General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Looking Forward: The 19 Gadgets We Can't Wait For in 2012

Posted: 19 Jan 2012 02:37 PM PST

CES did a good job this year of getting us excited about 2012 by showing us some awesome gadgets, technologies and products. From ultrabooks and tablets, to speakers and home automation, from software to televisions, from smartphones to solar power there was something at CES that every Maximum PC editor wanted to get their hands on.

Click through to get a gander on what each Maximum PC editor is most looking forward to in the next 365 days, and let us know what gadgets you're most looking foward to in the comments!

Geek Tested: 17 Thermal Pastes Face Off

Posted: 19 Jan 2012 12:10 PM PST

Does thermal paste really matter? We applied, reapplied, reapplied some more, and turned up the heat  on our testing CPU to find out.

Ask ten geeks about their preferred thermal interface material (TIM) and you'll get six different answers. Five will go with Arctic Silver 5 and the others will have five totally different favorites. Ask a non-geek about their favorite thermal paste and you might get slapped.

But is Arctic Silver 5 really the best? Is the thermal testing compound we've been using in the lab really cutting the mustard? We gathered seventeen premium thermal pastes and an overclocked test bed and set about finding out whether thermal paste really makes a difference, and if so, which one is the best.

A Note on Methodology

Our test bed consists of an Intel Core-i7-975 CPU, overclocked to 3.9GHz. This gives an idle clock speed of 2.1GHz. Our motherboard is an Asus P6X58D Premium with 6GB of RAM and a Thermaltake Frio OCK cooler with its fans set to their highest setting, to maximize airflow. Our test bed is built into a High-Speed PC Top Deck Tech Station (large), and our PSU is an Antec TruePower 850W.

We tested each thermal paste after an hour of idling, then after three hours running Intel's Nehalem thermal stress-testing utility at 85 percent thermal load. How'd we get that number? We applied our standard thermal testing compound—Arctic Silver Lumiére—and cranked up the utility until the CPU was consistently just under 90C, then used those settings for every future test. CPU temperatures are an average of the four CPU core temperatures as measured by HWMonitor, and we used TMonitor to make sure the processors were running under 100 percent load at their full 3.96GHz during testing.

For this test, we focused on thermal pastes that are nondestructive—none of this liquid metal stuff—and readily available in the United States.

After a few weeks of testing day in and day out, we're ready to report our results. Here are your contenders!

The Contenders (in order of testing)

Arctic Silver Lumiére OEM Thermal Testing Compound, Price N/A (OEM only)

Arctic Silver's OEM testing compound is a ceramic-based TIM which we've been using in the lab for years because of its consistent performance and lack of burn-in time. It's not available to the general public, but we included it to see how our baseline TIM really stacks up to the competition.

Not well, it turns out. We've been using Lumiére since God was a kid, and it's not bad at low temperatures, but in our stress test it pulled down temps on par with the worst performers of the bunch—89C, almost hot enough to trigger our CPU's automatic throttling.

Geek Approved?: No

Noctua NT-H1, $10 / 1.4ml tube

Noctua's NT-H1 is a thick electrically non-conductive composite material that ships with the company's CPU coolers and can also be bought separately. Noctua recommends dropping a small amount in the center of the heat spreader and allowing the pressure to spread the paste across the interface. Given the tackiness of the compound, that's good advice.

NT-H1 is good stuff. At full burn our processor only averaged 81.25C, and at our processor's idle temps (still far higher than most processors' burn temps) were just 41C.

Geek Approved?: Yes

Arctic Cooling MX-4, $13 / 4g tube

Arctic Cooling—not to be confused with Arctic Silver, which also makes thermal pastes—distributes several thermal pastes in addition to its lineup of CPU and GPU coolers and remote-controlled tugboats (yes, really). MX-4 is a non-metallic carbon-based gray compound that doesn't conduct electricity, and Arctic Cooling says a single application will last up to eight years. It's a bit pricy at $13 per tube, but it does the job well, with burn temperatures of just 81C and idle temps of 41C.

