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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2010-03b
News we'll all be too drunk to read come St. Patrick's Day
In this issue:
Antec Kuhler coolers coming... Bye oops; Fixmo Tools launches
next week... New Franklin Learner spelling corrector pencil
box... Breathalyzers coming to this year's prom... Tiffen at NAB:
Steadi on... Special Report: Analysis & analysts on 2560...
Project Yippie: POP3 & SMTP... Reviews: Asus P6T6WS, Adaptec
5405Z RAID controller, GE Power Failure Night Light, Ultra 4-port
USB bracket, Roku HD... plus our commentary on our tweaks
Antec Kuhler coolers coming this spring
Antec is kicking its CPU cooler presence up several notches this
spring as a new line of Kuhler coolers debut. Images & specs are
available now (preview reviewables not just yet) of these clever
combinations of heat pipes, fins & fans that are engineered to
draw heat away from the CPU case before dissipation begins. This
visible gap between the top of the CPU case & the bottom of the
radiator array reduces the amount of heat that can radiate back
into the CPU, a factor that very few contemporary cooler designs
address. Contact: Veronica Feldmeier, Antec Inc. (Fremont, CA)
510-770-2150 vfeldmeier@antec.com http://antec.com
Fixmo Tools for BB launches next week - bye, oops
The message ticked you off, so you fired off a reply saying some
nasty things about the other guy & his mom; oops! Your boss told
you when & where to meet him for lunch but you deleted the
message; oops! This afternoon, there's a major client meeting
that could mean a big promotion, except your phone keeps ringing;
oops! Next week, a collection of antidotes for all this launches;
scoops! Get all the info & hands-on now for the new Fixmo Tools
BlackBerry Edition ($20) officially launching on March 17. Ask
Rick. Contact: Rick Segal, Fixmo (Toronto, ON) 416-414-9726
rick@Fixmo.com http://Fixmo.com
New Franklin Learner line's first product debuts
The Franklin Learner product series has some great family-priced
products coming over the next few months, beginning with the new
LRL103 Webster's Spelling Corrector ($13) built into the lid of a
pencil box. Photos, info & even reviewables are available from
Aline now. Contact: Aline Boutin, Franklin Electronic Publishers
(Burlington, NJ) 609-386-2500x4434 aline_boutin@franklin.com
http://franklin.com
Coming to this year's prom: breathalyzers
At many schools, zero tolerance for alcohol extends beyond the
corridors & into screenings at football games (or other sports) &
the prom. We're also hearing about parents doing their own
screenings whether it's the prom or for any other date that
drives. With consumer-friendly prices on accurate breathalyzers
like those in the BACtrack family plus their increasing retail
presence, parents are feeling empowered to be parental. If that's
a story you want to cover, ask Keith for products. Contact: Keith
Nothacker, KHN SOLUTIONS (San Francisco CA) 415-693-9756x113
mailto:keith.nothacker@bactrack.com http://bactrack.com
Tiffen at NAB: Steadi on
The Tiffen Steadicam display never fails to draw a crowd at NAB,
sometimes because of the strange & clever ways it gets adapted
(like the Steadicam Segway) by its fans. This year's NAB will
include a preview look at something outside broadcasting, too:
the upcoming Steadicam Smoothee that's made to mount an iPhone.
