The Random Computer Stuff Blog

A few months back, the TSA and Homeland Security ruled that security agents could confiscate and search the laptop of an American citizen traveling into or out off the country, without a warrant.

When I heard about this, I immediately encrypted my laptop with Truecrypt, figuring that they could not make me divulge the password, based on my 5th Amendment rights.

A judge has just ruled that if you encrypt your laptops hard drive, the government cannot send a subpoena forcing you to give up your password. This means that you should be safe from searching, since a laptop encrypted with Truecrypt AES 256 and a strong, random password would take decades at  minimum to break.

I would prefer it if the TSA got a warrant, as they are legally required to do, by the Constitution. But this seems to be the next best thing.

Reference:

news.cnet.com

I finally got around to doing benchmarks on my 4850. Since most sites target high end resolutions, I decided to target a common budget one, 1440×900. That resolution is very similar to 1280×1024, so performance should be about the same. This test was done in the CS:S video stress test.

As you can see, the card offers extremely good performance. It suffers very little when using either AA or AF, although it does have a bit of a hit when both are enabled. Despite that, 276 FPS is still much more than the human eye is capable of viewing, so its doesn’t matter.

Our next benchmark uses Furmark. while I don’t usually like to use benchmarks not from real world cases, I like this one because it is extremely stressful on the GPU, and because it uses OpenGL, so you can get an idea of performance outside of Windows. This test was also done at 1440×900.

These results are a little more disappointing. Performance is the same at 1xMSAA, but falls rapidly after that. If this was a game, 4x MSAA would have been the highest playable setting. Clearly ATI need to work on their drivers for OpenGL.

From a subjective standpoint, the only game I couldn’t max out at this resolution was (you guessed it) Crysis. Bioshock, all of the Source games, COD4, and The Witcher all ran silky smooth.

If you want me to run benchmarks for any other game, just let me know.

The NSK2400 is designed primarily as a media center case, and as such supports only mATX. I had considered building a media center computer (also known as an HTPC), so I picked it up when Fry’s had it on sale (oddly enough, my current case is an Antec case Fry’s had on sale).

The case layout is excellent. It has a separated area for the hard drive, for the motherboard, and for the PSU, with vents or exhaust fans for each of these area’s. They also use the rubber mountings to reduce vibration noise found in other Antec cases, like the Solo.

NSK2400 Layout

NSK PSU mounting

Air flow is very good, with 2 120mm exhaust fans in the main area. They also provide vents in all the major area’s, as well as cutout vents under the case. The case is mounted on 4 metal stands with rubber bases, although in a very thick carpet airflow could become a problem.

PSK Fans

Build quality is excellent. The case has a sturdy silver front, and a black painted steel for the rest.

It is the front that I have the most serious complaints with. The case has only 2 USB and 2 Audio ports in front, while other higher end models have Firewire or E-SATA. While E-SATA is not important for an HTPC, Firewire could be, although its lost popularity in recent years.

Another problem is the expandability. The case has only 2 5.25″ bays and no 3.5″ bays, which means you may be hard pressed to find a card reader, which are normally in the 3.5″ bays. And the mATX form factor limits you to 4 expansion slots.

But overall, this case is well constructed, and well designed. The limited front options prevent it from receiving a Recommended, but it does recieve a well deserved Pass.

Hello all!

Tonight I was going through Apple’s website. I ran across speakers which were fairly priced and look good, and seem popular with the fans, so I was considering buying it. I went through some of the reviews of this product. It had a rating of 4.5 stars(average), which is good to Random Computer Stuff staff, as you may know. I continued reading through the costumer’s reviews and came upon this one person that said, “Good product, but I would wait for the Bose system come out.” Which stuck, I should just look at the Bose site, since this review was from March.

When I type in “iPhone” into the Bose search bar it said, “0 products have been found”. The thing I don’t get is, if apple has figured out a way for iPhone users to keep there iPhones off airplan mode, so you don’t get that stupid little noise sound in the middle of your music, why can’t Bose Systems?

I know you will come back at me, “Well Bose systems might be figuring out some way now.” Or, “Just deal with turning your iPhone to airplane mode.” Or even, “Play your other iPod.” Well these are valid points, all which I am having to deal with, though I keep my iPhone with me at all times, since it is my phone, I rather play it apposed to my other iPods, because i don’t have them with me the entire time. Then I would want to have my Iphone off airplane mode just in case something happens and a urgent call comes in or some needs to contact me. And then I don’t know, maybe Bose Systems are still coming up with a model that let’s us keep our phones off airplane mode, but either which way, Apple beat them to it, and let’s face it, that is a little sad.

SO this is more of a rant than anything I suppose, but just so my boss doesn’t get mad at me for posting a rant and not a review of anything, I am going to rate some of Bose Systems products.

We bought speakers that were about a month pre-iPhone, it didn’t say anything about the iPhone on the box or website or anywhere, so i give it a thumbs up.

Rating: Pass

Once we got a new Bose systems that said, for IPhone users a month after the iPhone release, we thought that it would work, but no where did it say that I must turn on airplane mode, so I was ticked. But yet it worked as speakers with iPods, which it did say . So i am splitting the rating.

Rating for iPods with product: Pass

Rating for iPhone with product: Fail - It said nothing about turning on airplane mood, which is miss leading.

Last products which I was really happy with. Bose head phones. Both the little ear phones and larger rap around entire ear head phones. We were quite surprised by what came out of both sets. The price at first we thought was pricey, but looking back, it was a great buy, and I would recommend them to anyone.

Rating: Recommended

This is Cody Thompson writing for The Random Computer Stuff Blog