Computer Reviews

This is a great keyboard. Has everything you need in MUCH less space. Also lays flat on the desk if you want it to.
Why do other keyboard (and PC) makers insist on adding more useless features instead of making good functional products like this? We've bought 3 of them. The price can't be beat and the spillproofing has come in handy more than once, too!

This keyboard is great for desks with limited keyboard space. If you're looking for a keyboard that doesn't have lots of extra (and in my opinion useless) keys but still has a numeric keypad and a "Windows" key, this one is perfect. Note that its NOT a USB keyboard which is is good if all of your USB ports are already in use.

This product is not from Microsoft, it's from Micro Solutions.

I have owned this product for several years and used it a lot. It's one of the best computing investments I've ever made. They've been selling this drive for several years, it's unusual for a company to support something that long these days. It works fine for me on a variety of computers. The drivers install easily and it works. I have run it on Win95, Win98, Win98SE, and WinNT 4.0 and it worked on all of them. You can tell that the Micro Solutions people are paying attention to engineering their driver correctly because all of the Backpack products use the same driver. That means the Micro Solutions people are not cloning their code, they are using the same code all the time and that cuts down on bugs and makes it possible to get the bugs out. They release updated drivers regularly. I've never had this device cause any of my systems to crash.

You can use this device with the printer port, which is great for portability, but it also comes with a PC card for use with the Notebook computer for better performance. Both printer port and PC card work for me.

It's useful to get a spare power adapter so that you can leave one plugged in both at home and the office so you don't have to get on your knees everytime you want to transport the drive. Also Micro Solutions has an inexpensive adapter available that will allow you to use the drive with a USB port. I don't have that, but given the quality of the rest of the package I have high confidence.

Addition: I now have the USB adapter and my confidence was justified. The adapter works fine. By the way, Micro Solutions also makes available free of charge their own CD recording software, called SpeedyCD. That, too, works fine for me.
A fine company.

Fast, light weight, as usual, great product from MicroSoft.
Just plug and you are running the backpack, Great for PC or Laptops.

Purchased this monitor 6 months ago. The monitor was packaged with good cushioning and a strong box - very important if you move alot and have your possessions shipped. The monitor itself presents a clear, bright display. My room over here is poorly lit due to a lack of windows. The display is easily read under these conditions; whether I'm typing a paragraph (such as this review) or watching a DVD movie with my computer. I will definitely purchase another monitor of this model when I have more $$$ so that I can run a dual display system.

I'm going to echo everything that this other reviewer had to say when he wrote:

"You'll be shocked when you open the box with your new Microtek monitor - there's almost nothing in it. A manual, 2 cables and the display. The instructions for connecting are very brief and to the point. Follow them exactly. If you are using an old monitor, just disconnect the cables from the monitor and use them, rather than the new ones. Saves time. You should be delighted when you turn it on. There seems to be no problems out there waiting for you, at least I couldn't locate any thru the sales clerks. A fine product."

Doesn't get any easier to hook up and to install, great product!

This camera takes perfect pictures. Every little detail in the photo is crystal clear. I can't believe how horrible all my pictures from my previous camera look compared to the pictures that the maxxum 3 takes. I highly recommend this camera.

This camera gives the best photographic results of any camera I've ever worked with. Ease of use and wonderful quality results in a perfect personal rating of this camera.

While described as fitting the DiMage Xi, this case DOES NOT! If you own the DiMage Xi, you'll need the MC-DG100 - and it seems that this is MUCH harder to find.

Just to note, I've seen the MC-DG100 in action and it's great! I can only image that the MC-DG200 performs just as well. It's just that the DiMage Xi will not fit into this case.

The XT and this case combo, I mean. When I started planning my vacation in the Galapagos Islands, this was the only digital camera/dive case combo around. I'm no diver, but I used it snorkeling. Bottom line: Dimage and case: $450. Underwater pics and a video of a Green Sea Turtle: priceless.

Oh, yes. When the camera's in the case, it floats. This was _extremely_ important at one point (butterfingers).

I recently added one of these to my high-end(ish) 2 channel stereo system. The difference it nakes is astonishing. I plug amps, pre-amp, cd player into it and ground-loop hum is completely removed. Also, due to componants operating at correct voltage, sound is quite noticably enhanced. Better midrange, smoother treble, blacker background, more natural voicing and better dynamics. I did notice that the low bass got a little more polite and lost some detail . . but for me it's worth it to have such big improvements in almost all other areas. Highly recommended. Plus it looks cool.

