Tag Archives: reviews

ÜberConference lets you manage conference calls visually

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These are the problems that ÜberConference, a new (and currently free) conferencing tool from Firespotter Labs, was created to solve. Several of Firespotter’s employees come from the team that developed Google Voice, and their stated goal with ÜberConference is to develop a similarly innovative and useful tool for conferencing. We experimented with the tool to see how much it could streamline the teleconference experience.

First look: ÜberConference lets you manage conference calls visually | Ars Technica.

Once the conference has ended, you can view a small conference summary that will show you how long the call lasted, who talked the most, and who talked the least. If you elected to record the call, a small speaker icon will appear next to the call—click it to listen to the call in your browser window or download the MP3.

ÜberConference is still in the early stages of development, but at the moment it looks like an elegant (if not perfect) solution for many of teleconferencing’s shortcomings. I would still like to see ÜberConference let users assign their own conference numbers to ÜberConference accounts, but if you can get every member of your team to use the service, it provides useful visual feedback and features like call recording and call history that make it worth considering—even if you already have a conferencing solution.

Intel Core i7-3770K Review: A Small Step Up For Ivy Bridge : Ivy Bridge: Was It Worth The Wait?

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Intel built Sandy Bridge-based chips in three different configurations: one quad-core and two dual-core designs. The most complex implementation included 995 million transistors in a 216 mm² piece of silicon. In comparison, the biggest Ivy Bridge die incorporates 1.4 billion transistors on a 160 mm² die.

via Intel Core i7-3770K Review: A Small Step Up For Ivy Bridge : Ivy Bridge: Was It Worth The Wait?.

All told, Ivy Bridge is yet another highly integrated processor design from Intel. Its pieces were constructed by independent teams throughout the world—engineers in Israel are responsible for the IA cores, a team in Folsom, CA built the graphics engine, and a second team in Folsom implemented the interconnects, cache, and system agent. Of course, a process development group up in Oregon made sure it’d all come together on the new 22 nm node.

Xeon E5-2600 Review

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http://www.anandtech.com/show/5553/the-xeon-e52600-dual-sandybridge-for-servers

Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture was introduced to desktop users more than a year ago. Server parts however have been much slower to arrive, as it has taken Intel that long to transpose this new engine into a Xeon processor. Although the core architecture is the same, the system architecture is significantly different from the LGA-1155 CPUs, making this CPU quite a challenge, even for Intel.

 

NZXT Switch 810: When Too Much Isn’t Enough

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I think there’s ultimately a market for the Switch 810 for users that can take advantage of all of its customizability, as well as users who want to employ a tremendous amount of custom watercooling. For them it’s going to be worth checking out. If you don’t need to install a 360mm radiator, though, Rosewill’s Thor v2 remains the superior buy. It performs better, costs less, and is quieter to boot. NZXT’s case is a good one, but not great, and definitely not competitive at $169.

via AnandTech – NZXT Switch 810: When Too Much Isn’t Enough.

It seems like the market are calling cases enclosures.  I like the term enclosures better.  It sounds more sophisticated.  🙂

The Opteron 6276: a closer look

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First let’s look at the pricing. The Opteron 6276 is priced similar to an E5649, which is clocked 5% lower than the X5650 we tested. If you calculate the price of a Dell R710 with the Xeon E5649 and compare it with a Dell R715 with the Opteron 6276 with similar specs, you end up more or less the same acquisition cost. However, the E5649 is an 80W TDP and should thus consume a bit less power. That is why we argued that the Opteron 6276 should at least offer a price/performance bonus and perform like an X5650. The X5650 is roughly $220 more expensive, so you end up with the dual socket Xeon system costing about $440 more. On a fully speced server, that is about a 10% price difference.

via AnandTech – The Opteron 6276: a closer look.

MagicJack Reviews – You get what you paid for…

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A magicJack is a cheap and small device that allows you to make telephone calls for very, very low costs.

As of June 2011, magicJack costs $39.95 plus shipping and handling. You get a free year of calling to the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. Additional years cost $19.95.

via MagicJack Reviews – You get what you paid for… | voipreview.org.

When you follow the easy-to-use installation steps above, you’ll find that magicJack installs software on your computer.

The magicJack software is almost impossible to remove. magicJack software also will display advertisements on your computer, too.

NAS shoot-out: 5 storage servers battle for business

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With so many use cases and potential buyers, the vendors too often try to be everything to everyone. The result is a class of products that suffers from an identity crisis — so-called business storage solutions that are overloaded with consumer features and missing the ease and simplicity that business users require.

via NAS shoot-out: 5 storage servers battle for business | Storage – InfoWorld.

I found the below snippet to be interesting.

Connecting the NAS boxes to your network should be done via a wired Ethernet cable, and each NAS in this roundup should get two Gigabit Ethernet connections. Strictly speaking, you need only one of these links, but by using both, you gain much greater flexibility. You should use them in a fail-over configuration, which means that if one of your Ethernet cables loses signal, the other will take over. You should also “bond” the two connections together to increase throughput or to balance the network load.

Also.

NAS shoot-out: Everything else but the kitchen sink
All of the NAS boxes in this roundup have the flexibility to do more than merely store your data. These features are too numerous to review in detail, but they include such things as the ability to collect images from IP video surveillance cameras, mobile apps that allow you to access your data from iPhones, iPads, and Android devices, and multimedia servers that provide access to photos, music, and video.

In addition to the built-in features, you can generally install software packages that extend the functionality. Typical add-on modules include BitTorrent downloaders, email servers, and content management and blog publishing applications.