HotHardware Blogs
I'm a bit of a Left 4 Dead addict. I have been a PC gamer for close to 27 years now, if you count those myriad hours spent banging away on my first Commodore 64, and I've come to the decision that Left 4 Dead ranks in my top three all-time guilty pleasures. I can't even fathom how much time I spent scrambling through levels in...
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By Daniel A. Begun My apologies to Robert Burns for butchering a line from his poem, To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough, but the line really does convey quite well the unexpected frustrations I frequently encounter as a reviewer of technology products. All too often, when I get a brand-new product in to test and review,...
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By Daniel A. Begun A dirty little secret for anyone who ever called me on my home phone or for anyone that I called from my home phone, is that my home phone is actually not a landline--nor has it been for a few years now. My home phone is actually VoIP-based--through AT&T CallVantage. I had the opportunity to test all of the major consumer...
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I'm sure you've all heard the old saying, "You get what you pay for" many times throughout your lives. Whether talking about plumbing or electronics, that saying has seemingly rung true for ages. But for whatever reason, it isn't always taken to heart, especially by PC users. Let me give you an example. Years ago, in...
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In this post, I'll show you a few select options for putting together an affordable media server computer for under $300 that can store all of your media in one central location and is small enough to fit just about anywhere in your house. This build guide is for a server that will probably be running headless (without a monitor) and not...
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In this post, I'll show you a few select options for putting together an affordable computer for under $500 that can handle just about every game currently available for PC while maintaining a decent screen resolution and image quality. Here are the goals I wanted to hit with this particular computer build: Budget of $500 not including...
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There are some things in life that just seem better in their "classic" state. Take Coca-Cola for example. They've tried to reinvent the product dozens of times. We've seen Diet Coke, Caffeine Free Coke, Cherry Coke, Coca-Cola with Lemon, Vanilla, even Raspberry. And these were all flavors that the...
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Although the Holiday Season is supposed to be a time for celebration and for reconnecting with family and friends, a few tragic stories inevitably come to pass. I'm sure many of you have read the news recently and are well aware of some of the ugliness that went down over the past few days. But I never thought something as terrible as...
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Every once in a while, something happens in a gamer's life that sticks out in his or her memory. I had one of those moments tonight playing a little Unreal Tournament 3. I was just taking one of my usual 20 minutes breaks for a round of Vehicle Capture the Flag on the Suspense map, and just as the match was ending (my team won 2 to 1),...
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Due to the fact that the vast majority of NVIDIA’s partners sell graphics cards that are all essentially identical, save for their clock speeds or perhaps a custom decal, they all look for creative ways to differentiate their products from the competition. They usually do it by including a hot new game, offering a really long warranty,...
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The very first color printer I ever purchased, many years back, was the original Epson Stylus Color. At the time, the Stylus Color was one of the most advanced color inkjet printers available for the PC, and its price--about $500 if I remember correctly--reflected that fact. The landscape is completely different today, however. While the original...
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I recently reviewed Cooler Master’s ATCS 840 case for an upcoming issue of CPU Magazine, and I liked it so much, I decided to build myself a new rig using it. Cooler Master is releasing the ATCS 840 on November 25 to commemorate the introduction of the original ATCS (Active Thermal Convection System) cases that first hit the scene in...
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Those of you that have been reading my blog entries regularly should know by now that I am a bit maniacal when it comes to my input devices. Even if a device is serving me well, I can’t help but search for its replacement—call it a disorder if you like, it’s just how I am. Over the last few months, this has led me to try...
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As the mass media warns of the financial apocolypse, consumers are tugging on their purse strings and retailers are feeling the pinch. Manufacturers everywhere are trying out kooky gimmicks to try and lure dollars out of the pockets of spooked consumers. Whether it is a free copy of Far Cry 2 with your NVIDIA graphics card purchase or a bonus...
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When we first took at a look at the GeForce GTX 280 upon its initial introduction back in June, we also spent some time with an early beta build of a program called Badaboom, from Elemental Technologies. If you're unfamiliar with Badaboom, it's a user friendly media converter that leverages NVIDIA's CUDA technology to accelerate...
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With all of the recent hype and buzz surrounding netbooks, Intel's Atom processor, VIA's Nano processor, and mobile computing in general, we decided to put up a poll a little while back asking about your next PC purchase. We asked whether your next PC would be a desktop system, notebook, netbook, MID (mobile internet device), SmartPhone,...
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As you've probably noticed, we've been fleshing things out a bit more around here lately. When HotHardware first started out, about 10 years ago (good lord time flies), we were primarily what I would call a "push" site or magazine of sorts. We had a basic content engine that...
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My recent blog post "Always Looking For Input" generated quite a bit of feedback from readers and even a few manufacturers. In that post, I wrote about my pseudo-obsession with input devices and why I burn through so many of them on a regular basis. (Hint: It's because I'm a bit OCD) After reading what I had to say about...
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As notebook and desktop computers have gotten more affordable over the last few years, it has become increasingly more common for users to have multiple PCs in their homes. As convenient as having multiple systems in one home can be, sharing files or an Internet connection among them can seem like a daunting task for less tech-savvy users,...
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Anytime there is a massive LAN party going on filled with hardcore enthusiasts and avid PC gamers, you can always expect a wide assortment of heavily modded systems to be on display. Of course, with the GeForce LAN going on within the NVISION 08 conference in San Jose this past week, there were a ton of modded systems at the event. While...
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I love technology. I know that's probably pretty obvious to anyone who comes to a site named "HotHardware", but I just had to say it. So, what has inspired me to state the obvious in this blog post? The Olympics. As my partners in crime here on the site can attest, I'm not much of a sports guy. Save...
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Social media and social networking is definitely a booming market these days and it stands to reason with a growing Internet audience and the explosion of new web-based services for the readership community. There are virtually thousands of different sites you can dive into but of course, as with anything, some are better than...
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