The tech may be new, but it hasn't helped us very much
Technology certainly has made our lives better in many capacities. Near limitless knowledge and entertainment are at our very finger tips; having said that, however, technology has also made our lives worse in many ways.
Below we have lighted seven heinous devices and touched upon how they have made our lives worse. Know of some other tech gadgets that have made our lives worse? Let us know what they are in the comments below!
Usually when someone sees red, it's not a good thing -- it means they're about to say or do something out of frustration that the recipient probably won't like. But that isn't the case here. Today's top deal will have you seeing Red, and it's a GOOD thing! Why? Because it's for FOUR Western Digital Red NAS 3TB Hard Drives for $400 with free shipping (normally $480). That's 12TB of total storage capacity to replace your NAS device's old drives with, or to fill your barebones NAS box with.
Ever heard of the ErgoDox? It's a mechanical keyboard kit that's available to purchase every so often, and if you're lucky to get one, your reward is an ergonomic plank with mechanical key switches. Well, after you assemble it, that is. And by assemble, we mean there's a fair bit of soldering involved, not just plugging in pieces like Legos. If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, meet ErgoDox EZ, a pre-assembled ErgoDox that's damn near close to meeting its funding goal on Indiegogo.
It comes with Cherry MX Brown key switches by default, though when ordering, you can select from five alternatives if you wish, those being Cherry MX Blue, Red, Black (costs $15 extra), Clear, and Green. You also have a choice in how much keyboard you want -- at present, there still exist openings for the $190 Early Bird Special (plus $30 shipping), which is a fully assembled ErgoDox EZ with blank PBT DCS keycaps and 2-year warranty.
At the $145 "One-handed Pirate" tier (plus $30 shipping), you'll get half the keyboard, either the right or left (it's up to you), also fully assembled with 2-year warranty.
Once the Early Bird Special runs dry, it will cost $225 through Indiegogo for a full-size plank, which again requires $30 shipping, or $225 if you want printed key caps.
There's a good chance this will get funded - less than $4,000 is needed to meet the $50,000 goal, with 15 days left for the crowdfunding effort. If you'd like to participate or just learn more, go here.
Want to add some functional bling to your big size computer case? Thermaltake today formally announced the Commander FT, purportedly the world's largest 5.5-inch touch screen fan controller. The Commander FT was first shown off at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas a few months ago, and now it gets an official launch alongside the company's Riing LED Radiator Fan Series.
You'll need a free 5.25-inch drive bay to install the Commander FT. It supports up to five independent fans, with 10W available on each channel. If you want to control each fan individually, simply tap from 1 to 5 on the central fan display and make any desired adjustments using the plus and minus icons, or using the on-screen slider. Any settings you make while in manual mode will be remembered, even after rebooting.
In addition to a Manual mode, you can also select Auto to let the fan controller adjust fans based on thermal sensor temperature readings, Performance for best cooling performance, and Silent, which adjusts all fans to their lowest speed.
No word yet on when the Commander FT will be available or for how much.
The search wars are an ongoing thing with plenty of advertising dollars at stake, and if you snooze, well, you lose out on the loot. To keep up with the competition -- namely, Google, the search engine that's also a verb -- Microsoft paid special attention to Bing's image search functionality and added some new features, including an online shopping feature that's currently in beta.
When you look up a product image in Bing, it will show you where you can buy what you're looking at. Expect some hiccups since it's in beta, but for now, Microsoft says it's focusing on more precisely detecting pages where you can purchase a product, adding more information for each source, and other experience improvements.
We tried to give it a test run and were met with limited success. Using the example Microsoft provided in its blog post, we were able to look up Coleman camping tents and see nine different places to buy one online when scrolling down. But when we looked up a GoPro camera and clicked on the picture, no shopping links showed up. That is, until we were more specific -- looking up a GoPro Hero 4 netted better results with links to Best Buy, B&H Photo, Ebay, and half a dozen lesser known sites.
Scrolling is the key to the enhanced image search. In addition to buy links, you'll find related searches based on the image, Pinterest collections, more sizes of the image from across the web, and pages with the image where you might be able to obtain more information.
Looking for a high end small form factor (SFF) system that uses the latest parts? If so, you may be interested in what Maingear has to offer. Maingear unveiled what it claims is the world's first lineup of high-performance compact mini ITX gaming rigs built around Intel's X99 chipset and Core i7 Extreme Edition (14nm Broadwell) processors, which include the Torq, Potenza, and Drift systems.
You have to shell out for the Super Stock edition of each model. Pricing starts at $2,999 for the Torq Super Stock, $1,899 for the Potenza Super Stock, and $2,399 for the Drift Super Stock, the latter of which hasn't been released yet but is availble for pre-order with an estimated ship date of May 1, 2015.
Looking at the least expensive model, the Potenza Super Stock, a baseline configuration consists of an ASRock X99E-ITX motherboard, Intel Core i7 5820K processor, Maingear Epic 120 Supercooler, 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-2666 RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 graphics card, 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD (7200 RPM), 8X slot-loading DVD burner, integrated 802.11n Wi-Fi, Silverstone 450W PSU, and Windows 8.1 in 64-bit form.
The Torq Super Stock offers a similar configuration but with a different case and cooling scheme, AMD Radeon R9 290 graphics card, 1TB Seagate SSHD hybrid drive, no optical drive, and 750W Evga Supernova PSU.
As for the Drift, that's Maingear's PC gaming console. The default config is also similar to the Potenza Stock, but with a faster graphics card (Nvidia GeForce GTX 970), and a 250GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD + 500GB Seagate Barracuda HDD (7200 RPM).
You can configure any of these news systems today by going here.
All the comfort without the soldering
Go big or go home
Online shop from Bing's image search
When Broadwell and mini ITX converge