Geek Approved? Yes

Tuniq TX-4, $12 / 1ml tube

Tuniq's TX-4 is gray and tacky and difficult to apply even with the included spreader, which is the size of a credit card. TX-4 is not electrically conductive. Once we did get the paste applied, Tuniq TX-4 performed the best of any thermal paste in our roundup, and was the only TIM with a sub-80C score—though at 79.5C, that's within the margin of error for our test. It's quite expensive for the tiny amount you get per tube, so you may be just as well off with some of the less expensive pastes in the roundup, but TX-4 has top-notch performance and earns our recommendation.

Geek Approved?: Yes

ZeroTherm ZT-100, $10 / 4g tube

ZeroTherm ZT-100 is gray, silicone-based, and easy to spread. It also comes with a finger cot, so when you spread a thin layer of it on your CPU (as per ZeroTherm installation instructions) you don't have thermal paste on your fingertip for the rest of the day. With burn temps of 81.5C and idle temps of 41C on our test configuration, it earns our solid recommendation.

Geek Approved?: Yes

Prolimatech PK-1, $13 / 5g tube

Prolimatech has a hard-won reputation as a maker of excellent, if massive, CPU coolers. It also makes PK-1, an aluminum-based thermal paste with bits of zinc oxide in it. PK-1 is gray and pretty easy to spread despite its almost claylike consistency, and doesn't conduct electricity. It's also one of the best thermal pastes we've tested, with burn temperatures under 81C and idles just over 41C. It's cheaper than a lot of the other premium pastes, too—$13 gets you a whole 5g tube, or you can grab a 1g pouch from NewEgg for $3.50.

Geek Approved?: Yes

Rosewill RCX-TC090 Pro, $6 / 20g bottle

Rosewill's thermal grease is cheap and easy to apply, thanks to its glorified nail-polish bottle and brush applicator, but its performance is strictly middle-of-the-road, with a burn average of 85.5C. Most of its 20g weight is the glass bottle.

Geek Approved?: No

Xigmatek PTI-G3606, $8 / 3g tube

Xigmatek's memorably named PTI-G3606 is a silicon-based  electrically non-conductive thermal grease. It's very easy to apply a thin layer to the CPU with the included plastic spreader. In our tests it performed slightly better than the Rosewill RCX-TC090PRO, with burn temps of 84.5C.

Geek Approved?: No

Tuniq TX-2, $8 / 3.5g tube

Tuniq's TX-2 is a light gray thermal paste that's stickier than most of the ones in our roundup. It's not conductive and it's fairly easy to apply. In our tests it was just half a degree Celsius warmer than the TX-4, putting it within the margin of error for the tests and making it one of the best pastes we've tested. It's cheaper than TX-4 and you get more in the tube, so we'd actually recommend TX-2 over TX-4 for the cheapskates.

Geek Approved?: Yes

Arctic Silver 5, $13 / 3.5g tube

The gold standard for high-performance thermal pastes, Arctic Silver 5 was our odds-on favorite to win this roundup. Arctic Silver 5 consists of silver particles in a paste with ceramic particles, zinc oxide, aluminum oxide, and more, to maximize thermal contact. Arctic Silver 5 is slightly tacky, but easy enough to spread. We tested it by applying a small dollop of paste to the center of the CPU and spreading it with a spreader, as is our custom for thermal pastes. Unlike most of the pastes in our roundup, Arctic Silver 5 has a recommended 200-hour burn-in period before it's supposed to reach maximum efficiency, but who has that kind of time?

Even without the 200 hours of burn-in, Arctic Silver 5 did well, reducing the CPU temperature at full load to 82.5C. It's not the best TIM in our roundup—at least not before the 200-hour burn in period—but it's good right off the bat.

