Friday News (20th of December 2002)

Annoying mouse cord? I know everyone knows how it feels when you are fragging your buddies behind and suddenly the cord gets stuck and he kills you!!! Well should you spend $$$ on bying a cordless and throw your favorite mouse away? No there is products to make the cord mice really good. One of them is Mousebungee and that is what we are going to look at today.

After a little bit of Intel I've done for a few reviews back, now we're heading towards AMD again. This time we will be looking at the Gigabyte GA-7VAXP motherboard. There was alot of anticipation for VIA's KT400 chipset, since now DDR400 is officially supported, allowing users to use even faster memory than ever before, and AGP 8x is now supported. Today we're going to see how it compares to an older board, the GA-7VRXP

Many of us rule out SCSI as an option mainly due to the high costs in operating such devices. SCSI drives are typically much more expensive than IDE drives and also require additional hardware to operate them. However, today we look at a low cost solution for those looking for a high performance SCSI setup

So what can we do about flat IDE cables, without resorting (read: spend money) to round cables? Fold them of course. I'm well aware you can make round IDE cables manually, but it won't work with the trick I'm going to show you. Folding cables is easy enough, and in most cases, it should hold it's shape well. Just be careful not to over do it, since if you ever decide to take it apart, you're going to have a tough time working all those wrinkles out

Any LAN party host worth their weight knows that good managed switches are essential in building a rugged network for any LAN of decent size. Once you’re above 16 players, lagless networked gameplay demands that you chuck your hub aside in favour of thoroughbred of the networking world: the switch. Nowadays, switches come in all shapes and sizes, and there’s no shortage of companies willing to sell you one. The question is, what features do you need for your LAN? Do you need unmanaged or managed? What about uplink capabilities? All of these are totally valid concerns, and often what the final choice boils down to is what you can afford. Switches can easily get well in to the thousands of dollars range when fully loaded, leaving completely high-end switches to the realm of sponsored events. However, as of late, there’s a new kid on the block, and he’s bringing better performance, more features, and possibly a freshly baked apple pie as a welcoming gift, all for a nice low price. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Compex’s entry into the mid-sized switching market, the DSR2216

OK... lotta figgers and graphs but what do they say? They say that this particular pump thingy can push a maximum of 332 gallons per hour through a 5/8" hose... but this changes drastically with "head" or the necessity to push the water up against gravity... my particular system is designed to minimize head but figuring in bends and other variables I would say that I am getting about half that or 150gph

This fan is different from others that you normally see, but it is designed for 1U/2U servers. The fan is a bit noisy, but it can keep the air flowing inside your case. The wide area the fan covers is good for general cooling. One thing I was disappointed about is the lack of instructions or mounting hardware, other than that this is a very nice fan that would be a good addition to any case.

The search for the perfect mouse continues. Once again Microsoft are leading the way. This time with the newest "Cable Replacement" technology to hit the marketplace, Bluetooth. The Wireless Optical Intellimouse Explorer for Bluetooth (catchy name huh?) has now hit the desks of the world, confirming Microsoft's acceptance of this emerging technology. Now that Microsoft have embraced Bluetooth, it will open the floodgates for more and more devices. Let's have a look at what they have to offer.