Fantasy Friday: We're drooling awesomesauce and coming like a boss

[Wesley]

Every Friday I take a look at some hardware that's honestly drool-worthy, stuff that we wouldn't necessarily sell kidneys for but would sit down and seriously consider the cons of a renal deficiency next to owning a Core i7 3770K. I'll post links in this first post to the ones I've already done, and all future ones will be added in here as I publish them.

[Space reserved]

[Wesley]

Cyborg R.A.T. 7 Gaming mouse

Okay, so its not the R.A.T. 9 that I’m drooling over – I’m through with battery-operated stuffs and wireless keyboard that I’m probably never going to own one myself. I’m a lazy guy, and I don’t want to have to troubleshoot my own computer when something goes wrong – I do that enough for other people, and I haven’t been let down yet. I will say, though, that my mouse needs a serious upgrade.

[Wesley]

Dell's Alienware range makes a handful of laptops that cater to the gamer who needs performance and quality. From the tiny M11x netbook on steroids to the huge, huge M18xR2, there's something for everyone who has about R15,000 stuffed under their mattress. For those of you who've decided that the Xbox or the PS3 sitting by your TV is lonely, there's the X51 for you to consider.

Linky

[Wesley]

Fantasy Friday: OCZ's Agility and Vertex 4 family

A lot of us tend to look at SSD reviews and drool over those super-fast boot times and extremely mind-boggling read and write speeds. Current mechanical hard drives cannot hope to catch up and their only benefit is the increased storage space you get on one platter. So if you're in the market for a new SSD, or if you're looking for something new to fantisize about this Friday, here's the OCZ Vertex and Agility 4 families for you to look at :)

Linky

[Wesley]

Fantasy Friday: Kingston's HyperX Predator 1TB Thumb Drive

Okay guys, hands up those of you that use an external hard drive? Alright, a good lot of you. How many with 1TB drives? Okay, good... good, you can put your hands down. I'm betting you lot would like something smaller, correct? While 2.5" drives have gone beyond the 1TB size before, they aren't any smaller than when the form factor first arrived on the market. They require cables, some need extra power and most of them cost a small fortune. It seems that its almost impossible to find a 1TB portable storage device that's small, requires no cables, fits into the palm of your hand and can be hung from your keychain. No, if you wanted something like that, the salesman at Incredible Connection would almost certainly look at you weirdly.

But not if one of these were on the shelf behind him. This is Kingston's monster terabyte-sized flash drive.

Linky

[H3R3T1C]

Fantasy Friday: Kingston's HyperX Predator 1TB Thumb Drive





Linky

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

[Zoop]

I was just wondering, how durable will those things be? The average lifespan of a flash drive in my house is anything from 3 - 6 months. I don't really expect small drives to last much longer than that, but one would certainly expect a 1tb flash drive to last for years, at least.

[KalMaverick]

I was just wondering, how durable will those things be? The average lifespan of a flash drive in my house is anything from 3 - 6 months. I don't really expect small drives to last much longer than that, but one would certainly expect a 1tb flash drive to last for years, at least.

I have two flash drives that I got in 2009 that are still running fine.

Although I agree, does seem risky putting 1tb of data onto that.

[tarisma]

I have two flash drives that I got in 2009 that are still running fine.

Although I agree, does seem risky putting 1tb of data onto that.

I have a drive from 2007 that still goes, that 512meg badboy goes like a bomb. If I had that 1tb drive I would just be scared of losing it!

[Wesley]

I have a black 8GB drive that's been in the washing machine three times, has been used in extremely dusty conditions, been formatted thousands of times and had too many viruses on it and its still going strong two years later.

I guess the point of the 1TB drives is that if you're rich enough to buy one, generally you're rich enough to afford to replace it, given the finite nature of flash drives.

However, its not really a flash drive, but a small SSD ;-)

[Wesley]

Fantasy Friday: Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC)

You may have heard of NUC mentioned on my columns and between the pages of various tech magazines. While the concept isn't new, it's a entirely new direction for Intel, who is now pretty much concentrating on their invasion into the low-power market with their x86 designs, making computers with just enough power to operate as you would normally expect them to. That's also been AMD's aim with the birth of the APU and the now-defunct Fusion brand, but it seems like Intel had a different idea in mind.

Linky

[Legion]

Fantasy Friday: Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC)



Linky

Hmmmm tasty

[Wesley]

Fantasy Friday: Samsung's Galaxy S4

Last night while we were all sleeping, Samsung put out the biggest challenge to the mobile phone industry we've ever seen. The Galaxy S4 is possibly the most important thing to the mobile phone industry because it changes two things: the perceived acceptable size of a mobile phone and also the kind of hardware you can pack inside without the damn thing exploding. Its almost as big as the Galaxy Note II and almost as pretty as the original Galaxy S2. It continues on with Samsung's design language and the white one looks really, really good.

Linky

[$CHN!TZ3L]

Definitely going to get an S4. I hope we get the 8-core version, It's so over the top but it'll be worth it when you tell people, "Yeah, that's right. 8 cores. That's 4 more than your S3 and about 4 more than I'll ever need."

[CrashHelmut]

(Psst Wesley, it's Exynos not Enoxys.)

Also, there are conflicting reports, but it may be that the four A15 cores are running at 1.2GHz and the four A7 cores at 1.6GHz (not the other way around). Although, I think it might just be a mistake from Anandtech.

[FoX]

Pleeeese be a lot smaller then the note II, the S III was bordering on to big.

[$CHN!TZ3L]

Its smaller by a millimeter in width. Progress eh?

Otherwise it's the same as the S3 to hold.

[Cpt.Monde]

Not too impressed by the S IV, to be honest. It resembles the III way too much for my liking, and 5-inch screens are a bit too large for single-handed operations. It kinda just says, "Galaxy SIII-S" to me when I read about it. I'd rather get the HTC One.

Definitely going to get an S4. I hope we get the 8-core version, It's so over the top but it'll be worth it when you tell people, "Yeah, that's right. 8 cores. That's 4 more than your S3 and about 4 more than I'll ever need."

We are getting the 8-core version. The quad-core variant is only for the US (it has something to do with the LTE chip inside it).

[KalMaverick]

(Psst Wesley, it's Exynos not Enoxys.)

Also, there are conflicting reports, but it may be that the four A15 cores are running at 1.2GHz and the four A7 cores at 1.6GHz (not the other way around). Although, I think it might just be a mistake from Anandtech.

The confirmed key specifications for the device are summarised in the table below

Processor 1.6GHz quad-core Cortex-A15 + 1.2GHz quad-core Cortex-A7

Source

I'm pretty sure those are the correct specs.

[CrashHelmut]

Yeah, that's pretty much the specs from every source other than Anandtech. Thing is, Anand tends to know his stuff, hence the modicum of doubt from my side.

The Exynos 5 Octa side is a bit more interesting. Samsung is calling the SoC a 1.6GHz Octa-core part, but that appears to be the clock speed for the four Cortex A7 cores. The four Cortex A15 cores will run at up to 1.2GHz, which should help keep power consumption manageable. We’ve been wondering for a while what clock speeds we’d see the Cortex A15s run at in smartphones, and I believe this is the first line drawn in the sand. If we go back to Samsung’s ISSCC disclosure of Exynos 5 Octa power consumption, it looks like peak CPU power consumption should be somewhere around 2W - definitely better than what we saw from Exynos 5 Dual in the Nexus 10. Again, no surprises here given that we’re talking about a smartphone - it’s just interesting to see.

(source)