Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
Recent posts
Digital Storm’s latest offering, the Vanquish II, features some excellent components inside, but none is quite the top end. Performance will take a hit to be sure, but so does the cost. Digital Storm offers four base configurations of the Vanquish II. Level 1 costs a mere pittance (relatively speaking) at $699, while the Level 2 ($779)...
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What better way to usher in the summer season than to give away an absolutely awesome gaming rig, designed to keep you inside, fragging away when you need a break from those long, hot summer days?!
HotHardware has teamed up with our friends at EVGA, Kingston, Thermaltake, and Intel to offer you all the chance to win a powerful gaming PC
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Today we're evaluating NEC's new MultiSync EA244UHD, a 24-inch 4K Ultra HD monitor. As part of NEC's EA series, this monitor is intended for high-end desktop users as opposed to professional graphics users, though there are features of the EA244UHD that may tempt potential customers who fall into the latter category. Things that separate this...
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Intel’s solid state storage offerings are as diverse as they come. Although Intel started with only a single family of enthusiast-class drives a number of years ago, the company has since expanded its scope to include everything from ultra-high-end PCI Express-based offerings to small, entry-level SATA drives, meant to be used solely...
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NVIDIA just officially announced the SHIELD tablet (powered by their Tegra K1 SoC) and SHIELD wireless controller. As the SHIELD branding implies, the new SHIELD tablet and wireless controller builds upon the previously-released, Android-based SHIELD portable to bring a true gaming-oriented tablet to consumers. In some ways, the SHIELD...
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When we reviewed the Maingear Epic Rush a few months ago, we found its performance jaw-dropping, and thus we expected the same out of its sibling, the Maingear Rush. However, these are different systems with different configurations on board. For instance, they have different CPUs--the Rush we're testing today has a newer, more powerful GPU...
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It has been almost two years since AMD launched the FirePro W9000 and kicked off a new battle in the workstation GPU wars. Today, we're reviewing the company's FirePro W9100 -- a new card based on the same Hawaii-class GPU as the desktop R9 290 and R9 290X, but aimed at the workstation market and professional...
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ASUS recently refreshed its 7-inch MeMO Pad 7 tablet with Intel’s new Atom Z3745 Bay Trail-based processor. Having overcome its rocky start, the latest generation of Atom processors is building a reputation for power efficiency and computational chops. Despite its early days in ill-fated netbooks, today's Atom looks to be a good fit...
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Today we're looking at the Sound Blaster ZxR, Creative's flagship audio solution for PC power users. It's also one of three available cards in Creative's ultra high-performance Z-Series of sound cards, the ZxR being the top-end solution. It boasts a signal-to-noise (SNR) of 124dB that Creative claims is 89.1 times better than your motherboard's...
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Normally, the question of whether a game runs better on the PC or a console is a no-brainer -- at least, for PC users. Watch Dogs, however, with its problematic PC play, challenges that concept. And since the gap between consoles and PCs is typically smallest at the beginning of the console generation, we decided to...
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One of Samsung's goals with its latest Galaxy Tab 4 tablets was to create a family of products that offered good value and versatility to a wide range of potential consumers. The new Galaxy Tab 4 family is available in three sizes: 7-, 8-, and 10.1-inches and the tablets feature lightweight materials, thin bezels, and HD displays. In March,...
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In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a steady stream of new solid state drive releases, from the likes of Plextor, Crucial, and SanDisk. Today, however, Samsung is unveiling something new we think you'll really take interest in. Up next for your reading pleasure, we have Samsung’s brand-new SSD 850 PRO series. The 128GB and 1TB...
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In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a steady stream of new solid state drive releases, from the likes of Plextor, Crucial, and SanDisk. Our review of the Plextor M6M mSATA drive can be found here, and we covered Crucial’s MX100 series here. And reviews of some new SanDisk drives are currently in the works. Today, however, Samsung...
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As a followup to its ThinkPad 8 tablet, Lenovo has now incorporated Intel's Bay Trail platform into its larger ThinkPad 10, a business-ready slate the company claims can offer users a full PC experience. Stopping there would be selling this tablet a bit short, however, as it's really a multi-mode device that can serve a number of purposes,...
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Wearables in general--and smartwatches in particular--are among the hottest tech trends of today. Despite a great deal of hullabaloo over these devices, though, many aren’t quite finding them as compelling as you might think. As a result, there’s a sense that no one has yet figured out the secret sauce that makes a wearable / smartwatch...
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The small form factor market has seen a ton of innovation as of late, and while it’s quite nice to have so many tiny PC options that offer generally impressive performance in a package that you can stick just about anywhere (often with price tags that make these machines affordable enough as your second PC), system builders need to work...
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We have already looked at a number of PCI Express based drives, with wide ranging price points and performance levels. Some of the drives use proprietary technologies, while others are simply SATA RAID configurations, bridged to PCI Express. Intel, however, recently released a whole new family of PCI Express solid state drives, the SSD DC...
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The pace of innovation on in the solid state storage market hasn’t slowed a bit in the last few years. Numerous manufacturers continue to release newer, faster SSDs at regular, frequent intervals. There’s been an underlining limitation, however, that’s prevented monumental leaps in performance—the aging SATA interface....
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MSI's Dominator Pro GT60 packs two significant firsts. It's the first high-end gaming laptop we've reviewed with a HiDPI display (the GT60's 2880x1660 panel is the equal of the vaunted MacBook Pro's Retina display), and it's the first system we've looked at to sport NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 880M. MSI has also packed this system with a plethora...
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Intel has been slowly releasing information about its Devil’s Canyon processors for a few months now. If you’ve been on top of the processor scene, you probably know that Devil’s Canyon is the codename for a new revision of Intel’s 4th Gen Core processors, based on the Haswell microarchitecture, that features a high...
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Intel has been slowly releasing information about its Devil’s Canyon processors for a few months now. If you’ve been on top of the processor scene, you probably know that Devil’s Canyon is the codename for a new revision of Intel’s 4th Gen Core processors, based on the Haswell microarchitecture, that features a...
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When we last checked in with Republic Wireless, we found that the service itself was as advertised (inexpensive and very good), but the asterisk was the handset--the Motorola Defy XT, a decidedly midrange smartphone that was the only handset you could use with the service. Worse, the price tag was a mite steep at $249. Subsequently, however,...
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