Geek Approved?: Yes

Arctic Silver Alumina, $6 / 1.75g tube

Alumina is Arctic Silver's "Premium Ceramic Polysynthetic Compound," and it looks a lot like the Arctic Silver Lumiére OEM Testing Compound we've been using for years in the lab. It's white, spreads easily, and requires no burn-in time. It performed better than the Lumiére, with burn temperatures around 85.5C—decent, but not high enough to earn an "Approved" rating in this roundup.

Geek Approved?: No

Shin-Etsu MicroSI X23-7783D, $4 / .5g tube

Shin-Etsu X23-7783D is justly renowned in the cooling world. This gray silicone thermal paste is thicker than most and doesn't spread easily, so we used the dot-in-the-center method to apply it to our cooler. Once installed, the X23-7783D enabled CPU temps of just 80.25C average at full burn and 40C at idle. There's a reason many OEMs pre-apply it to their CPU coolers.

Geek Approved?: Yes

BioStar TC-DIAMOND Nano Diamond Thermal Compound, $17 / 1.5g tube

Nano diamonds, you say? We'll take eight! Biostar Nano Diamond Thermal Compound is only 10 percent diamond particle; the rest is silicone compounds (50 percent), carbon compounds (20 percent) and metal oxides (20 percent). It's electrically non-conductive and easy to apply with the included plastic spreader, but its performance in our test bed wasn't impressive—89C at burn and 43C idle temperatures.

Geek Approved?: No

Zalman ZM-STG1, $15, 3.5g bottle

Zalman ZM-STG1 is another thermal grease in a tiny bottle with a brush applicator. The bottle is significantly smaller than the one Rosewill's grease comes in, and the grease is thinner. We applied the ZM-STG1 with the brush as per instructions several times, but met with the same disappointing performance each time—over 89C at full burn and 43C at idle, just like the BioStar Nano Diamond paste.

Geek Approved?: No

Xigmatek PTI-G4512, $10 / 4g tube

Xigmatek's PTI-G4512 is a light gray silicone-based thermal paste that's easy to apply with the included spreader. It's non-conductive and non-corrosive. It performs better than the other Xigmatek TIM, PTI-G3606, with burn temperatures just over 81C and great idle temps at just 40C. The PTI-G4512 is pretty cost-effective, too; a 4g tube is just $10—not quite as cheap as Arctic Cooling MX-2, but close.

Geek Approved?: Yes

Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound, $9 / 4g tube

The predecessor to Arctic Cooling's MX-4 is slightly lighter and slightly thinner than the newer compound, but is also non-metallic and electrically non-conductive. Its performance was almost indistinguishable from MX-4—well within the margin of error.  It's also a few bucks cheaper, so if you're especially budget-conscious, go for the older but cheaper compound.

Geek Approved?: Yes

Cooler Master ThermalFusion 400, $12 / 4g tube

Sound familiar? Cooler Master's ThermalFusion 400 is a gray, electrically non-conductive thermal paste that spreads quite easily with the included plastic spreader. It cooled our stress-tested CPU to 81.75C at full burn and 41C at idle—good enough to earn it our recommendation. It's not exactly cheap—MX-2, TX-2, and ZT-100 all give slightly better value for money—but at this point we're talking a few dollars and a few degrees Celsius.

Geek Approved?: Yes

Conclusion

On an idling overclocked processor or a stock-clocked CPU, the differences between thermal pastes is minimal—we saw a spread of less than 4C between the best and worst thermal pastes in our roundup. At high temperatures—and we should reiterate that we overclocked the processor to 3.9GHz and used a custom thermal-stress utility to put an enormous thermal load on the CPU—we saw a spread of over 12C. Margin of error is plus or minus 2C to allow for ambient air temperature, which ranged from 23.8C to 25.4C throughout the testing procedure.

