It's fair to say that, for many of us, a serious, separate headphone amplifier like the iBasso D2 is the kind of luxury we think we can do without. Whereas a bargain-basement device like a Cmoy amp or the much-loved FiiO E5 is pretty much an impulse purchase, you need to be serious about your audio before you splash out £150 on a pair of headphones, let alone on an amplifier to drive them. The iBasso D2, however, leaves me pondering. Sure, I could do without it, but having heard my music with it, do I want to?
Let me explain. In the Hi-Fi world, headphone amps became popular because serious headphone aficionados felt that the built-in headphone outputs sported by most mainstream amplifiers didn't provide a signal that was clean or powerful enough to drive their favourite cans as they wanted them to be driven. A separate amplifier, tuned specifically to the needs of headphones, would provide a better result.
iBasso D2 Boa Headphone Amplifier Review
Acer Re-enters the Smartphone Market
To crack into the burgeoning smartphone market at a time where so many touch devices and new user interfaces are fighting for dominance, you need to play the game with a good hand of cards. Acer is not new to the PDA market - some of you will remember the Acer n-series handhelds - and has no doubt gathered a few aces up its sleeve by making full use of the technology and assets gained through its acquisition of Taiwanese smartphone maker E-TEN in March 2008.
Launched here today, the new Acer Tempo series features five models, each with a different focus, to cover all bases in their target user portfolio. They include a dual-sided touch device with a numeric keypad, a device with a dual SIM card and two devices with a 3.8-inch WVGA screen - one of which sports a full QWERTY keyboard.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ HardwareZone
Panasonic to announce its professional 3D full HD production system
Panasonic announced it starts developing a professional 3D Full HD production system. The system, which is expected to be the first of its kind in the industry, consists of a twin-lens P2 professional camera recorder and a 3D-compatible High Definition Plasma display. Panasonic exhibited concept models of the 3D system at NAB 2009 to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada from April 20, 2009.
With Hollywood studios moving towards creation of more 3D entertainment content, Panasonic successfully debuted the world's first 3D Full HD Plasma Home Theater System based on Plasma display and Blu-ray Disc technologies at the CEATEC trade show in Japan in September 2008. More recently, the company also established the Advanced Authoring Center within Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory in February 2009 to support Hollywood studios in developing 3D Full HD Blu-ray Disc titles.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ Aving
Nanovision Mimo 7" USB Powered LCD Monitors
Digital designers and video editors will tell you that one display is often not enough. With so many different tool and palette windows, a single display can get crowded very quickly, leaving little room for the primary workspace. Add some other apps to the equation, such as e-mail and Web browsers, and you can wind up with a desktop drowning in windows. But another full-sized display is not always a practical solution for such users: A second display might represent a prohibitive expense or it simply might not fit on a desk that has limited space. Perhaps even more importantly, many systems simply lack a second video-port (or even lack the ability to swap out a graphics card, such as with laptops), making it impossible to add a second monitor that uses a traditional VGA or DVI input.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ HotHardware
OCZ's Neutrino netbook reviewed, deemed totally handy and easy to use
OCZ's Neutrino netbook looks much like any other 10.1-incher, but this DIY affair comes with no OS, hard drive, RAM or multicard reader, leaving the users to decide for themselves how to outift it. The folks over at ExtremeTech are kind of unhappy about that point -- they'd like to see it be more customizable than it is for the truly nerdy, but they're still pretty happy with what OCZ's got to offer. They did a test run, installing a 60GB SSD, one 2GB SODIMM and WindowsXP onto the machine, all which went off without a hitch. They didn't try to use the Neutrino for gaming or anything, but it apparently handled everything else quite snappily, and overall, they seem to think that for $269 plus some parts and labor, you can't really go wrong.
Source : Engadget
LG to launch its 240Hz LED TVs
Western Digital finally releases the 1TB My DVR Expander, TiVo owners rejoice
Finally! We've been waiting for Western Digital to put out the 1TB My DVR Expander for so long we almost thought that Amazon listing a couple weeks ago was a mistake. The external eSATA drive allows any number of HD DVRs to record an extra 120 hours of HD content, but the real noise is that it's certified to work with the TiVo HD and TiVo XL, which have locked-down eSATA ports that prevent you from using just any drive. (The original Series3 doesn't have this restriction.) Stupid, we know, but at $199 list and $167 at Amazon, the markup on this thing doesn't seem overly ridiculous, so we won't complain too loudly. Just ship 'em already, okay?
Source : Engadget
ECS GeForce GTS 250 1024MB Review
Aah yes, we here at Guru3D serve you videocard reviews as much as you like enjoying that lovely croissant early in the morning. Hey everyone and welcome to a new graphics card review here at Guru3D.com.
A couple of weeks ago NVIDIA made some small modification to it's mid-range line-up, in specific their GeForce 9800 GTX+ product. These design changes are related to PCB board design, power efficiency and bringing the overall cost of the product down. As a result the GeForce 9800 GTX+ had what you can call an extreme makeover. Same features, same performance .. yet less power consumption and NVIDIA was able to shave off roughly 25%~35% of the sales price, bringing the GeForce 9800 GTX+ from just over 200 USD, towards sub 150 USD.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ Guru3D
Antec Solution NSK4480BII Case Review
Well, well. Here we are with yet another PC case. Another round of “will it fit” and “what’s the airflow like”. Another exploration of the inner workings of a piece of architecture meant to house the latest and greatest in hardware. I give to you none other than the illustrious Antec NSK4480B II. It’s sleek. It’s black. It’s “green”, and it is a pain in the ass to figure out how to get it open for the first time. Don’t worry, once you get it, you’ll feel like a complete moron for not figuring it out sooner.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ OCModShop
Cogage TRUE Spirit CPU Cooler Review
It seems that companies are all doing pretty the same thing these days. One thing that we are seeing becoming a trend is companies branching off to open a 'gamers or mainstream' brand. One of the biggest companies to do it was Coolermaster when they opened CM and introduced two cases in the Sniper and the Scout. Both being great cases cost cheaper than the ones branded by the parent company. Our next review item is coming from a company that is doing the same. This company is one that many of us consider the best when it comes to cooling. That company is Thermalright. Thermalright is the manufacturer of the Ultra 120 Extreme CPU cooler. A cooler that many companies target to try and conquer.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ ProClockers
