I’m surprised how many machines I see without antivirus, the first thing I take a look at is for any installed software and usually I find nothing. It’s one of those initial preventative steps to protect your system from any damage at a later point.

Kaspersky

It was the best for a long time, so good that it from being a free antivirus to one you had to pay for. It seems to always keep your machine updated and on top of most of the little bugs that bother your machine. I have seen it block out quite a few viruses that come through outlook or downloading attachments. They do have a good internet suite which also protects you fro malware and other problems as well. So if your going with the paying option then Kaspersky is your best option.

AVG

AVG is the best free antivirus software out there period, I have tried a few it’s always updated and works lightly on your system. It works stabely without bothering your system at all, and it always automatically scans your USB and many time I have plugged other people’s USB’s to find malware and virus, it cleans them out and makes them accessible which is great. Every system must have it installed if you don’t have one in the first place.

I would avoid any McAfee or Norton Symantec software out there, it messes with your machine’s registery and always becomes slower. Some how the machine never recovers from an install of McAfee or Symantec install, if you try pulling it out it seems like it trys to do as much damage as possible before leaving your system.

AirAttack HD

For the regular arcade airplane shooting game then this is your best choice, lots of upgrades, different kinds of enemies with a nice fast pace. Its the perfect game to play for a short time you want to kill, great graphics and lots of fun plane upgrades to work with, and when you stop in the middle of stages you can continue later which is great.

Time Consumption: Short

Highborn HD

If you like fantasy turn based games where you have different characters to fight for different reasons and you have to make sure your troops are positioned stratigically then this game is for you. Sort of like Might & Magic but much much simpler and pretty fun, I have had my frustration when I lost a few times but still a lot of fun and you can kill a lot of time playing this game.

Time Consumption: High

Conquist

Simply put this is the iPad version of risk with multiple maps and its a hell of a lot of fun. The concept is the same, you want to take continents to build troops and attack others. For some reason I keep getting my butt handed to me, the bots always know how to position themselves to beat me or the odds are really against you with the dices so I think there is some cheating going on but maybe I’m just not that good yet.

Time Consumption: Medium

I am spending as much time as I possibly can playing StarCraft II and at times it doesn’t do it justice and it isn’t enough time. I really want to play a hell of a lot more of SCII but time is something I currently lacking. Looking at the upcoming Diablo III it looks insane, a fantastic game to play soon. I’m just happy that they might not be releasing it until 2011 since that will give me enough time to finish and enjoy all the multiplayer games of SCII, not including the challenges and the custom games. Now with all the time they have made an amazing game with SCII I’m expecting that they won’t be disappointing with Diablo III either.

At long last I have the beast within my grasp! The Velociraptor 600 GB Sata III, I have heard the rumors of its capabilities but its different when its in your hands. When you want a fast hard drive and its not an SSD then your option is the Velociraptor line from WD. I remember their 150 GB and 300 GB drives but this is the new iteration, I preordered the 600 GB Velociraptor to build with a system later this year but here it is in all its glory. Its laying in a box next to two RMAed Hitachi 2 TB drives, Velociraptor sits among them as the pride of the pack.

The Velociraptor is a high speed and high performance drive with Sata III with a 6 GB/s communication interface, but the motherboard has to have the equivalent Sata III connection on the board. In my case I do have a board with two Sata III connection which will help me take advantage of these ridiculous speeds. If you are looking for a solid high performance drive then you can’t go wrong with the Western Digital Velociraptor, it comes in 400 GB and 600 GB.

The moment I saw this it reminded of the command chair on StarTrek The Next Generation with Captain Jean-Luc Picard on the Starship Enterprise. A very comfortable chair with a very capable command console aka The iPad, everything at your finger tips and you don’t lose the use of your cup holder. Everything at your finger tips including controlling your home theater system through the Crestron, Control 4, or Home Logic systems, or even controlling a Starship if needed.

Link: TheDesignBlog

After four solid years I thought my computer’s hard drive gave up but I was wrong. I thought that was the case intially since after restarting it would only show a black screen. I restarted a few times but no go, so I opened it up and didn’t hear any clicking from the hard drives so I assumed they were all fine. I switched out the graphics card since I had a spare one, but again no go. I didn’t have any other spare parts so I sent the computer over to Professional Computer in Hawally.

They called me telling the Ram is faulty and the Power Supply Unit is faulty as well. That explains it, if there is a problem with the PSU and it doesn’t supply enough power then nothing will show up on the screen, that happened to me before. So they switched it out, and switched out the 2x1GB sticks for 2x2GB sticks adding up to 4GB but only 3GB can work with Windows XP 32 Bit. Got my PC back and everything is working back to normal, I was worried for a little while but now I’m going to back up some of my personal files and I’m thinking about formatting it and installing Windows 7 on it. I can never get enough tinkering of machines, upgrading, installing, tweaking, and configuring.