Of the seventeen thermal pastes in this roundup, Tuniq's TX-4 scored the highest. Its burn temperature was 3C cooler than Arctic Silver 5's. Eleven pastes earn our Geek Tested & Approved badge: Tuniq TX-4 and TX-2, Shin-Etsu MicroSI X23-7783D, Prolimatek PK-1, Arctic Cooling MX-4 and MX-2, Noctual NT-H1, Xigmatek PTI-G4512, ZeroTherm ZT-100, Cooler Master ThermalFusion 400, and good old Arctic Silver 5. We'd give pride of place to Tuniq's TX-2, Arctic Cooling's MX-2, and Prolimatech's PK-1, because they're slightly cheaper than some of the other premiere thermal interface materials.

So does thermal paste matter? Yes—there's a big difference between thermal pastes when running a CPU at full burn. There's a big difference between a thermal interface material that's good for overclocking and those that aren't, but with eleven great thermal pastes to choose from, you can't go wrong with one of them.

One final note: The true hero of this story is Arctic Silver's ArctiClean two-step thermal remover & surface purifier. It's nontoxic, smells like oranges, and cuts through the toughest thermal interface with ease. We've used it in the lab for years and it's a lifesaver any time we need to remove thermal paste from a CPU or heatsink. We've yet to meet a thermal interface material it didn't work on.

Thermal Results
Idle Temp (C) Burn Temp (C) Geek Approved?

Arctic Silver Lumiére
(zero-point)

 43.75 89 NO
Noctua NT-H1 41 81.25 YES
Arctic Cooling MX-4 41 81 YES
Tuniq TX-4 40* 79.5* YES
ZeroTherm ZT-100 41 81.5 YES
Prolimatech PK-1 41.25 80.5 YES
Rosewill RCX-TC090 Pro 41.75 85.5 NO
Xigmatek PTI-G3606 42.25 84.5 NO
Tuniq TX-2 41 80 YES
Arctic Silver 5 41.5 82.5 YES
Arctic Silver Alumina 42.75 85.5 NO
Shin-Etsu MicroSI X23-7783D 40* 80.25 YES
BioStar Nano Diamond 43.25 89 NO
Zalman ZMSTG1 43.25 89.25 NO
Xigmatek PTI-G4512 40* 81.25 YES
Arctic Cooling MX-2 40.75 81 YES
Cooler Master ThermalFusion 400 41 81.75 YES

Asterisk (*) denotes best score. All tests performed on an overclocked Core i7-975 @ 3.9GHz (burn) and 2.1GHz (idle) on an Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard with 6GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3, a Radeon HD 5850, and 850W Antec TruePower PSU. The CPU cooler used was a Thermaltake Frio OCK with its fans set to maximum speed. Temperatures recorded after 1 hour at idle and after 3 hours of full-burn testing using Intel's internal Nehalem stress-testing utility. We use HWMonitor to determine core temperatures and TMonitor to keep an eye on clock speeds.

Shogun Bros. Unveil Sniper-Friendly Ballista MK-1 Gaming Mouse

Posted: 19 Jan 2012 11:35 AM PST

Gamers already have a ton of options when it comes to gaming mice -- thanks to Shogun Bros., that number just hit a ton plus one. The company claims that its newly unveiled (but not yet available) Ballista MK-1 Gaming Mouse is tailor-made to make the lives of online campers -- pardon me, online "snipers" -- more cushy than ever before with a bevy of sharpshooter-friendly features.

According to Shogun Bros.' press release, the mouse rocks 5,700 DPI and 11,570 fps movement tracking -- when you make a movement, the mouse should definitely register it. The DPI of the X and Y axis are totally separate and open to individual tweaking. The Ballista MK-1 packs in presets with 20 different DPI settings for different gaming types, there's 11 macro buttons, and a side button that allows gamers to drop into a Speed Shot mode. (Hey, that doesn't sound very sniper-like!)

No word on pricing, but the mouse will be available in the second quarter.