This is heavy stuff. An excellent piece of equipment that works no matter what. The quality of the power in my house is really bad. Every time the fridge goes on, there is a brown-out. With all my home theater equipment hooked up to this baby, there's no more picture flickering or drop in sound level. Highly recommended. Please be aware of the following though; You do not get any filtering whatsoever with this unit. You must also get a surge protector or a more advanced filter unit to take care of those problems. The AVS 2000 only correct the voltage, nothing more. Comes with an 8ft beefy AC cable and must be hooked up to a grounded (3-prong) outlet.

I was looking for a way to keep my AC voltage clean for my home stereo. My last stereo amplifier gave up the ghost early due to voltage spikes and such. I purchased HTS1000 after some research. What I did not expect was how greatly the quality of my sound would improve. I was pleasantly surprised! The price vs quality and performance is great considering the much higher priced options. I don't own a "Mark Levinson" amp, but for the average JOE who loves good, clean, accurate music, this is it.

The Powercentre is well made, technical specs match the "official" Amazon review, has a decent manual, and comes complete with short lengths of decent SV1 video cable & telephone cable.

In use with audiophile hi-fi (Linn), there are seemingly perceptable (audio) gains in precision, clarity, range and soundstage. No idea about video effectiveness. Recommended.

the cables are great they are very strong but bendable at the same time also look cool and most importantly the give a great piture actualy i havent compared it to anything bet i had a component for my ps2 now i have it for my xbox and the the dvds look a lot better with monster cables for my xbox than normal sony component hook up for my ps2 the cables are overall great and the colors really look more real and alive and if u notice with normal av cables u see color mixing and the backgrounds look fuzzy (kinda) and component get rid of 99% (rarely u see a very little color fade or something in a couple of movies in the wrold) and it uses 3 anlog cables for video instead of the 1 anlog that is standerd so u colud say it makes the picture 3x better

Why hasen't any else reviewed this great product? Anyways I got my component cable a few days again and can certainly say I notice a great improvment in video quality over my previous S-Video connection. You can certainly tell the difference in the action packed DVD's like Xmen,Spiderman,Terminator and such. But in movies like Bruce Almighty you may not notice the difference.
These are definitely worth the cost.

I wrote the other review, and I have a correction to make. I had to write a new review - after all, I don't want to lose all my helpful votes now do I?

I've since bought a new graphics card (ASUS GeForce4 MX440), which has made the monitor sooooo much sharper at the higher resolutions containing more than 1600 horizontal pixels (i.e. 1920x1080, 1920x1200, 1920x1440 and 2048x1536). I didn't think a graphics card would make any difference at all to the quality of the display. Boy was I wrong. Before I said that the screen was slightly blurry looking at say 1920x1440. Now I find it is very crisp indeed, and I suddenly realised why this monitor is worth so much.
The display is still the slightest bit "shaky" at 2048x1536 @ 75Hz, it kind of quivers or hovers around a bit. This is probably because it is 75Hz and not 85 or 100Hz. Personally, I don't find that 75Hz is high enough for the amount of time I spend in front of the computer. But anyway, the "blurriness" aspect has gone completely.
The only explanation I can come up with is that when I yanked out the two-year-old old graphics card, there was a really thick layer of dust on the back of the circuit board. A few times, I'd carefully vacuumed out some of the dust from inside the computer, but I must have missed that area. Sorry NEC, if you lost any customers because of the other review.

With over 3 million pixels at my disposal, I can display two whole pages in MS Word side-by-side simultaneously, while still being able to legibly read font (Verdana) as small as size six!! Try doing THAT with any LCD display!!
So it sure helps with the layout aspect of serious word-processing (such as producing a thesis or a book). It is also capable of displaying, perhaps, 3, 4 or even 5 times the number of cells at any one time than, say, a 17" monitor could in those huge spreadsheets you sometimes create (no I'm not kidding).
And for all you gamers out there, can you imagine playing need for speed 4 in 2048x1536, and 16-bit colour? That is the reality. What a blast!

One last thing, for all you desktop publishers and graphics artists out there: know that you better plan on getting a mighty fine graphics card if you intend to use 32-bit colour at the 2048x1536 pixel mode, because even though I bought the ASUS card that said it could cope with this @ 75Hz, it could only manage 60Hz, which is not good enough for me. I even edited the ini files of the display driver to try and force it to work, but could not get the claimed 75Hz - despite what it said on the website to the contrary. So I stick with 16-bit colour, partly because I can't really notice the difference, but mainly because the refresh rate is higher.
The other thing to consider is that even though the monitor may be capable of, let's say, 1600x1200@95Hz - the graphics card might only be able to display 85Hz or 100Hz at this resolution, so you must use the lower one, which is a pity because it isn't taking full advantage of the monitor's capabilities.

