Reviews 52162 Published by

Here today's reviews and articles, including What’s Wrong with the Xbox One?, Using Solr With TYPO3 On Debian Wheezy, PQI Air Drive External Wireless Storage Device Product and Video Review, AMD 2013 A and E-Series Kabini and Temash Mobile APUs, and Haswell Z87 Motherboard Preview: 50+ Motherboards from ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, MSI, ECS, Biostar and EVGA



What’s Wrong with the Xbox One? @ TestFreaks
So what’s wrong with the Xbox One? Too many things at this point it seems. In the past day or so we’ve learned a lot about the Xbox One and then we really didn’t learn that much did we? It seems like we did, but watching that broadcast it seemed all smoke and mirrors to me with Microsoft leaving out a lot of things that I think most gamers are concerned with. Many issues were not addressed and when Microsoft was asked about them they provided vague answers that really weren’t answers at all. From what I saw most of their answers were basically no comment on a lot of things that are important to their customers. We’ve had a lot of media attention in the preceding months, a lot of speculation and a lot of people just talking about the next Xbox. People have made it clear what they wanted and didn’t want and what they expected from the next Xbox and it seems to me Microsoft just ignored everything that was said everywhere.

Read more: What’s Wrong with the Xbox One? @ TestFreaks

Using Solr With TYPO3 On Debian Wheezy @ Howtoforge
TYPO3's default search extension called "Indexed Search" is fine for small web sites, but if your web site is bigger (> 500 pages), it is getting very slow. Fortunately, you can replace it with a search extension that uses the ultra-fast Apache Solr search server. This tutorial explains how to use Apache Solr with TYPO3 on Debian Wheezy.

Read more: Using Solr With TYPO3 On Debian Wheezy @ Howtoforge

Shuttle OMNINAS KD20 @ techPowerUp
Today, we will take a look at a small and affordable NAS server from Shuttle, a company that specializes in the development and production of mini PCs. The OMNINAS KD20 supports up to two HDDs, doesn't cost much, and supports Android- and iOS-based devices.

Read more: Shuttle OMNINAS KD20 @ techPowerUp

What You Need To Know about the Xbox One @ ThinkComputers.org
Microsoft’s Xbox Reveal event was held today at Microsoft’s Redmond campus. If you missed it we have all of the information on the next generation Xbox console. After months of speculation the official name of the console will be Xbox One. The Xbox One is made to be an “all-in-one” box that interacts with all the devices in your home theater. Microsoft’s Don Mattrick said the core strategy is “simple, instant and complete.” The Xbox One will be available “later this year” and will ship with a new Kinect motion camera and controller. Read on as we go over some of the new features.

Read more: What You Need To Know about the Xbox One @ ThinkComputers.org

PQI Air Drive External Wireless Storage Device Product and Video Review @ TechnologyX
The PQI Air Drive is a portable storage device the size of a credit card (and a bit thicker) that enables up to five people to connect and stream live music, movies or photos from the drive to their portable devices simultaneously. Unlike traditional storage devices that uses on fixed memory to store your files, the Air Drives only source of storage is an SD card (or in our case microSD card) up to a maximum capacity of 32GB and can be purchased with different capacity cards included.

Read more: PQI Air Drive External Wireless Storage Device Product and Video Review @ TechnologyX

i-Mego Throne Gold Over Ear Headphones Review @ TestFreaks
Music is a huge part of our lives, I know I don’t leave home without my MP3 player and if I do happen to forget it I have music on my phone. The problem with these mp3 players and phones is that the headphones that comes with them usually aren’t best especially if you like good sounding music. Today for review I have the i-Mego Throne headphones, these are over the ear style and in my time with them I found them to be excellent overall in sound and build quality. The sound from the Throne headphones is crisp and full and clear, but they might be a little bit heavy on the bass and slightly light on the treble. It just all depends on the type of music you prefer to listen to. The Throne headphones might be considered expensive by some, coming in at about $130, but for good sound you have to pay a little more and these are definitely worth the price. So read on to learn more about the i-Mego Throne headphones…

Read more: i-Mego Throne Gold Over Ear Headphones Review @ TestFreaks

AMD 2013 A and E-Series Kabini and Temash Mobile APUs @ HotHardware.com
AMD has been pretty open about discussing certain product in the roadmap. In fact, we've disclosed a number of details regarding the main products we'll be talking about in this article, Kabini, Temash, and Richland over the last few months.