FBI Arrests Seven Analysts for Insider Trading on Dell, Nvidia Stock

Posted: 19 Jan 2012 11:35 AM PST

Seven men connected by friendship or business association were arrested this week for allegedly participating in insider trading, the Federal Bureau (FBI) of Investigation announced in a candid press release. These latest arrests are the most recent developments in "Operation Perfect Hedge," the FBI's systematic targeting of insider trading in the hedge fund industry that began more than four years ago.

According to the FBI's statement, the seven men "knew ahead of time which way the stock in Dell or Nvidia would move once quarterly earnings figures were officially announced. When you have the answer sheet beforehand, it's pretty hard not to ace the test. But cheating on the test and getting away with cheating on the test are two different things."

The FBI is receiving assistance in its investigation from Sandeep Goyal, a junior research analyst at the Manhattan office of Neuberger Berman, an investment management firm, who has pleaded guilty to committing securities fraud. Analysts Jesse Tortora and Spyridon Adondaki also pleaded guilty and each face a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.

"Goyal had the direct connection to the Dell Insider," the FBI said. "Goyal passed along Dell quarterly earnings information to Tortora and defendant Todd Newman at Hedge Fund A. In compensation for this, Tortora and Newman arranged to pay Goyal a total of $175,000 in 2008 and early 2009, using 'soft dollars' and an intermediary to conceal the deal. Hedge Fund A reaped $3.8 million in illegal profits from advance knowledge of positive Dell news for the first quarter of fiscal year 2008 and negative news for the second quarter."

The insider trading scheme runs much deeper than that and includes additional hedge funds, but short and to the point, these guys (allegedly) did the crime and now stand to do some serious time.

Acer Betting Big on Ultrabooks in 2012

Posted: 19 Jan 2012 11:10 AM PST

Will this be the year of the Ultrabook? It's certainly looking that way so far. Ultrabooks debuted at the tail end of 2011 and were a predominant theme at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. Whether manufacturers can keep the momentum going remains to be seen, but the expectations are high, particularly at Acer.

Acer chairman JT Wang expects Ultrabooks to account for no less than a quarter of his company's notebook shipments this year, and perhaps as much as 35 percent, DigiTimes reports. If Acer attacks the segment with the same ferocity that it did netbooks, there's every reason to believe JT Wang's prediction will come true.

Sales of Acer's Aspire S3 Ultrabook totaled around 250,000 to 300,000 units in the first quarter after launch. In the second quarter of 2012, Acer expects to launch its second wave of Ultrabooks, along with even more models in Q3.

At the same time all this is happening, Acer is expecting its notebook shipments to drop 10-15 percent sequentially in the first quarter, but to pick up as the year goes on and ultimately post a 10 percent year-on-year growth rate.

Image Credit: Acer

SOPA Protests: Results And Aftermath

Posted: 19 Jan 2012 11:10 AM PST

Yesterday's SOPA/PIPA protests were unprecedented -- for the first time, the Internet as a whole banded together, users and websites alike, and we flexed our collective muscles to tell the government (as Craigslist put it), "KEEP THOSE CLAMMY HANDS OFF THE INTERNET." In typical Washington fashion, several Senators and Congressional Representatives quickly changed their minds about the bills. But just how effective was all the e-complaining? Since the effort was so widespread, nailing down exact numbers is difficult, but let's take a peek at the ones we managed to dredge up.

First up, some anecdotal information: the websites of various Senators received so much Web traffic yesterday that they kept going offline under the strain.

