Going all out with its new naming system,
WD Red will be one of Western Digital's products to start using colour as its
name. The rest of WD's series will also bears other colours like Green, Black
and Blue. The Red series is targeted at small office and home office (SOHO) NAS
users. Based on the specs alone, it is clear that WD wants the Red range to
provide low cost drives for use in NAS environments. Let's put this to a spin.
New
stuff
Featuring an all new technology called 3D
Active Balancing, this helps eliminate vibration by tuning the drive to boost
the performance. As for NAS support, WD has bundled NASware together with its
WD Red, which features a slew of technologies that is aimed at keeping the
drive from dropping off a RAID array. This is achieved through extended error
recovery. These features also work to offer improved power performance.
Steady
transfers
We used the QNAP TS-412 4-bay NAS box to
test a pair of WD Red 3TB hard disks. The plan is to set up both 3TB Reds on a
RAID 0 (striped) and RAID 1 (mirrored) configuration. We then decided to upload
around 4GB of pictures, which is sitting in one of our servers, into the WD Red
that had been designated RAID 0. In terms of performance, we clocked in a
sequential read performance of 123.5MB per second and a sequential write
performance of 113.7MB per second. The average transfer speed for this 4GB
package over a wired connection is less than 10 minutes and it took even less
time RAID 0. As for RAID 1, the read/write speeds had slightly lower read/write
times but they are not too significant in differences.
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Info
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Dimensions: 147 x 101.6 x 25.4mm
·
Type: Internal
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Interface: SATA 6 Gb/s
·
Cache: 64MB
·
Features: NAS ready, WD NASWare, RAID array
support
Verdict
·
High speed storage at its finest
·
Value: 9/10
·
Features: 9/10
·
Performance: 9/10
·
Design: 9/10
·
Usability: 9/10
·
Score: 9.0/10
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DOSS ASIMOM DS-1042 - Does not compute
Traditionally, tiny speakers are a waste of
time and money, especially when you can have a decent pair of earphones for
about the same price. That's why the oddly named ASIMOM DS-1042 had given us
such a pleasant surprise.
The barrel
It is not very impressive on the outside
since the entire chassis is just a round cylinder. Honestly, it isn't the most
striking shape to use as a speaker design. It does, however, have a very small
footprint and can sit by itself on your desk. It can be a cute desk accessory
if nothing else.
Making music
Even if the design of the ASIMOM is rather
mundane, it makes up for it by having the best sound quality that we've heard
in a long time for a tiny speaker unit. The sound performance is very solid and
so unlike the usual hollow ringing that's endemic to these kinds of products.
Even the bass provides a table rumbling thump when require. Admittedly, it's
not the best of audio quality, but it does manage to pass at the top of its
class.
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Info
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Price: $36
·
Dimension: 57 x 60 mm
·
Power: 3W
·
Connectivity: Bluetooth, headphone jack
Verdict
·
Not a bad choice for a Bluetooth speaker
·
Value: 8/10
·
Features: 6/10
·
Performance: 7/10
·
Design: 6/10
·
Usability: 8/10
·
Score: 7.0/10
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iRig Mic Cast - Crystal Clear Recording
The iPhone can be considered a very good
voice recorder, thus the plethora of apps you can download from the Apple
store. Even so, the built in microphone can only do so much and for other
enhancements you will need a more professional microphone to capture interviews
and such in better clarity. IK Multimedia is a name well known in the music
industry with their innovative products for computers and mobile. Today we have
their most compact product in their list, the iRig Mic Cast.
Big box
When you get the box, it is a bit deceiving
as the box is bigger than the product itself. This is because the iRig comes
with a stand for you to prop up your iPhone when you are using it. Operating it
is very easy - download the accompanying app, plug the mic into your headphone
jack, run the app and have fun!
Better app
The accompanying app, called the iRig
Recorder, is a simple looking app but comes with a wealth of settings you can
tinker around. You can even export whatever you recorded to emails, iTunes,
WiFi, FTP or SoundCloud. Using the iRig, all of our interviews were truly free
of background noise. Indeed, it is totally clear for us to use for
transcribing. We like this product!
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Info
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Price: $64
·
Microphones: Dual omnidirectional
·
Mode: low / high sensitivity
·
Plug: 3.5 mm
Verdict
·
A great companion for interviews
·
Value: 8/10
·
Features: 8/10
·
Performance: 8/10
·
Design: 8/10
·
Usability: 8/10
·
Score: 8.0/10
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TITAN - Rockin’ Shootin’ Robots
A decade ago, there had been a game called
as Mechwarrior 3050, which had players driving a giant robot around to shoot at
things. Today, we have Titan, a game that runs in a similar vein. Players take
control of a remote drone on a damaged spaceship and must run around destroying
other robots for some reason or another. Things are a little fuzzy and all you
really need to know is who to point your guns at.
Somehow there is a feeling that this game
would be better with some proper controls since you are expected to drive the
killing machine around while aiming the torso guns at enemies. The one screen
simulated joysticks just don't provide the same satisfaction or level of
finesse that comes with a physical interface. That being said, it's still good
enough that you won't be dodging into enemy fire too often.
Custom tiles maker - Custom things are good
This is one app that you assuredly will not
find on any other platform, for obvious reasons. It also fixes one common gripe
about Windows Phone: the lack of backgrounds (something I will never
understand).
The app lets users turn pictures into tiles
on the phone, and assign them to different functions. It's more like making
shortcuts with snazzy icons. There is also the option to break up a picture
into multiple tiles, to create a kind of mosaic picture of shortcuts. It's
really quite a novel idea and anyone who has played around with Facebooks cover
image will definitely find a way to be creative.
Sadly, the free version doesn't allow for
this option and creativity will have to pay the price. Expect to shell out RM3
on the Marketplace for the advance options.
ZAGAT - Hunger Begone
Frequent travellers or food enthusiast will
have a reason to go out again because the Zagat app offers locations of local
delicacies while not skimping on any of the restaurants out there. The app
gives users a chance to explore as it offers a multitude of options with the
long list of restaurants it has available.
The app will give users a year's worth of
ratings and reviews for every Zagat-rated restaurant in 45 cities. This is way
better than spending money to get a printed guide that covers just one city. Or
risk spending more for a list of the top-rated restaurants.
The GPS-powered app will save travellers'
time in filtering out all the good, bad and ugly in terms of restaurant picking.
Furthermore, there is also the option to book a reservation at the selected
restaurant if users need to eat there. Zagat is definitely the stomach's best
friend.
My backup - Got your back
There are times when users have no choice
but to factory reset their phone. It causes great pain to say goodbye to all
the wonderful apps and the information inside. Thankfully there is an app to
backup all of these and there is no need to root the Android smartphone. Aside
from all the apps, My Backup will also save photos, contacts, call log, texts
messages, calendar, system Settings, home screens (including shortcut
positions), alarms, music playlists, and more. It is a whole suite!
My Backup takes things a step further by
allowing users to save the backups not only on the microSD card or internal
storage, but also on an online server that is wholly dedicated for such
purposes. This is one of the best offers available as using the online server
will be the best option for protection. The reason is if one loses the device,
there is still access to files for restoring to the new device.
RerWare gives users 100MB for free with the
option of purchasing 250MB for US$10 per year or 1GB for US$20 per year. It is
not a lot to pay for something that offers so much. Last but not least, users
can always schedule automatic daily or weekly backups instead of doing it all
the time. It is always great news to know that this app got the users' back.
