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"Two years ago the best SSD you could buy was made by Intel and it cost $7.44 per GB of MLC NAND. Today Intel is actually the value leader. The 80GB X25-M G2 will set you back $205 at Newegg, or $2.56 per GB. The performance crown now belongs to companies like Micron and SandForce. Although Intel hopes to have performance leadership once more with its 25nm SSDs due out in Q4, the priorities have shifted. Intel’s focus is on bringing SSDs to the mainstream; it wants a bigger slice of the HDD pie. At the end of the day, that’s where the money is.

At just over $200 that’s affordable enough for high end notebooks and desktops but what about more mainstream price points? For many the $99 mark is key. Luckily as SSDs have gotten faster, a new breed of small, affordable SSDs have emerged right around the $100 mark. Today we’re going to take a look at three of those devices."

"When the current state of the graphics card market is compared to the situation of four or five years ago, one might think that it’s much simpler to buy a graphics card nowadays. Indeed, the numerous LE and SE models are long gone and there is no covert memory bus halving, when users ended up with performance far inferior to those in reviews. You may stumble upon a few models containing DDR2 memory, instead of the referent models’ GDDR3, but these are usually end-of-life products at the rock bottom of the current product gamma, so buyers actually do end up with the performance they paid for these days. Still, the unequal speed of new chip development in the two competitor companies, followed by strong economic impacts last year and a no-holds-barred battle for market dominance, caused the existence of a higher-than-needed number of similarly priced models present on the market at the moment, so customers may be in doubt as to which card will give them the best performance in a given price range. That’s why we decided to make a test of all models from the current generation available at the market."

"Take everything you think you know about displays and throw it out the window. It's time for a clinic on what display specs really mean—brace yourself for the alarming truth."

"118.69 million game boys have been sold worldwide since its introduction in 1980. However the last 30 years has not been kind to these gaming devices and now many lie dead in basements across the world. Here are 10 creative ways to make the most from the game boys that did not make it to 2010!"

"This time around AMD has a significant flexibility advantage over Intel on its offerings below the $100 mark, but the question remains: how do they compare performance-wise?"

"Phreakmonkey YouTubed his vintage Livermore Data Systems "Model A" Acoustic Coupler Modem connecting to a modern Linux box. At 300 baud. That's about 30 characters per second."

"We are going to digress from our tradition of comparing hard disk drives of the same capacity within a single review. Not long ago we wrote about 1-terabyte and then about 2-terabyte HDDs, so we already know HDDs of these capacities well enough. But as is often the case, soon after those reviews we came across a number of interesting products. They are too few, however, for us to write two independent reviews, but we do want to tell you about them. That’s why there are both 1- and 2-terabyte HDDs in this article."

"You're not seeing double: what we have for review today are the Acer and Gateway netbook "twins". At their core, these are virtually identical 10.1" Pine Trail netbooks, with all that entails. And these aren't the only "twin" netbooks out there, as just about every Pine Trail netbook boasts similar specs, features, and performance.

Other than cosmetic differences like the color and an LCD panel lottery that results in two different panels being used, there's nothing to separate these two netbooks from each other. So how do they stack up against the competition? And are they worth the entry price of $335 for the Acer or $340 for the Gateway? Join us as we compare a couple more netbooks against the competition."

"Some of the latest security updates for Windows XP will not be installed on machines infected with a rootkit virus."

"Lately, it feels like the good, old, reliable hard disk drive (HDD) doesn't get any respect. When it comes to storage, Solid State Drives (SSDs) are getting all the attention these days--and it's no wonder, considering the speed, durability, low-power, and silent-running attributes of current solid state drives. But SSDs are also very expensive and offer relatively low-capacities when compared to traditional HDDs. The vast majority of systems that use some sort of fixed drive for storage----be they desktops, workstations, or servers--still use HDDs. And when it comes to maximum storage capacity in a 3.5-inch form factor, you simply can't get any higher these days than a 2TB HDD.

In this roundup we take a look at a total of nine 3.5-inch, SATA, 2TB hard drives, from Samsung, Seagate, and Western Digital.... "

"The entertainment industry has always kept a wish list of the kinds of draconian policies they'd like to see implemented in a fantasy world where nobody questions them or disagrees with their practices. Frequently calling piracy a virus, companies like NBC and Viacom have often pushed for copyright filters to be embedded in networking hardware or even anti-virus software."

"We've taken a look at a handful of drives from Kingston's V and V+ Series of solid state drives, and this time around we actually have the smallest capacity drive on hand. This 30GB drive is intended for use as a boot drive, meaning you load your operating system and core programs to it, and use a second drive for file storage."

"If you don't want to wait until late 2011 to experience USB 3.0 today with the Intel platform, you'll have to spring for one of the new X58 or P55 motherboards with NEC's USB 3.0 controller built-in. Fortunately Gigabyte offers a wide range of boards with this feature, and even 6Gb/sec SATA also. In today's article we take a look at Gigabyte's budget offerings for both chipsets. With prices starting as low as $120 on the P55 and $210 for X58, Gigabyte's boards are quite affordable. But are compromises made in the process? See how these boards fare in today's review!"

"We got our hands on an X25-V and put it through the paces against Kingston's newfound replacement: the Toshiba based 30GB SSDNow V Series."