  • Wikipedia says that over 162 million people saw its anti-censorship message yesterday. In sheer, numerical terms, that's over half the population of the U.S., or as our very own Paul Lilly puts it, more than the combined population of both Iceland and Estonia.
  • Google bragged that more than 7 million people signed its anti-SOPA/PIPA petition yesterday. That's not shabby; according to the infographic the search giant posted, prior to the protests only 3 million-plus folks had signed the various petitions floating around the web.
  • Mozilla's blacked-out start page and social media inititatives reached 40 million people, which resulted in over 360,000 emails sent to Congress.
  • The White House released a statement saying that 103,785 people had signed petitions asking President Obama to veto SOPA and the E-PARASITE (PIPA's other name) acts. Around 50k people signed each.
  • According to BlackoutSOPA.org, 80,987 people changed their Twitter and Facebook pics to protest the acts.
  • The Anti-SOPA page on Facebook snarfed down 78,273 Likes. Wikipedia also notes that the various anti-SOPA hashtags trended like crazy yesterday, and SOPA received over a quarter-million Tweets per hour yesterday.
  • The L.A. Times reports that people sent over 350,000 emails to their representatives through FightForTheFuture, the nonprofit behind AmericanCensorship.org and SOPAStrike.com. Additionally, a full 75,000 sites registered with the group to help protest the two bills. Another 1,458,000 signed a petition at Avaaz.org.

We could keep going, but you get the point.

Yeah, but did all the e-bitching  actually accomplish anything?

Yup! We told you yesterday that Representatives and Senators were already changing their positions on SOPA/PIPA, and the numbers only increased throughout the day. OpenCongress reports that 34 Senators are now on record as being opposed to PIPA, a massive jump over previous numbers.

After a quick Google search, here are the names of some representatives who leaped into the anti-SOPA/PIPA camp yesterday: Lee Terry (R-Neb.), Ben Quayle (R-Arizona), Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), John Boozman (R-Arkansas), Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Tim Holden (D-Pennsylvania), and former heavy-duty supporter and Hollywood darling Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Note that some of them were previously undecided about the bills. Other Senators failed to withdraw support, but instead called for a delay in PIPA's vote to give them time to further evaluate and adjust the bill.

CNET's Elinor Mills and the always-excellent Declan McCullagh covered the political fallout from the protests. Head over there for reactions from various Congressmen/women.

So, SOPA/PIPA are dead, right?

As Wikipedia puts it, "Not at all. SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith stated that the House of Representatives will push the bill forward in February. Senate sponsor Patrick Leahy still plans for a PIPA vote on January 24."

Don't lose yesterday's momentum! Keep bugging your representatives and let them know you oppose SOPA/PIPA, even if you've already done so. Phone calls have the most impact -- give them a jingle if you've only sent them a letter or signed an e-petition. Just keep the pressure going!

Contact your House Representative

Contact your Senator

Foxconn Chairman Likens Employees To Animals, Solicits Advice From Zoo Keeper

Posted: 19 Jan 2012 10:39 AM PST

By all accounts working for Foxconn -- the China-based company that does the actual manufacturing of a lot of consumer electronics, including the Xbox 360 and the various iProducts -- is a horrible drag. Not only is there the threat of massive explosions, but the combination of long hours and low pay have led to a rash of suicides amongst its workers, highlighted by the threat of a mass suicide last week. Why aren't things getting better? The chairman of Foxconn's parent company may have dropped a hint when he likened his workers to animals.

ReadWriteWeb pointed us towards the Want China Times, who reports Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou as saying at a year-end party: "Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million worldwide and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache." He then quipped that he wanted to hit up the director of the Taipei Zoo for tips on how to handle the herd.

What, that isn't offensive enough for you? It gets better/worse: Gou actually tapped Zoo director Chin Shih-chien to give a presentation at Hon Hai's annual review. The WCT says Shih-chien "(shared) his experience with the audience on how to manage different animals according to their individual temperaments" while Gou continued to crack jokes about his work force.

McAffe Promises to Patch Spammy Vulnerability in SasS Total Protection

Posted: 19 Jan 2012 10:35 AM PST

Two security issues have been identified in McAfee's SaaS Total Protection anti-malware software suite, one of which could allow an attacker to misuse an ActiveX control to execute code and turn affected PCs into spam servers. The other vulnerability involves a misuse of McAfee's "rumor" technology to allow an attacker to use an affected machine as an "open relay," which could also be used to send spam. Fixes for both are coming.

