| How To – December 2012 (Part 1) : Install Windows 8 from a USB Drive |
| If you shun OVOs, love speedier installations, have a digital download of Windows 8 or just plain don’t have an optical drive, then it’s going to be a USB-based installation for you. And that’s just fine; it’s a great quick way to get an operating system onto your hard drive. |
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| Transcend SSD320 128GB – Excellent Mainstream SSD |
| For anyone relying on conventional drive technology to boot their system and launch their applications, the future is SSD. Until recently these devices were so expensive that only those prepared to pay for the best could use them. |
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| WD 1TB My Net N900 Central |
| WD has been involved in the NAS market for a good few years selling its various Book products. Recently, WD launched its range of Red hard drives that are intended for installation in diskless NAS boxes from the likes of Synology so you can buy a WD NAS or you can use WD hardware in another company's NAS. |
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| Zalman Z9-U3 – Cheap Mid-Tower Chassis |
| The case’s design isn’t all that different from the company’s previously released Z9 chassis. Changes include the removal of the case’s grilled side in favor of an acrylic window and the happy inclusion of USB 3.0 connectivity on the chassis’s front two ports, with internal headers. |
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| iBuyPower CZ-17 - The Incredible Hulk |
| AestheticalLy, the CZ-17 Looks eerily similar to our MSI GT60 zero-point Laptop (reviewed December 20121 except super-sized with a 17.3-inch display. The 1920x1080, LED-backlit monitor features a nice matte finish, which nicely diminishes glare. |
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| Netgear ReadyNAS Duo v2 Diskless |
| The Netgear ReadyNAS Duo v2 is a diskless NAS that can accommodate two 3.5" desktop SATA drives (that's the Duo part of the name) and furthermore this is the second version of the Duo, hence the v2 suffix. |
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| SSD Shakedown: Corsair Neutron GTX 480GB vs. Intel 335 Series SSD 240GB |
| With Intel’s new budget-oriented 335 Series SSO, that tax is gone, as this drive is priced right below $200, the current sweet spot for 240/256GB SSOs. It still has the same SandForce SF-2281 controller and the same Intel reliability, but includes new smaller-die 2Onm MLC NAND flash. The smaller flash marks the industry’s foray into the 2Onm era, and Intel is the first manufacturer to take us there. |
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| Acer Aspire S3-391 Ultrabook - Cheap Ultrabook With Attractive Features |
| The term 'ultrabook' is a doubled-edged definition, because it's almost as much about what might be missing from a portable computer as it is about what's included. Being one of these devices, the Acer Aspire is a curious combination of conflicting objectives: to be slim and transportable, yet powerful and well featured. |
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| Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime |
| Asus enjoyed much praise for the original incarnation of the Eee Pad Transformer and it was certainly an unusual bit of kit that amalgamated the best bits of both a tablet and a laptop. Having said that, it wasn’t one of the most desirable of gadgets to look at even if it delivered the goods on the performance front. |
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| Digital Storm Bolt - The PC Is Going Small |
| Digital Storm doesn’t just settle for the 3770K’s stock 3.5GHz, either. The company pushed the Ivy Bridge processor to a stable 4.4GHz. That’s about 200MHz faster than Falcon Northwest’s similarly spec’d Tiki. |
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| Evga GTX 690 - Hail To The King |
| When Nvidia launched the GTX 680 back in May, it handily cleaned the AMO HO 7970’s clock, but that wasn’t enough for Nvidia (or us, to be honest). So Nvidia did what any rational power-hungry company would do, and married two GK1O4 GPUs to a single PCB, connected them with a 48-lane PLX PCIe 3.0 bridge chip, and dubbed it the GTX 690. |
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| Iomega 1TB EZ Media & Backup Centre |
| Full marks to Iomega for spelling out its plans and intentions when it named the EZ Media & Backup Centre. There's no mistaking the intended market for this drive, and you have every right to expect that it will live up to the EZ tag and make your life as easy as possible. |
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| Asus ET2300 All-in-One PC - Mostly Evolutionary |
| Like the A720, the E2300 tucks all its components inside the base of its display; but for whatever reason, Asus needed more room than Lenovo. The E2300s base is thin enough at the front, but it slopes up to about 1.5 inches high in the back. Lenovo’sA720 is less than an inch thick all around. |
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| Burn-In Your CPU With Linux (Part 3) |
| A field closely related to burn-in tools is benchmarking. It might not have the same aim, but it creates the same results - putting your hardware through hell. The main difference is that benchmarks need to be timed for the results to make any sense, so you wouldn't keep them running for days on end. |
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| Burn-In Your CPU With Linux (Part 2) |
| The perennial command for monitoring a Linux system is called 'top'. There isn't a Linux distribution, or even a UNIX installation, that won't display a dynamic process list, along with the distinctively cryptic usage table, when you type this command. |