But I'd still give it six stars if I could! :-)

ONE MORE THING: NEC ISN'T NOT GOING TO MAKE THIS IN AUSTRALIA ANY LONGER, SO SNAP IT UP WHILE YOU STILL CAN 'CAUSE THEY'RE NOT GETTING ANY CHEAPER!

A couple of things about this screen which you may not already know. Firstly, I noticed that the image that you see on the screen is kind of set back a little, behind this flat glass plate that is at the actual front of the monitor. The resulting parallax error will be noticeable if viewing from the side at an angle - something that you can't tell if you're buying sight-unseen. On the positive side, you do get a built in USB hub, so you'll get 2 more slots than you have now!

You'll probably need to get yourself a new graphics card; the minimum that will take advantage of the FP1355's full potential will be at least the nVidia GeForce II MX400. If you're paying this much for your monitor, a little extra for a new card probably isn't going to make any difference (or like me, you can't afford anything else for months).
Don't think that because this monitor is capable of up to 2048 x 1536 @ 75Hz that this resolution will be practical. At this highest resolution, I couldn't help notice that the resolution is not all that crisp, perhaps a little blurry or more correctly, quivery - so it isn't perfect. Do you use the highest res possible on your existing monitor? Probably not, right? So if you can't live with using this monitor at the NEC recommended 1600 x 1200 @ 95Hz, I'd say don't buy it.
Don't forget that if you will be looking at text, you will have to make it slightly larger because you'll be using much higher resolutions. However, you can will be able to look at smaller-sized fonts than with normal monitors because it will look crisper and less pixelly.

A small tip for windows setup: go to the display properties window / settings tab / advanced button / general tab - and where it says font size, choose other and make it something like 150 or 200% and THEN go back to the display properties window / appearance tab and re-adjust the size of each item individually for fine tuning. If you don't make the fonts 200% of their normal size, some of the text that you will see in use during windows will be very small indeed and it can't be changed by changing any of the items in the appearance tab alone, and you will end up squinting.

I truly don't think this monitor is for everyone. If you know much about computers and windows setup, and you enjoy customising everything..... if you spend hours with your current monitor adjusting the screen's image so that you get the last millimetre of display area out of it - you will be very pleased; but I couldn't recommend it if you simply want to do ordinary computing just with a bigger screen. Remember that the intended use is desktop publishing / CAD / graphic design and perhaps spreadsheets (although NEC doesn't mention this use) - which is what I bought it for.

Yes, the two thin horizontal black lines are visible on any light-coloured background. But only a perfectionist or fastidious person would be truly bothered by it. It's something that you learn to live with.
I have personally called it "varanus komodoensis" which translates as komodo dragon - or the biggest monitor that ever lived!!

I wanted to upgrade my home network from a 10M/sec hub built into my router to a 100M/sec switch. I probably could have gotten by with an 8 port product, but I've wired up a few outlets to a patch panel and didn't want to have to walk to the basement and patch around as I moved around the house. This 16 port version seemed like a good way to go.

The product is very different styling than other Netgear products I have (not that I cared). It is small, not a much larger profile than the plugs themselves need, and the case is very sturdy and solid. With no fans, it makes no noise. My only negative comment is I would have preferred a standard 19 inch width for rack mounting, but others will prefer this more condense case. Fits on a shelf easy, or you could mount it to the wall with screws on the underside.

And the end result -- much faster home network! This would be a good solution for anyone with a larger home or small office wired network, or someone who hosts LAN parties. 16 ports will connect a lot of people!

I had been looking at the FS116 for some time, hoping for the prices to come down. Recently, I was able to get one at a good price from Amazon so I jumped on it.

This switch, unlike many of the Linksys products, is made of *metal*. It is VERY solidly built and quite small - not much taller than the network jacks themselves. It does not have any fans and runs only slightly warm to the touch.

... EVERY port on this device is now uplink capable, not just one port "with a button" as the heading indicates. For me, this was a pleasant surprise as I have several ethernet cables that are designed for uplinking and with this switch, I can use them whenever I need to due to the auto-detection on all 16 ports.

I really like that the LEDs and cables come-out of the front. The trend in consumer level devices is to put the cables on the rear. This does not work for me as I have my "network center" in the basement and all of the cables approach from the front (note, front-connect is how professional-level equipment is built and the fact that the Netgear uses that also harkens to their power-user-level equipment).

Anyway, I have been using this switch transparently for a couple of months now. It functions just as a switch should: without a thought. It just works.

Mike