TechLounge » PC Components

Table salt increases disc space

techlounge — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:51:36 +0000

We are all demanding more space on our disc drives as we gather and store more information, a simple solution seems to have been found by scientists in Singapore who have developed a surprising use for ordinary salt that they say could help deal with the increasingly quantities of data that companies and individuals require.

Their new manufacturing process, involving simple sodium chloride (table salt), can boost the capacity of computer hard disks by six times. With current hard disk manufacturing technology reaching its limits, the new process could mean that current capacity is able to be increased on future computers. In a statement it is reported that the agencies have “developed a process that can increase the data recording density of hard disks to 3.3 Terabits per square inch, six times the recording density of current models”.

Epson Stylus SX125 Multifunction Inkjet Printer

techlounge — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 12:44:15 +0000

Multifunction printers are a fraction of the cost that they were just a few years ago and no longer do replacing ink cartridges cost the earth. An example is the Epson range which by using four individual ink cartridges you need only replace the colour used, making this an all-round, affordable device.

The Epson Stylus SX125 is a very affordable multifunction machine that is ideal for students and home use, it is compact, cost-effective and prints, scans and copies making it perfect for scanning college work, printing reports or copying recipes. For photo processing work the Epson is no slouch, this model will remove red eye from photos, restore colour and correct backlight on faded or old scanned photos, improving and perfecting the quality of your prints with the Easy Photo Fix function and Easy Photo Print software.

Acer Aspire Revo R3700 desk top PC

techlounge — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 15:33:41 +0000

An ultra thin desk top PC which will stand discretely on a desk or behind the monitor without taking up too much space, but is capable of providing HD multimedia entertainment. This small but mighty powerful PC is driven by today’s latest mini processor matched by an advanced NVIDIA graphics chipset plus fast DDR3 memory, in addition to HDMI connectivity for enjoying lifelike imagery on a large external display or TV screen.

With a memory of 2GB DDR3 800MHz, this is expandable to 4GB and has a 250GB hard drive. This is the Acer Aspire Revo R3700, the newest product to come from Acer. This fantastic new net top looks like a mini desktop while also packing quite a punch, and consumes very little power. Overall this product looks good and by all reports performs very well.

HP buys Palm for $1bn

techlounge — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:39:07 +0000

US computer giant HP (Hewlett-Packard) has agreed to buy Smartphone manufacturer Palm for $1bn. The deal is expected to be complete be July with HP stating that Palm’s webOS operating system would help the computer manufacturer expand into the highly lucrative Smartphone and mobile device market.

Palm has struggled to compete with other Smartphone manufacturers such as Apple and HTC and its newest device the Palm Pre, although well-received didn’t hit sales targets.

HP has said that Palm’s chairman, former Apple executive Jon Rubinstein was to say with the company. Todd Bradley HP’s executive vice president talked about the deal saying that, “Between smartphones, slates, and potentially netbooks, there are a lot of opportunities here.”

Shuttle XPC X100

techlounge — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 11:06:05 +0000

Here at Techlounge we are big fans of the Shuttle systems and it is what we use in our offices. We were excited to hear that there will soon be a new Shuttle available called the XPC X100.

This Shuttle XPC X100 sets new standards in the PC arena and is the smallest system that Shuttle have produced. It is around 5 cms high and has a footprint of an A4 piece of paper. So roughly the size of a ream of paper. The size does not mean it has lost any performance qualities and the XPC X100 has a fantastic spec.

Expect to see the XPC X100 come with a choice of IntelR Core Solo or Duo T2400 processors, a 250 gb Sata HDD, ATI Radeon x1400 graphics card, optical drive, wireless LAN, Firewire, multiple USB ports and a multi card reader. Shuttle have also kept the Silent X Technology which is amazing. The Shuttle XPC X100 looks extremely sleek and will save a huge amount of space on your desk, especially if you use it in the upright position.

ATI FireGL V7350, Graphics Accelerator with 1GB Memory

techlounge — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 10:29:59 +0000

ATI Technologies have just released the PC industry’s very first workstation graphics accelerator card with 1GB of memory. The ATI FireGL V7350, has incorporated ATI’s Avivo display and video technology, giving better performance and image quality.

The Avivo platform includes features like automatic gain control, gamma control and increased colour depth.

Retailing for around £1,143 you might just want to wait a bit!

Seagate 400GB External Hard Drive

techlounge — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 10:03:47 +0000

400GB of portable storage is ideal for photos or music or even backing up your data. Firstly we would like to praise Seagate on the great back up software they have bundled in with this drive. It’s so easy to use and install. All you need to do is point it to the drive you want backing up, then choose whether you want it to back it up daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. Then choose whether it’s to re-write all info or just new data, choose a time and that’s it done. It’s also good at doing mapped drives as well so you can backup your entire office data automatically through the night.

