Advantages: Extremely quite, beautiful machine
Disadvantages: CPU Cooling fan & the floppy drive connector are placed

...manual covers both the Intel and AMD XC cubes in brief detail. There's absolutely no mention of the BIOS, features or settings. It presumes a prior level of knowledge on the user's part. A fold-out installation guide simply refers to how one should plug the keyboard and mouse into associated ports! Leaving me to wonder if they are having a bit of a laugh. one of the most important things to consider when building a system is your choice of CPU. AOpen's, as we know, has opted for AMD's Athlon XP range. The performance blot arrives in the shape of a maximum Front-Side Bus support of 166MHz, thereby limiting the EZ18 to an Athlon XP3000+ processor. Which is not bad, but with other systems now being capable of taking AMD's Athlon 64 Model 3400+ and Intel's 3.4GHz Extreme Edition without issue, truly high-end performance is beyond the EZ18's reach... Read review

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Advantages: Very silent, very stylish and very good at performing
Disadvantages: Not too many expansion possibilities, no DVI.

...Great little thing, this machine. I have always been a great fan of Shuttle computers - mainly for the thought that lays behind the systems and the designs. However two things have always been annoying about Shuttle: The price and the noise. AOpen has been pioneers when it comes to Pentium-M and this fact made me confident in buying a small form factor (SFF) system based on the Pentium-M. The system is brilliant and I use it for all my computing-tasks which are surfing on the Net, text- and powerpoint-handling as well as games every now and then and some audio recording and editing. My system is equipped with a 1.6 GHz Pentium-M (bought cheap from eBay), 1GB of Corsair RAM (two different types!), 533 MHz fsb. The system runs with Windows XP Home SP2 - and does so brilliantly. The good things about this machine: - Costs way less than... Read review

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Advantages: Cheap and lots of features
Disadvantages: average overclocking ability

...The AOpen AK77-600 Max has a unique feature of having double bios chips, specially these days when virus attacks are common these days. With having twin bios, the second bios can store a good bios version that can be used when the first bios other one fails. It is also bundled with a Norton virus 2003, s very helpful software which can protect you from e-mail worms and viruses. This board has via kt600 chipset instead of an nforce 2. The motherboard has a little heat sink at the middle which helps to avoid overheating. All the headers of this motherboard are place on the near bottom of the motherboard. The USB 2.0 header s located at the second third PCI slots. A total of 6 USB ports are located at the back panel of this board. There is also a printer port and 2 ps/2 ports. Four mounting holes are located in CPU sockets, which free... Read review

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Advantages: Cheap, Good battery life, Long range
Disadvantages: Lacks Features, Small screen

...After my cheapy binatone phone broke after a few weeks of buying it, I bought my BT Freelancer XC100. It was quite cheap, I got it for £15 so its available to pretty much anyone. The phone looks really nice, much better than in the picture and it is comfortable and light too. The reception is always good too, so I can sit in the garden whilst chatting to friends, which is always useful :) The sound quality is ok, it isn't as clear as a normal phone but its slightly better than a mobile phone. The battery life is good too, I can leave it away from the charger/base station for days and it will still have enough power to make a call. As with all BT products, its a high quality phone made out of strong plastic. It would be better if the screen was bigger, you can't really fit much on there. Its only really suitable for the numbers... Read review

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Advantages: Cheapish, good wet traction
Disadvantages: Easily punctured, encourage punctures!

...My Tioga factory XC's have not really lived up to their name. If indeed they are a cross country tyre, then I guess Tioga designed them for a very flat and uneventful country indeed. I have caught flats on innumerable occasions with these tyres, as for some reason, they embed debris into the tube far too forcefully. They do provide excellent traction in wet mud however, but their rolling resistance is a little greater than desirable on some tracks. Cornering can be a bit of a underwear laundry moment too. The edges don't give too confident a feel to the bike's handling, and on gravel you often find that gnarly descent looking like a trip to casualty is on its way towards you! On the whole, probably a good tyre for light trail work, but leave thanm off the higher spec bikes as they are not really up to the job.... Read review

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Advantages: Good durability, great for all day rides
Disadvantages: None

...Although to many tyre choice on a bike tends to come down to what the local bike shop have that's cheap, there's a few things beyond that which mountain bikers look at when buying tyres. The first main thing tends to be the use that the tyre's going to get. Shove a slick tyre with no tread on a bike that's going to get used in the mud, and you're going nowhere. Put a mud tyre on and go and ride on a hard surface and you'll be puffing and panting like Ivor the Engine with the flu. The Fire XC Pros fit in somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. As the XC in the name implies, this is a cross country tyre. Cross country riders expect some grip in the mud, but not at the expense of putting so much grip on the tyre that it's hard going all the time. Panaracer seem to have managed that quite well with the Fire XC Pro, although... Read review

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Advantages: Grip, durability and looks
Disadvantages: Costly

...The Panaracer Fire XC Pro has proven itself to be one of the wisest, if costly, upgrades to my Cannondale Jekyll. In our murky winter (and summer) months you need a tyre that will cope in the claggy conditions, providing grip and shedding mud quickly and efficiently, but not so aggressive in tread pattern that it hinders progress on fire-roads and tarmac – The Panarcaer achieves this and is one of the most striking designs available, with its white writing emblazoned on the sidewall. It has performed admirably in the mulched leaves of the Dorking Redlands Trails; it kept my fatigued body moving on the punishing mud, roots, rock gardens, hairpins and drop-offs of the Afan Skyline Trail and has dug me out of the sticky Cotswold clay. A true all-round performer that is perfectly suited to our changeable climate. There are a great number... Read review

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Advantages: Very cheap, intelligent electronics keep wasted disks to a minimum
Disadvantages: None so far. How long can something this cheap last?

...speed read machine, was, as I’ve said, a good machine at the time of purchase, but it’s replacement, an AOpen CRW5224, is only costing me a shade over £30 (yes thirty!) from www.dabs.com, AND it’s got a maximum write speed to CD-R of 52x, making full CD copies possible in just a few minutes, and I do mean a few. AOpen may well be more familiar to you as the makers of motherboards. Even if this machine only lasts the 12-month guarantee period and no longer, it’ll only cost me 66p a week to own (as for the DVD player, the most that can cost me is 50p a week thanks to the 2-year warranty). Every month beyond the first year is a bonus for the AOpen, and if it lasts as long as the Yamaha, it’ll cost me about 22p a week. Anyway, that’s got the skinflint bits out of the way. What’s it like to install and use? A BIT OF THE OLD ‘IN OUT... Read review

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Advantages: Reads many formats, cheap
Disadvantages: TOO FAST!

...days ago. It's a 52x CD ROm, and is pretty fast. The reason I got this, was because my previous one could not read many formats or types of CD ROMs. Now this AOpen 52x IDE CD ROM is perfect. It reads every thing. Including CD-RW! It is fairly silent running. It came at a very affordable price, and at great speeds. 7800k/s. Which is quite fast. I am pleased with this buy, and well what more can I say? That's probably as good as a CD-ROM can get nowadays! The only thing this CD ROM doesn't do, is write CDs, or play DVDs, which can be done with other drives that come at a higher price.... Read review

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Advantages: Well built, good performace,
Disadvantages: None so far...

...... Read review

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