Ask Hilary. Contact: Hilary Araujo, Tiffen Company (Hauppauge,
NY) 631-609-3216 haraujo@tiffen.com http:/.tiffen.com
Special Report: Analysis & analysts anent 2560
See http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey for a survey of the
hardware that gamers on Steam are using & you'll find some
interesting trends: more cores per PC, a lot more Nvidia than
ATI, a lot more Intel than AMD plus some surprises. One of those
is a decline in their most popular resolution (1280x1024) with
the biggest gain for 1920x1080; please see the data yourself to
intuit the differences between notebook & desktop users; our
1920x1200 displays (the highest resolution Steam supports) are
typical of about 6%. That link came to us courtesy of the main
brain trust of display info, Dr. Jon Peddie (we call him "The
Tiburon Monk") of Jon Peddie Research, who introduced us to Bob
Raikes of Meko, behind the premiere UK-based industry newsletter
on displays. Jon pointed out that you could get more screen
resolution for less money by using more monitors with more modest
pixel counts; HDTV manufacturing volumes are keeping those panel
prices very attractive. He doesn't see much hope for the 2560
category. "I have been surprised (and so have Dell, HP & Apple)
that the 30-inch didn't gain more traction," he said. "It's just
expensive enough and production low enough that it's stuck." Bob
believes that while there are 11 major panel manufacturers, the
30" panels are currently only being made by LG & Samsung. He sees
the current premium pricing for 30" 2560 displays as based mostly
on the expectations of the panel makers, noting that the price
per square inch is "often more than double, although there is not
much of a cost difference - given the same volume." Bob also
expresses (with some disappointment as a self-avowed
pixelaholic), "It frustrates me that I can't get a desktop
monitor with the same dpi as my notebook." My comment to them &
you: "I perceive that one difference among us is that you guys
are focused on things you can observe & measure while I get a
bigger thrill out of finding things I can change. I try to
observe where things aren't just as lucidly as you try to discern
where things are & we're all old enough to know it's a crap shoot
either way."
Project Yippie: POP3 & SMTP
We very deliberately set out to find a commercial (not open
source or freeware) incoming & outgoing (POP3 or IMAP & SMTP)
e-mail server software package because we thing the very small
businesses (anent whose needs this article series is focused) may
need the stability & support implicit in that. We came close. The
commercial package we landed on is Ipswitch IMail Server, but as
we went down the list of which of its features we needed, we up
choosing its free sibling, IMail Express. Its most significant
limitation (before you need to upgrade to one of the not-free
versions) is that it supports no more than 10 logins, but it
includes some features that can make each login cover a lot of
e-mail addresses. The righteousness authentication features that
help your recipient's anti-spam engine know that you're OK are
all there. We use a non-standard SMTP port (among other measures)
to help keep the wrong people from relaying through our mail
server, also supported in the free version. The free version does
not include support, but it is available at a modest fee (not all
users will need it). More advanced features or more logins or
add-ins for antispam or archiving or antimalware are likewise not
free. IMail Express does support Webmail access & remote
administration plus some nifty rules-like tools for helping (for
example) misaddressed e-mail still reach you.
Special Report Bonus Review: Asus P6T6WS
Last year, our multipart Core i7 build series set its sights on a
non-overclocked desktop system capable of including HD video
editing & rendering among more ubiquitous office tasks. This year
(in our next issue's "Project Up & Up" series), we look at
rolling in several in-place upgrades & seeing what visceral
differences we'd encounter. Might a different kind of X58
motherboard better fit our needs? The experts at Asus recommended
& sent their workstation-class P6T6-WS Revolution. The initial
trigger for that choice was our desire for a second Gigabit LAN
port (making it easier to reach both our internal NAT addressed
LAN & the "real" internet where we have a static IP address).
That opened the door to an avalanche of cool features, like being
our first mobo with SAS & the only one we've seen with six PCIe
X16 slots. The build quality is especially good to an engineer's
eye, with extra shielding, effective heat piping, aggressively
finned chipset cooling plus some impressive deployment of power
management components around the board. The connector layout must
have been done by somebody sick & tired of swearing at boards
with unreachable headers; it's one of the easiest we've
encountered. While there are warm spots on the board, there are
none of those light-my-cigar points we sometimes see on other
boards; overall the motherboard contributions to heat are well
spread out, making for a build that can run cooler & as a result,
more quietly. Bottom line: the Asus P6T6-WS Revolution
workstation-class X58 motherboard offers a combination of
features, functionality & extras that, for veteran builders like
us, borders on fantasy.
Special Report Bonus Review 2: Adaptec 5405Z RAID controller
When we did our Core i7 build project a year ago, we spent a lot
of time doting over its internal 4-drive RAID 5 array, capable of
dealing with high-bandwidth pro-level YUV 4:2:2 HD video a bit
faster than real time. We had a hunch that we could find a better
controller card, asked industry leader Adaptec & on their
recommendation, got a 5405Z controller card (PCIe X8) for review.
