Peripherals

Every now and then in the midst of products that are intended to make your system more powerful or impress your friends we get to play with products that are fun. We found this in a pair of external speakers from a company called Accessory Power. The speakers are designed to look like the heads of animals (in a cute way) and can work with PCs, phones, tablets and pretty much anything with a 1/8-inch speaker jack. In addition to their function as a speaker set they are also intended to bring awareness to endangered species. We were lucky enough to receive two different models for our testing and enjoyment. So let’s take you along as we see if the Accessory Power Gogroove Speaker Pals Panda and Koala sets are worth your time and money.

Although not as sexy as a new CPU, GPU or Motherboard USB flash drives are still used on an almost daily basis by many, many people. These are the indispensable little products that we carry our files around in. I know quite a few IT people that carry complete operating systems on them (I keep a Linux Live USB handy). It has also become increasingly popular to keep a web browser on a USB key to maintain better privacy (when combined with TOR). Now the problem is getting a USB key that has enough room and speed to keep things humming along so that these are extra steps are not slowing you down when you are working. We have gone through quite a few USB keys and are now taking a look at another one from Kingston; The DataTraveler Elite 3.0 32GB USB 3.0 Flash drive.

With the increasing popularity of the SD form factor for media storage (SDHC, SDXC, etc) in modern devices like Cameras, Camcorders and more it was no surprise to see many mobile devices built with an SD card reader. However, most desktop were left out as there is no spot on a motherboard to deal with this. So many photographers and videographers end up tethering their cameras to their systems just to get their images onto them for work. This is awkward and can be annoying. True there is an option for a multi-card reader, but many of those are slow or can be as bulky as the cameras were. With the release of the USB 3.0 specification and the rise of the case with USB 3.0 ports on the front it was time to revisit the multi-card reader. Today we have a small USB 3.0 multi-card reader from Kingston that is not much bigger than a USB flash drive. So follow along as we introduce you to the Kingston MobileLite G3 USB 3.0 Reader.

As you might imagine we have a rather large number of electronic devices in use in our lab. These range from network switches to access points to tablets and more. Although we did build in surge protection and a good number of isolated outlets into the lab we always like to have more protection and more available plugs to play with. After wading through a number of flat and boring power strips with basic surge protection we started looking for something different. That is when we stumbled across a company called Accell and their PowerSquid Surge Protector.