A Roundup Of Hot New Products

Kingston Solid State Drives A Solid Value

Memory maker Kingston Digital’s SSDNow V+ solid state drives, released in January, deliver faster read-and-write performance than previous-generation SSDs, and are available in 64-, 128-, 256- and 512-GB editions. Listing for $268, $512, $992 and $1,969, the CRN Test Center recommends the 2.5-inch drives for resellers seeking high-speed storage for new systems or as rugged replacement hard drives for laptops, top-tier arrays and other high-end systems. The drives are covered by a three-year warranty.

Testers received a 256-GB drive as part of an upgrade kit, which includes a USB drive enclosure, SATA data and power cables, drive brackets and Windows-only cloning software; the upgrade kit adds $15 to the list price. Testers connected the unit via USB to an Apple MacBook running Mac OS X Leopard, and used SuperDuper to copy system data to the new drive. Once the drive was made bootable, it was installed in place of Apple’s Hitachi-branded 160-GB factory drive.

Xbench performance test results were fairly impressive. The SSDNow turned in a score of 230, compared with the Hitachi’s overall score of 42. The Kingston drive’s fastest transfer rate was in sequential reads of large (256K) blocks at 189 MB/s to the Hitachi’s 56 MB/s. With random writes of 4K blocks, the SSD outstripped Hitachi 26 MB/s to 1 MB/s, and when large blocks were involved, solid state outperformed magnetic by nearly 20 times, delivering 8.9 MB/s to Hitachi’s .46 MB/s. Kingston’s SSDNow V+ drives also support the TRIM command, a spec that prevents SSD write degradation over time.

NEXT: Samsung P2350 LCD: Light And Bright

Samsung P2350 LCD: Light And Bright

When unboxing the Samsung SyncMaster P2350, testers were immediately struck by its weight -- or lack of it. It was among the lightest 23-inch LCD panels we’ve come across, tipping the scales at 10.5 pounds (shipping weight is just under 15 pounds). Also notable was its flat packaging -- thanks to a detachable plastic stand—which will help to maximize space in reseller stock rooms.

The P2350 plugs in using a standard power cord (there’s no annoying AC/ DC converter brick); it consumes 44 watts while powered up and just 1 watt when off. On power-up, the monitor’s bright 50,000:1 contrast ratio was immediately evident, but comes at a cost. After several hours of continuous use, Samsung’s new monitor was gauged at 120 degrees Fahrenheit near the exhaust vent and 100 F elsewhere, front and back. So it’s safe to report that the P2350 runs a bit hot.

The rear air vent doubles as a carry handle; below are holes for wall mounting and vertically inserted power, DVI and VGA connectors. Cables for all three are included, as is a wire clip and driver/utility disk (not tested). The full HD screen supports a maximum resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 and delivers a 2ms response time. It measures 22 inches by 13.5 inches (16.75 inches with stand). Thickness is about 2.5 inches. Touch-sensitive controls for the on-screen display are along the right side of its lower bezel, and are adorned by luminescent labels.

Shipping now, the SyncMaster P2350 lists for about $200 including a one-year warranty, and is a recommended product for the budget-conscious corporation or consumer.

NEXT: HD Media Player Breaks Price Barrier

HD Media Player Breaks Price Barrier

You’ve heard of U-Haul. You’ve heard of YouTube. But we guarantee you haven’t heard of UEBO, a device from a company you’ve also probably never heard of: UITStor Inc., the Santa Clara, Calif.-based division of United Information Technology Co., this summer will begin shipping UEBO (pronounced YOU-bo), a $129 set-top box aimed at consumers of just about any type of local or Internet-based media content.

With the Internet becoming a medium for content producers from Hackensack to Hollywood, non-PC consumption devices have begun to emerge as a new revenue stream for resellers. These small, network-connected devices deliver high-quality images and sound to an existing HDTV or monitor, and can be pointed to specific sources of news, weather and traffic feeds, or RSS content, as well as sites for streaming movies and television programming. The UEBO also can access media on its internal SATA hard drive, or from the local network, USB devices or SD memory card with support for FAT, FAT32, NTFS and EXT3 file systems. The device outputs to HDMI, component and composite A/V, as well as coaxial and optical S/PDIF.

Through a recently announced partnership with MediaMall Technologies, UEBO also will offer optional streaming of live network television feeds and Internet-only channels such as Hulu, NetFlix and YouTube with MediaMall’s PlayOn. PlayOn is PC-based media streaming software that channels content to DLNA-compliant devices such as the PlayStation 3, Xbox and Nintendo Wii. At press time, UITStor had not set a firm ship date.

NEXT: Nvidia Quadro 5000 Impressive

Nvidia Quadro 5000 Impressive

On July 27, Nvidia began shipping the Quadro 5000, its latest high-end graphics processor for 2-D and 3-D graphics creation and gaming applications. The CRN Test Center received a preproduction unit for evaluation, and results were impressive.

The Quadro 5000 board -- with its 352 CUDA processor cores -- was installed in a six-core AMD Phenom-based machine running 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate with 4 GB of DDR3 memory. Testers first ran Viewperf 11 by Standard Performance Evaluation (SPEC), an industry consortium of about 60 member organizations that develops independent benchmarks. We’ve reported the 5000’s performance scores compared with the mean scores of its predecessor, the Quadro 4800, as reported on SPEC.org.

Where the 5000 performed best vs. the 4800 was in Viewperf’s Ensight test of scientific visualization workloads, delivering a score of 34.19, 2.6 times that of the 4800’s score of 13.0. The 5000 also performed well in the Tcvis visualization mockup, delivering a 37.28, more than doubling the 4800’s 18.40 score. It also shined in the Snx test with as many as 62 million vertices, scoring a 35.06 compared with 18.11. In the five remaining benchmarks, the 5000 was either on par or slightly slower than the 4800. In a test of raw frame rate using rthdribl (Google it), the 5000 achieved a maximum of 492 frames per second at 640 x 480.

The preproduction hardware put off 115 F at its exhaust port and reached 138 F at its hottest point inside the cabinet. Pricing had not been set at press time. The Test Center withholds its recommendation until production hardware can be tested.

NEXT: PlanOn Doing More Software Work

PlanOn Doing More Software Work

These days, if a small electronic device lists for $299, it had better work flawlessly. Sadly, that was not the case with the DocuPen Extreme X05 from PlanOn Systems Solutions. The CRN Test Center received the entry-level device in the three-piece Extreme series of miniature, battery-operated full-document color scanners that transfer collected data via Bluetooth or USB. But testers were disappointed by clunky software and suboptimal performance.

Upon receiving a 600-dpi color scanner, testers were enthusiastic about a unit that would input a whole document at once, rather than enduring the tedium of a line at a time. But disappointment set in when a spelling error was discovered in one of the pen’s primary messages displayed on its two-line LED, broken English was found in the Windows software installer, and the software’s interface was practically unusable. Testers also were puzzled when no matter how slowly they scanned, the LED read “Too Fast!”

Testers believe that potential uses are many for a device like the DocuPen Extreme, such as by researchers, artists, health care workers and those in the legal profession. However, the software accompanied by the unit needs work. And despite claims of compatibility with Mac OS X as well as Windows, a driver is included for Windows only. We can’t recommend the DocuPen Extreme, but we invite PlanOn to improve its software and contact us again.