Seagate’s first Momentus XT hybrid drive arrived about a year and a half ago. The original drive featured a 500GB hard drive paired to 4GB of SLC NAND flash and a SATA 3.0 interface. At the time of its release, the original Momentus XT turned out to be a rather compelling product. Its price was relatively low and Seagate’s...Read more...
This Holiday Gift Guide is sponsored by Epson—makers of the World’s Fastest 2-sided inkjet printer, the Epson WorkForce Pro. Run your business at full speed with Epson. We hope everyone is able to spend the holidays with the people that mean the most to them, but we also recognize that sometimes it's impossible to get everyone...Read more...
This Holiday Gift Guide is sponsored by Epson—makers of the World’s Fastest 2-sided inkjet printer, the Epson WorkForce Pro. Run your business at full speed with Epson. As the holiday season rapidly approaches, there’s one question that gets asked rather frequently: Have you been naughty or nice? Of course, we all know that...Read more...
OCZ had been a strong partner of Indilinx, dating all the way back dating back to the original Vertex series of SSDs, which featured the Indilinx Barefoot controller. Due to stiff competition from Intel and SandForce, on both the price and performance fronts back then, Indilinx-based SSDs ultimately fell out of favor with enthusiasts....Read more...
AVADirect should include a bumper sticker with its Clevo P180HM notebook that says, "My desktop replacement beat up your Ultrabook and defiled your MacBook Air." Don't get transfixed on the notion that someone would be silly enough to own both of those ultraslim systems rather than choose one over the other. The point we're trying to make...Read more...
Specialty or niche' products have always caught our attention here at HotHardware, for the simple reason that, when it comes to PCs anyway, attention to detail or a specific characteristic usually equates to something interesting. And after all, we're not into publishing stories and evaluations of uninteresting things here. You...Read more...
After playing through Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's single-player campaign and spending some solid time with the game in multiplayer, we can attest that MW3 is the latest well-executed title in the long-running Call of Duty franchise. The game's production values are excellent, the single-player campaign is gripping and intense, and all...Read more...
There are a myriad of nice smartphones on the market today. And since we're all for choice and options around here, we like the competition we're seeing in the mobile market. If you're a Sprint customer, you've been given the choice of a few really good 4G options this year. One of those options, the Motorola Photon 4G, has all of the...Read more...
We’ve been in this business here at HotHardware for a long time now. For most of that time, we’ve heard from countless so-called "industry experts" that the PC is dead, or at the very least dying. Quite frankly, we’re sick of hearing it. The PC is far from dead. One has to look no further than Intel's most recent finanical...Read more...
A few months back, we rounded up a half dozen SATA III solid state drives in this article. In that showdown, we had drives based on SandForceSF-2200 series and Marvell controllers represented, with both synchronous and asynchronous memory types. We ultimately found the SandForce-based drives when paired to synchronous NAND flash memory offered...Read more...
We’ve looked at our share of Z68-based motherboards here at HotHardware, and the Gigabyte G1.Sniper2 is another stand-out to consider. The G1.Sniper2 is in Gigabyte’s line of Sniper/Guerilla/Assassin gaming motherboards, although it’s currently the only one in the family with the Z68 chipset. Gigabyte G1.Sniper2 Specifications...Read more...
Don't let the doomsayers sell you on the idea that the desktop PC is dead. Far from it, desktops are just now entering their heyday with blazing fast multi-core processors, gobs of RAM, high definition output, SuperSpeed USB 3.0, HDMI connectivity, wireless input devices, and everything else you might find on a modern day system. No, desktops...Read more...
Not too long ago, we took an in-depth, hands-on look at the unlocked version of the Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone. At the time, the phone wasn't available in the US, so we weren't able to show you a hands-on video of a US version of the phone. Now, however, the Samsung Galaxy S II is available through Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile. All of...Read more...
Battlefield 3 dropped last week, promising a strong single-player campaign, an impressive new graphics engine, and up to 64-person multiplayer mayhem on huge maps. Despite a rough few days post-launch, the game delivers much of the multiplayer goodness that it promised, with a strong emphasis on team dynamics and an experience system that...Read more...
We're fortunate enough to get hands-on time with some pretty sexy hardware here at HH and we're not going to make any apologies for using the "s word" as it relates to this hot new notebook from Asus. Though some industry pundits might take issue with us describing this machine as "sexy," you'd have to agree this 12-inch slice of aluminum...Read more...
Zotac is one of a select few companies that have fully embraced the ultra-small form factor and home theater PC markets. Although they’re also known for producing custom, high-end graphics cards, and an array of motherboards, which include a smorgasbord or mini-ITX options, Zotac’s Zbox and Mag lines of mini PCs are quite diverse....Read more...
The Droid Bionic by Motorola made one of its first public appearances at CES in January. Months have passed, and though there were rumors of a summer release, the phone didn't become available through Verizon Wireless until fall. The Droid Bionic is the first smartphone from Verizon Wireless to offer 4G LTE connectivity paired with a powerful...Read more...
Over the last few months, we have taken a look at a couple of OCZ-built products that leverage the company’s SuperScale Storage Accelerator with VCA (Virtualized Controller Architecture) 2.0. The first product to arrive was the RevoDrive 3 X2, which is a high-end, PCI Express SSD targeted at ultra-enthusiasts and workstation customers....Read more...
Here it is folks, the iPhone 4S from Apple. It's not the iPhone 5 like so many people were expecting, or at least hoping Apple would unveil. You won't find any obvious outwardly design changes, like a bigger screen or a redesigned chassis. Even the back is still covered with glass, ready to dole out instant punishment to the poor sap who carelessly...Read more...
Until Intel's next-gen, high-end Sandy Bridge-E and its companion X79 chipset, launch sometime this quarter, Sandy Bridge, Intel's second generation Core family of processors and the Z68 Express chipset remain Intel's current premiere desktop platform. It is with that in mind that we've just taken a look at several different motherboard...Read more...
When we first took a look at NVIDIA’s 3D Vision technology a couple of years ago, we came away impressed. We understand that gaming and watching video in 3D isn’t for everyone, but after using NVIDIA’s first 3D Vision kit with one of Samsung’s then-new 120Hz LCD displays, we truly enjoyed the experience. Not only...Read more...
Rage is id Software's first game in seven years and its lead developer, John Carmack, has more than earned a spot in the video game industry's all-time Hall of Fame. Rage, however, doesn't live up to its pedigree*. While it's not a bad game, it's a shadow of what we hoped for. There's no character customization in Rage and the game world,...Read more...