Techie Toys I’m Currently Playing With

I thought I’d give you guys a look at what I’m currently torturing. Sometimes I forget what I’m playing with too so it’s good to write it down somewhere.

More Terabytes Of Goodness

A couple weeks ago, Seagate sent me four one terabyte drives that I needed for an upcoming review. Unfortunately, they sent me the wrong ones. Instead of sending me Serial ATA ones, they sent me Serial Attached SCSI drives! Serial Attached SCSI or SAS drives typically end up in servers or high end workstations. None of my systems supported that interface. Seagate apologized, asked me to hang on to them while they got me a SAS adapter so I could play with them. In the meantime, they sent me four more one terabyte drives.

Today I got four more drives with the SATA interface. I’ll definitely be putting these into use shortly. The SAS adapter also showed up. Since the adapter supports both SAS and SATA drives, I can use it with both sets of drives. I can’t wait to see just what the big deal is about SAS when I finally get everything setup. Because SAS is backwards compatible with SATA, I can definitely see boards coming out with this interface standard in the future.

Cool Those 8800 Ultras…

Canada’s very own CoolIT Systems sent along their latest MTEC powered 8800 GTX/ULTRA coolers. I’ve had my eVGA 8800 Ultras for quite some time now and my biggest annoyance with them is how hot they get and how un-overclockable they seem to be. In fact, they get so hot that the pair of them heat warped the VGA channel in the back of my CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 case. I was also unable to run them with the case closed as they would start to crash after reaching over 90+ degrees celsius. Case open was the only option.

I was able to install them today, and currently, they are on their sixth hour of torture running the 3DMark06 Demo. I was never able to run them for this long without crashing or flakiness, especially with the case closed. Hopefully, they’ll be fully cooked and ready for some temperature readings and overclocking in a couple days.

Surviving Hot, Cold and becoming Roadkill…

Corsair dropped off one fo their Survivor USB Flash Drives, a tougher version of their Voyager series of flash drives. The drive features 32GB’s of flash storage sealed inside a durable machined aluminum chassis. A rubber seal keeps the elements out and screws shut to create a waterproof seal up to 200 meters. To test it, I froze it, boiled it out of its icy grave, and then I drove over it with my car. Did it survive? You’ll have to stay tuned for the review.

Take Pictures and Save The Planet…Polar Bears Too…

LowePro fired over one of their new Primus AW camera bags for me to torture. It was originally supposed to get here in time for the Telus Whistler Ski and Snowboard Festival, but it didn’t make it in time. LowePro designed this bag for their 40th anniversary and it embodies all of their latest technologies including their new eco friendly recyclable materials, new slide lock tripod system and a new design. The bag’s recycled material is equivalent to 21 water bottles and a portion of the sales of this bag will go to save the Polar Bears. I’m sure Al Gore has one and I’m eager to see how well this recycled material stands up to abuse.

Well, that’s all for today. Look for all these product reviews coming up soon at Futurelooks!

From Guitar Hero to Guitar Zero…

Do you suck at Guitar Hero? Do you hate that guy that never misses any notes on expert? Well, this one’s for you…

All of a sudden, guys that are good, start sucking and use just a little less star power

Cactus Diving Anyone?

That’s what I call a “Little Prick”