The launch of the 450Mbps segment of the 802.11n specification was sort of backwards. We saw some of the first routers last year in the September – October time frame. Then at CES we got our first glimpse of one of the new 450Mbps wireless adapters. This was the TRENDNet TEW-687GA that we just finished testing. But we are not going to stop there as we have another 450Mbps adapter from TRENDNet in the lab. This one is more PC specific and connects over USB 2.0. You lose the universal appeal that the 687GA had but gain more on portability. So let’s introduce the TRENDNet TEW-684UB 450Mbps Dual Band USB wireless adapter.

Overclocking is a big deal these days. I can remember when it was just a bunch of crazed guys with too much money and free time on their hands. We used to do things like solder new resistors onto CPUs (the Slot A Athlons), swap out caps and resistors on motherboards to get more voltage through the boards and to the CPU.  I vividly remember building water cooling kits with pool pumps and tubing bought from Home Depot. Once I even pulled a radiator from a Coke vending machine (old and broken) for a rig I was building. Well thankfully those days are over (but it would still be fun to do some of this). Motherboard makers are now designing and building motherboards with top of the line components voltage regulation systems and tracing that is laid out for business. Many have world class overclockers that work for them to get the most performance out of each and every motherboard. Every now and then they get to build something special from the ground up. We are taking a look at one of these boards that has been built for speed. The one we have in-house was designed by HiCookie; the resident overclocker at Gigabyte. This is the X58A-OC (the OC is for Overclocking as if you could not guess).

Home networking is something that everyone knows a little about. Often times what they know is not accurate (to put it nicely). I have heard some of the most bizarre “facts” about home networks, wireless networking and pretty much everything under the sun. We here at DecryptedTech are officially kicking off our networking section with a review of the TRENDNet TEW-687GA; this is a 450Mbps wireless adapter (sort of). We first saw this back at CES when we had our meeting with Zak from TRENDNet. It is a rather large adapter that boasts the full Duplex speed of 450Mbps at a price of $94.99. Let’s take a look at this product and talk a little about wireless networking in general.

As motherboards get smaller and CPUs run cooler the demand for smaller cases grows. The idea of the small form factor case is nothing new but these days awe find the number of these is growing as well.  The idea is simple; stuff a motherboard (complete with CPU, GPU etc), optical drive and some type of storage into a small area while keeping things cool, pretty easy right? We take a look at one entry from ThermalTake; The Element Q. This is a small form factor case that has a few nice things to offer (like a 200 Watt Power Supply). So let’s take a look that the Element Q and see how it handles a system built around the Intel Core i5 661 CPU.

Anyone that owns a smart phone these days knows that there never seems to be enough battery life. This is even more true for those of us with the HTC EVO 4G from Sprint. The phone is excellent (once it is configured properly). But has the worst battery life in a phone I have ever seen. In a normal day just in typical usage (for me) I get about 7-8 hours of life. If I am in an area with poor reception it is even worse (sometimes as little as 3 hours).  There are multiple ways to try and extend this life; everything from killing tasks to running around with an extra battery pack to externally charge your phone. None of these really work though and all are time consuming. Trust me there is nothing like trying to talk with a giant tumbdrive dangling from your EVO. Fortunately there are battery packs and cases that do not require you to leave them hanging from the phone. We are taking a look at one of these today; it is the PowerSkin Silicone case with Bulit-in Battery for the HTC EVO 4G.

The net is full of articles talking about how this or that technology company is controlling their software, hardware, IP (Intellectual Property) or some other item that they want to complain about. You also cannot run a search on net-neutrality, DCMA, MPAA, RIAA, Pirate Bay or, of course Apple without hearing about how medieval and out dated their concepts of fair usage is. I have talked about this kind of corporate control for years as well. It I oppressive, stifles the market and Hurst consumers. However, there is one type of control that is good for the consumer. This is the type of control that Kingston is holding over their ValueRAM Server Premier memory.  What Kingston has done is take their already great server memory and add an extra level of quality control to ensure maximum performance and stability. They have done this by controlling every part that goes into this product right down to the revision of chip die. Let’s take a quick look at how this works and what it means to the consumer and enterprise.

You know there is nothing like a good keyboard; whether it is for work or for play you really cannot beat having a good keyboard under your fingers if you spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer screen (or two). So when my favorite Bluetooth keyboard died on me a couple of days ago I was not looking forward to finding a replacement. It is not an enjoyable task at all. I stopped by multiple stores including Target, Best Buy and finally Staples. It was while ruminating about the money I would have to spend to get something decent that I walked around the end of the Keyboard isle and saw something that really piqued my interest.  It was a keyboard that boasted of being green. It was a wireless keyboard that maintained it charge by the power of light. It was the Logitech Solar Wireless Keyboard K750. The best part about all of this, it was on sale. Normally this ultra-thin “Chiclet” style keyboard would set you back $80, but it was on sale for $60 ($59.99) was it worth the money? Read on to find out.

With all the news about the Z68 and P6x chipsets these days is seems that many people feel the X58 is done. Well that is not the case; many manufacturers still see this as a viable top end platform for Intel and are making some great boards for this market space. The nice thing about this is that they are not just making the high-performance/dollar products but are still working on quality boards for every price level. One of these is the Gigabyte X58-USB3. It is a mid-range board that leaves out SATA 3.0 but still keeps many of the other features you would expect from an X58 board (SLI, Crossfire, etc). Gigabyte has made sure they add in USB 3.0 for you while keeping everything around $180. Let’s take a look and see if it is worth that price.

One thing that you can never seem to have enough of is storage. As more and more people store large image files, movies, music (I know a few that have over 3 TB of music!) it is even more critical. Now when you are back at home and have access to your desktop, a network attached Storage product etc there is no problem. The question is how do you move this data around with you when you are on the road and space on your laptop/slate is at a premium? The simple answer is some sort of small external storage. Fortunately there is no shortage of companies that make these. We have taken a look at our fair share of them; from external HDDs, to mini USB flash drives. Today we have a new product on the test bench. This is the 32GB DataTravler Ultimate G2 from Kingston. Nothing to get excites about right? Well this one might change your mind. The DT Ultimate is a USB 3.0 drive that boasts of read speeds over 100MB/s. So let’s see if the DT Ultimate can really do that the Marketing guys at Kingston say it can

AMD’s 68xx series GPUs have been out for a little while now. This means that the boring time of stock and reference designs is well past and now we get to see what happens when a manufacturer puts their best effort into designing a graphics card. In the past we have seen Asus stand out with some impressive designs. Their DirectCU and Voltage Tweak offerings have been excellent. Today we have one of these on the test bench in the form of the Asus EAH6870 DC/2DI2S/1GD5. This factory overclocked card features their DirectCU (hence the name) cooling which has the heat pipes sitting right on top of the GPU for better thermal performance. This new card also features Asus’ Voltage Tweak to help you get even more performance out of it. So let’s take a look and see if this $200.00 card is worth your time and money.