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| Burn-In Your CPU With Linux (Part 1) |
| If there's one thing Linux is good at, it's stretching hardware to its limits. Whether that's a diminutive ARM CPU sprinting like a caffeinated hamster within a Raspberry Pi, or the behemoth-sized computing grid that spreads its fronds across Europe as it crunches through the petabytes of data produced by the Large Hadron Collider; Linux works very hard. |
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| BusyCal 2 - Not A Skeuomorph In Sight |
| It would be unfair to suggest that Apple’s Calendar app divides opinion. In fact, nobody likes it. But convincing alternatives remain scarce. Menu bar tools such as Fantastical (flexibits.com) are a help, but BusyCal is arguably the only fully featured standalone competitor. |
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| Windows Vista : Managing Your Contacts |
| If you need to use your Windows Contacts entries in another program, Vista enables you to export them. Click Export in the taskbar to open the Export Windows Contacts dialog box. Choose either the CSV or vCard file format, and then click Export. If you choose the CSV format, Vista will ask you to specify which fields you want to export. |
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| Samsung 830 Series SSD 256GB - Gives You Wings |
| Samsung claims this drive reads data sequentially at up to 520MB/sec and writes at up to 400MB/sec (on lower capacities, the maximum write speed is lower).A6Gbit/sec SATA III interface is required to get those speeds, and only MacBooks introduced since 2011 have that; earlier models use a slower SATA II interface. |
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| Software Buyers Guide – December 2012 |
| There are two aspects towards this Photoshop plug-in – firstly is the Skin Retouching panel, secondly is manual masking. The latter goes along with plenty of tools supporting to improve the mask as well as prevent other features run out of control. |
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| How To Solve The Limit Of Device Storage |
| All of us have different ways approaching media. Some like to save all on MP3 player, despite that how they won’t be frequently played. Some scatter everything, including photos, music, videos and documents, in a few units, such as PC, laptop, USB drive, SD card and even music player. |
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| Windows 8’s Anatomy (Part 5) |
| You can connect with other PC by Remote Desktop (but you can perform distant connection with a Windows 8 system) and Storage Space allows you to combine disk drives into one “Storage Pool”, functioning like Raid for a better file protection. |
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| Windows 8’s Anatomy (Part 4) |
| Classic wallpaper seems assuring user immediately if you try to catch up with Modern UI, though the absence of old Start menu may panic some users. Set your mind at rest! You will soon get accustomed to executing apps from Start screen or shortcuts lying on wallpaper. |
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| Windows 8’s Anatomy (Part 3) |
| Windows 8 comes with existing apps classified as Media, Social and Search. Most of them look like completed apps which are optimized for previous Windows version we have seen earlier. However, there is room for upgrade and Microsoft did provide regular updates. |
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| Windows 8’s Anatomy (Part 2) |
| In Windows 8, your computer will boot, popping up lock screen which is seen in Windows RT tablet, too. To remove lock screen, you need to slide onto touchscreen or press a key on the board. This will reveal user accounts that have been configured on the device, similar to what you used to see on previous Windows versions. |
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| Windows 8’s Anatomy (Part 1) |
| Windows 8 was released in October 26th when it would become the most installed operating system on new PCs and laptops. Its variant, Winndows RT is also available for tablets among which is Microsoft Surface. |
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| Luna Keyboard - Illuminate Your Workspace |
| Once you are accustomed to back-lit keyboard, returning to normal keyboard which is not illuminated feels backward. Apple introduced back lighting technology with 17in PowerBook G4 in 2003. Then, the manufacturer has retained that feature through MacBook Pro in 2006 brought it on MacBook Air in 2003. |
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| iStorage diskAshur 500GB Review |
| iStorage diskAshur 500GB is a security USB 3.0 hard drive. According to the British provider, this compact model is also the world’s most budget model. It is available for 128bit or 256bit AES-XTS hardware encryption. |
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| Lite-On iHes112-115 - 12x SATA Internal Blu-Ray Combo Drive |
| This is a bulk-buy version of the product thus you won’t get any software included. If you don’t have necessary software, you should take a look at iHES212, provided with a basic version of CybetrLink PowerDVD. Or, you can purchase a packed copy of CyerLink’s playback application. |
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| Organize Windows With Virtual Desktops |
| There’s not much needed to mess Windows desktop up: just open some windows and the space is soon used up. Adding the second desktops can solve the problem but it will be costly plus require more work space. |
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