give it a look.

PC Perps is reviewing Asus’ Rampage II Extreme X58 mobo. You know... the one that costs more than a full netbook? Ryan says it’s absolutely the best consumer mobo on the market, and despite being a $400+ board it earned his Editor’s Choice Award. $400. Sheesh.

The Canucks are testing OCZ’s Gladiator Max CPU cooler. OCZ has added an extra heatpipe to the Vendetta formula to make it a better solution. Unfortunately, says HC, the cooler isn’t as effective its predecessor, the Vendetta 2, and even sports a higher price tag. It’s also a pushpin design which, let’s face it, isn’t the most reliable around. Read aboot it here. µ