It has a nicely designed caddy and looks like it could take a few knocks.
The only downfall of the product is having to have the power adaptor. It would be nice if the power lead plugged straight into the caddy.

The hard drive has Firewire and USB2. We chose to use Firewire as you’re more likely to use a USB port than you are a Firewire port and the speed difference between the too isn’t really that noticeable. We would recommend this drive to everyone even the smaller sized drives like the 300GB and 200GB will be just as great

Logitech OEM Speaker S200

techlounge — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 09:32:12 +0000

Cheap speakers you wouldn’t touch them right, especially when they’re under £15. We bought these speakers to prove that just because something’s cheap it doesn’t mean that performance or quality is affected.

First of all these are Logitech speakers so there’s the stamp of quality. As soon as the box arrived with these speakers in we were surprised how heavy it was and there was very little packaging there adding weight. It was literally just a brown box and folded cardboard keeping everything in place. So setup was easy just plug the power cable into the mains and plug the speakers into the Sub with one lead and you’re away. What we liked here at Techlounge was the bass volume on the side of the speaker is handy instead of having it on a wire that just gets in your way, or on the sub itself so you have to bend down so you can adjust the bass for each song you listen to.

The overall sound from this setup is great. We found that having the bass and volume half way on the knobs was about the right volume for us. The blue power light is very bright and I can imagine it lighting up a room late at night. Overall we think these speaker are a bargain.

Cooler Master Centurion

techlounge — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 10:44:47 +0000

When you say budget cases you think of a cheap £20 case, that has flimsy side panels, and the metal inside is so sharp that you need to wear gloves just so you don’t cut your self. They also tend to have fans that are cheap and noisy and last all of 2 days.
Here we have the Cooler Master Centurion. Ok, this one is the bottom of the Cooler Master price range but does not mean that the quality factor has disappeared.
As soon as you open the box and get the case out you notice how the case is still fairly weighty. There are two thumb screws holding the left hand side panel on which instantly suggests that you can expect the same quality inside. Upon taking the side off you’re startled to see a 120MM fan screwed in the back. This isn’t any old fan, its again another great Cooler Master fan, there’s also a nice small fan at the front.
The pressed metal inside is so smooth all the edges are rolled over and even the bits that aren’t are so smooth you can run your hand over and not lose a finger which is the normal practice.
Great you think no tools needed which in reality is true, but you’ll realise that because there are no screws holding the DVD-R drive in when you push the button it feels a bit flimsy. So we screwed all the drives in down the right hand side.
Getting the blanking plates in is bit of a fiddle if you are building on your own, as you need to nip together the two prongs. If you don’t do it enough it pops back in so we just stuck a screw driver in the bottom to keep it in place. Once the front is off you notice that all the blanking plates are screwed in place, with a fine fabric mesh clipped in acting as a filter.
This case doesn’t come with a power supply but again we find this a bonus as we can then customise the case and use a FSP power supply.
Although this is a budget case it does not lack sophistication or modern styling.

GeForce 7800GTX Graphics Card

techlounge — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 11:52:16 +0000

If you have around £600 burning a hole in your pocket and you want Battlefield 2 running like a dream, go SLi. We were so impressed with that one card, we could only imagine that we’d be in the battlefield if we had two of these beasts strapped together!
So we stuck it in our test rig here at Techlounge. The basic spec of our test PC is ABit fatality Sli, Athlon 64 3400 GHz CPU, 2GB dual Channel DDR Memory, 74GB Raptor HDD.

Ok, it’s not the latest and best but it certainly doesn’t hang about. With the supplied drivers Battlefield 2 was noticeably smoother and shaper. The same goes for Far Cry; slightly older game but still stresses your rig to the max. When we got the new drivers off NVIDIA’s site and installed them on the system it was a completely different scene. Draw distance was better and was rendered much faster. The detail on people’s faces was almost life like. The fps where up about 8-9 over stock drivers so you could expect 12-16 if you where running Sli. Oh and by the way these were with the highest settings, the rig was flying; we could have spent all day on this game.
When we went on pcmark05 we only got a score of 7580. But at the end of the day the testing is very hard any of the other hardware might have held the card up.
What always amazes us is the beautifulness of the stickers on the heat sink, they just look out of this world.
This is the first time we have seen gold plated dvi connectors on any graphics card, again its one of the finishing touches to the card and adds to the wow factor.