"This week, there has been public interest regarding some issues disclosed in McAfee products. McAfee treats security issues in our products very seriously, and so our Product Security team will explain the details around these issues," McAfee said in a blog post. "They do not affect all McAfee products, both are in a single product: SaaS for Total Protection, our hosted anti-malware service. We have mitigating factors already in place that reduce risk, and a patch is coming to remediate any additional risk to our customers."

McAfee said it plans to roll out the patch later today after it's finished testing it, and that customers will receive the update automatically.

Credit British art firm Kaamar Limited for exposing the vulnerabilities in a blog post of its own after noticing that it's emails were being blocked and blacklisted.

iFixIt Seeks Out Repair Gurus from Around the World, Profiles Them on New Website

Posted: 19 Jan 2012 10:00 AM PST

We'd love it if you spent the bulk of your online time right here on MaximumPC.com, and we're constantly working hard to deliver awesome online content to keep you coming back. But hey, the Web is big -- really big -- and there are some worthwhile destinations out there. One of our favorites is iFixIt.com, a site dedicated to DIY electronics repair enthusiasts, and these guys aren't afraid to crack open the latest gear to see what makes 'em tick. We dig that kind of mindset. So when our friends at iFixIt told us they were launching a new website, they had our full attention.

"This week, we're launching iFixit.org to tell the story of repair. We are going to profile repair gurus from around the world, investigate the motivations of people who fix things, and consider the larger ethical and philosophical issues surrounding repair. It's going to be a blast, and we look forward to bringing you along on the journey," iFixIt stated in an email.

iFixIt's founder Kyle Wiens has been hopping around the globe visiting small repair shops in developing countries, chronicling his travels along the way. Some of what he's seen will end up on the new site.

"We will also be posting updates about Fixers, a short documentary Kyle and his team of journalists have been developing about electronics repair technicians in cities such as Nairobi, Delhi, and Cairo," iFixIt says. "Currently in post-production, Fixers will be released later this year. iFixit.org will host progress reports, behind-the-scenes goodies, and previously unreleased footage."

Being a new site, there's not a ton of content up yet, but like a stack of old electronics, it's starting to pile up. There are posts about about a water pump repair shop in Kenya, finding a good e-waste recycler, Egypt's master car mechanic, and a few other tidbits. You can dive in here.

Image Credit: iFixIt

SSDNow V+200 SSDs Command a King's Ransom, Kingston Calls Them "Inexpensive"

Posted: 19 Jan 2012 09:38 AM PST

A high performing solid state drive at a reasonable price is something every enthusiast wants, but they're harder to find than a needle in a mountain of hay. Kingston believes it's found that balance with its new SSDNow V+200 line. Featuring a SATA 6Gbps interface and SandForce's SF-2281 controller technology, the SSDNow V+200 offers some serious speed for "performance minded yet cost-conscious business or home users," Kingston says.

The SSDNow V+200 reads data sequentially at up to 535MB/s and writes sequentially at up to 480MB/s. For the security minded folk, the new series boasts self-encrypting drive technology. But while Kingston pegs these new drives as being "an inexpensive yet powerful upgrade," it's all relative. Here's how the price structure breaks down:

  • 60GB: $140 standalone, $156 upgrade bundle
  • 90GB: $196 standalone, $211 upgrade bundle
  • 120GB: $245 standalone, $260 upgrade bundle
  • 240GB: $479 standalone, $494 upgrade bundle
  • 480GB: $970 standalone, $985 upgrade bundle

The upgrade bundle includes cables, brackets, cloning software, and an HDD enclosure so you can mount the 2.5-inch SSDs into 3.5-inch drive bays. With or without, these might be a tough sell to home consumers. OCZ's Vertex 3, for example, sells for less at each capacity, though it's not offered in 480GB capacity. Corsair's Force Series 3 is, and it sells for around $680 street for 480GB, around $300 less than Kingston's SSDNow V+200.

Image Credit: Kingston
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