Brief reviews of products including a 4GB SDHC card, a cheap DirectX 10 card and a wireless gaming mouse.
Miles Mendoza’s Website of the Day
PRICE $15
SUPPLIER Amazon
INTERNET www.websiteofthedaybook.com
Website of the day lists tend to be mercurial. But, if you can stand the odd change (plus the fairly frequent bias), Website of the Day offers hundreds of neatly categorised websites. The emphasis is on lifestyle websites, but with categories such as music, travel and sports covered, the omission of a technology section is just about forgivable. Website of the Day doesn’t just cover the best-known sites such as Expedia and Google either: there are plenty of brilliant, less well-known sites to discover. Just visit www.angryalien.com to see what we mean.
PEAK Xtreme 150x 4GB SDHC card
PRICE $91
SUPPLIER Digital Camera Warehouse
INTERNET www.peakhardware.com
With the advent of the SDHC standard, SD cards are set to soar to a theoretical maximum of 32GB. The PEAK Xtreme 150x is spacious at 4GB, and at $91 it’s a compelling buy for anyone with a compatible camera or solid-state camcorder. It captured nearly 800 RAW-quality images from Nikon’s D40 D-SLR and showed no signs of slowing down after recording 40 top-quality JPEGs in burst mode. Results in RAW mode were less impressive – we fired off four frames in quick succession before the D40 slowed to around one frame per second.
XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB
PRICE $489
SUPPLIER www.digitalyes.com.au
INTERNET www.xfxforce.com
This 8800 GTS 320MB is currently the cheapest DirectX 10 card available. The only difference between this and the 8800 GTX is the RAM – 320MB for the GTS versus 768MB on the GTX. The result is a card that, while not superlative, still offers 82fps in Far Cry at 1600 x 1200 with 8x AF and 46fps in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The only time we saw less-than-playable frame rates was in Call of Duty 2 with textures set to Extra. At our highest settings, we saw an almost-playable frame rate of 27fps. DirectX 10 games will inevitably offer a steeper challenge.
Logitech G7 Laser Cordless Mouse
Price $260
Supplier www.notebook.com.au
Internet Logitech
Following in the footsteps of the G5, the G7 Laser mouse adds cordless operation using 2.4GHz for 500 position updates per second. The 2000dpi laser pickup also helps with precision, and the polytetrafluoroethylene feet mean the mouse moves smoothly. The G7 also comes with two rechargeable batteries, which Logitech claims will last for seven hours of continuous gaming each: when one is in use, slide the other into the charging dock. It’s a shame the cordless USB dongle doesn’t slot inside the mouse for storage, but the G7 is great for gaming.