It was all the way back at CES that we first showed you Kabini, Temash, and Richland-based products in action in a number of prototype notebooks at tablets from Vizio, HP, Asus and others. And AMD actually talked about the foundation of two these products (Kabini and Temash)-its Jaguar CPU core microarchitecture-at Hot Chips in April of last year. If you're unfamiliar with Kabini and Temash, they are the codenames given to AMD's next-gen, low-power APUs targeted at notebooks and ultra-mobile form factors. Kabini and Temash are not simple updates to existing products, however. They feature newly designed CPU cores fused to a Graphics Core Next-based GPU, and are designed to improve performance considerably, while also operating at lower power...

Read more: AMD 2013 A and E-Series Kabini and Temash Mobile APUs @ HotHardware.com

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 680 AMP! Edition Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven.com
The GPU landscape will be changing soon which means that current generation parts have received a discount to make them more attractive so there may well never have been a better time to consider something like a GTX 680, so today we have one of the latest designs for review. ZOTAC's GTX 680 AMP! Edition.

Read more: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 680 AMP! Edition Graphics Card Review @ HardwareHeaven.com

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Review @ OCC
There aren't a whole lot of negatives, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Blood Dragon's UPlay account requirement, even if you by the Steam version like I did. I certainly wouldn't consider it a deal breaker, but I know some people hate any digital DRM outside of Steam. Unfortunately, if you're a fan of achievements, there are curiously no Steam Achievements, despite them existing on UPlay. Other than that, there were some minor texture glitches (though you may never even notice them unless you look hard), and vehicles can only be driven in first-person, which can be quite jarring if you're used to switching to third-person view when in vehicles like I am. All these things are minor qualms, but they are worth mentioning. The other thing that is worth mentioning is the game's Mature rating. Blood Dragon certainly has its fair share of foul language and sexual content, not to mention its extreme violence. If those things offend you, you may want to steer clear.

Read more: Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Review @ OCC

AMD Kabini APUs Detailed @ Anandtech
AMD has a three-pronged assault going out today: at the bottom (in terms of performance) is their 2013 AMD Elite Mobility Platform, formerly codenamed Temash. Next up is the newly christened 2013 AMD Mainstream APU Platform, aka Kabini. And at the higher end of the spectrum we’re also getting the Richland update to Trinity, which AMD is calling their 2013 Elite Performance APU Platform. We’ll cover all of these with individual Pipeline pieces, starting with Kabini. Here’s the overview of the Kabini parts:

In total there are five new Kabini APUs launching: one 25W part, three 15W parts, and one 9W offering. The hardware is the same from the architectural side of things, with the A-Series parts coming with four Jaguar CPU cores and supporting DDR3L-1600 while the E-Series will be dual-core with DDR3L-1333 on two of the models and DDR3L-1600 on the highest performance option. The GPUs in all cases will be fully enabled 128 core GCN architecture parts, but clock speeds range from 300MHz on the 9W part up to 600MHz on the 25W part, with the 15W parts filling in at clocks of 400-500MHz.

Read more: AMD Kabini APUs Detailed @ Anandtech

Haswell Z87 Motherboard Preview: 50+ Motherboards from ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, MSI, ECS, Biostar and EVGA @ Anandtech
With time quickly approaching the launch of Haswell, leaks on both motherboards and CPU performance are coming out of the woodworks.  Similar to our advance Ivy Bridge coverage, here is a current roundup of everything we were allowed to show or is currently in the public domain.
Read more: Haswell Z87 Motherboard Preview: 50+ Motherboards from ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, MSI, ECS, Biostar and EVGA @ Anandtech

AMD Kabini and Temash APUs @ Bjorn3D
AMD has officially released its entire mobile platform for the year 2013. Today the company released the Kabini SoC for the ultrathin notebooks and the Temash SoC for tablets. Built on the 28nm process, Temash and the Kabini are expected to deliver up to 20% better CPU performance, 75% GPU performance and longer battery life. 

Read more: AMD Kabini and Temash APUs @ Bjorn3D