There's some seriously sweet tech on this card, including
dual-core ROC (RAID on chip) & 512MB DDR2 cache (many times what
we had before). Its zero-maintenance cache protection, using 4GB
of flash memory & powered by a super-capacitor, is a wonderful
alternative to piggyback backup batteries with amazing 10-year
preservation ability (versus 72 hours before, until the batteries
quit). Passively, it uses fins (heat sink) & a vented bracket to
keep its cool without adding to the PC noise load, though it does
expect plenty of airflow. There's a bigger (active) difference
through features Adaptec collectively calls Intelligent Power
Management, which both spins down idle disks & offers a
lower-power mode for active disks. That adds up to a substantial
power savings (especially in our installation, where this array
is mostly used for HD video editing & rendering) which in turn
lets the power supply run cooler & the system's thermally
responsive fans run more quietly. This card lists for just under
$800, so it's not something you should grab on a whim, but having
had opportunity to deal with lesser offerings, there's such a
long list of better attributes here that it presents a much
better value, regardless of price (unless your time & your data
are both worthless). Bottom line: the Adaptec RAID 5405Z PCIe X8
4-port SAS/SATA controller card
Special Report Bonus Review 3: GE Power Failure Night Light
Our third LED lighting product from Jasco Products is the GE
Power Failure Night Light, a cylinder with a flip-out power plug,
a 3-position switch (on/off/auto), a photosensor & a triangle of
LEDs. When set to auto, it stays dark when there's light in the
room, glows when its surrounding are dark & turns on its brighter
flashlight mode should the power fail. Keep it plugged in to let
its flashlight-mode battery charge or unplug it to use it as a
flashlight any time. Bottom line: the GE Power Failure Night
Light combines all the features you might want for a kid's room
(or your own) to keep from bumping into things in the dark,
especially when that darkness is unexpected.
Special Report Bonus Review 4: Ultra 4-port USB bracket
Every recent motherboard we've seen has a header for connecting
additional USB ports & every system we've had since the arrival
of USB has always had more things to plug in than places to plug
them in. Since we're dealing with other in-place upgrades to last
year's Core i7 project system, we found a hidden treasure in the
Ultra Products ULT40299 4-port USB bracket. New motherboards
often come with a spare-slot bracket with a pair of ports ready
to connect to a single USB header; this offers a pair of pairs -
4 ports total - each pair ready to connect to a separate header
through its own 18" cable. Our new ASUS motherboard has 3 such
headers, meaning we can connect one to the case & 2 to this
bracket & not waste any of the available ports. Even if you don't
build your own, if you find a rear bracket with just 2 USB
connectors, it's worth checking to see if there's an unpopulated
USB header on the motherboard; if so, you can gain 2 fully
powered ports just by using one of these brackets instead. Bottom
line: We really like having the one-slot 4-port option that the
Ultra Products ULT40299 bracket gives us.
Special Report Bonus Review 5: Roku HD
We've bought chunks of cheese bigger than the Roku HD box - its
small size surprised us - but so did its performance. It connects
via wired or wireless Ethernet to tons of Web-based content, from
Netflix or Amazon or Pandora or any of a growing collection of
content (a dozen free & 5 premium channels at this writing). WiFi
means that we can, if we want, walk it from set to set with a
back-panel choice of connecting analog or optical digital audio,
composite or component or S-video or HDMI. We don't know what
trickery they're using to upscale streams of old content to an
HD-displayable output, but we like it. Bottom line: The Roku HD
box is a fun, flexible, richly & wildly varied content resource
for those surprisingly many times when hundreds of cable channels
just don't seem to offer choices as good as these.
Tweaks
Based on your feedback, we've made some tweaks on our format but
we have no idea if they're good or bad until you tell us what you
think. We've begun paring down on our item length. We added the
"In this issue" section at the top. We're staying with plain text
(favored 3:1 among those who responded). What do you think?
Contact: Martin Winston, Newstips (Novelty, OH) 440-338-8400;
marty@Newstips.com http://Newstips.com
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Newstips Bulletin [Novelty, OH] +1.440.338.8400 http://Newstips.com
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