“The Mother of All Mother Boards”

That is what they call the scariest motherboard I have ever seen, I have built the infamous Intel SkullTrail and that monster was a beast, but this is just another creature. Running dual Intel Xeon processors, 12 Dimms for up to 48 GB DDR3 Ram, Two Sata III, Two USB 3.0, and a very big board. Every once in a while there is a piece of hardware which just blows you out of the water, the last one for me was the Skulltrail and I got it after a long time, and not the Classified SR-2 from EVGA. They really outdid themselves, has twin LGA1366 sockets, providing the foundation for a colossal 12-core, 24-threaded monster box, and it’s worth noting that Intel’s Core i7-980X isn’t supported. This board is so big they had to make use of the new acronym, HPTX, which is bigger the ATX boards which are the usual size in computers. It can be yours for about $600 and that doesn’t include the extremely expensive Intel Xeons that you have to get the heart beating in this beast, but if your looking for something that can eat up all you can throw at it then this is where you start.

There are a lot of storage solutions out there, some are simple, some are complex, and some are more reliable then the other. Usually for big Storage needs I have stuck to the Netgear ReadyNAS line as their support has been excellent and they have a nice range of items from the expensive to the reasonably price depending on your needs. Lacie have been also developing high quality external storages for sometime now, and now they have just launched the new LaCie 5 Big Network which is available in 5 TB, 7.5 TB, and 10 TB versions.

The 5big Network is fully featured with a Gigabit Ethernet connection, USB, 3 eSata, and five hot-swappable drives that support seven RAID modes, which makes it very versatile. The 5big Network’s multimedia server capabilities have been improved, now allowing users to play media from the NAS device through a UPnP-AV compatible device such as a PS3 or Xbox, directly to a television or directly to any DLNA multimedia device. Not including that is compatible with iTunes Server, moving library over and streaming all media to different computers across the network. It has been optimized for Mac & Windows backup solution with 3 Intego Backup Licenses for Mac & 3 Genie Backup Manager Pro Licenses for Windows The price ranges from $799 all the way to $1400, it is a well backed-up product with LaCie procedure to replace it within a few days of you sending it. And I think it looks very good, same sort of Industrial Design as Apple.

Link: Amazon

Doxie’s new USB-powered device simplifies the oft-tedious task of scanning photos or documents with its easy setup and an intelligible Internet integration. It’s small portable USB Scanner, works with both Macs & Windows, it works in black and white, grayscale or color and processes documents or photos at up to 600dpi. It automatically adjusts photos by cropping or straightening, you can also play with the saturation, contrast and brightness before saving it which is pretty cool, not like the old days when you had to rescan it.

One of the features that makes the Doxie so convenient, their free web application integration called the Doxie Cloud allows for uploading of photos or documents straight to sites like Tumblr, Flickr, Evernote and now to iBooks. The Cloud also provides a short URL so you can seamlessly share the photo via e-mail, chat or Twitter. Documents and photos can be saved as PDF, JPEG or PNG formats, which is great for sending the images to Google Docs. And, the best part is that you can digitize hand written notes & documents because of its built-in Optical Character Recognition capabilities. I haven’t looked at a scanner probably since 1999, since I don’t think they have really changed too much, they are bulky, and take up too much space. For once a scanner which address people’s needs at high quality and very portable, its a brilliant little device and very reasonably priced at $130.

Link: Doxie

There are a lot of motherboards out there these days, some more powerful then the other. Its really a huge selection of bords chips and ram. I’m always looking for a perfect combination for a Home Theater PC, something just strong enough to play HD video without any glitches and small enough not to look obtrusive next to your tv. To have both strong machine and a small HTPC you need to start off with the mother board, and for this case the Zotac Motherboard was perfect for the job.

The Mini iTX motherboard can fit in any case no matter how small it is, and for a small motherboard it packs a lot of features. Its an Intel Core i3 motherboard, meaning that this little guy can pack a punch, and it has a lot of features. I installed 4GB GSkill Ram which really did the job, I played everything possible on it and it handled it without a hitchYou seriously couldn’t ask any more from such a board, if media playback is your task then this is the best board.

Pros:

• HDMI output with Audio output included, unlike other HDMI output Graphics Cards
• 10 USB slots, how many more could you want
• Built-in Wifi
• Small footprint – Mini iTX
• Plays 1080p, 720p, and BluRay without an issue
• Very reasonable price

Link: Amazon
Price: $129
Review: