Review of the Adesso NuFORM Basic

In Short

Ergonomic keyboard with silent, soft touch keys.

In Depth

This is a nicely shaped Microsoft Natural Keyboard clone. I have only tested it in the store, but I did so extensively. While I really like the layout of keys, the feel of the keys themselves is lacking, at least to my tastes. The keys are silent (good), but are not tactile at all (bad). They do have a good amount of resistance to them, but they never "give way" like tactile keyboards do (early IBM keyboards are a classic example). Price: about $40.

ZEOS Cobra motherboard

ZEOS Cobra motherboard, with 5 ISA, 3 PCI, and 6 SIMM slots.

As you can see from the specs, a nice board, but it only works at the speed of the clock crystal soldered on to the PC board, in my case at 60 Mhz. Otherwise a real quality board, if dated (it uses the mercury chip set)!

Slot Type Length PCI If six SIMMs are installed, 14 cm for sure, maybe even full length. Full length for sure if less. PCI Full length. PCI Full length, but shared with ISA slot. ISA Full length, but shared with PCI slot. ISA Full length if a small heatsink/fan is used for the CPU, otherwise only 24 cm. ISA 24 cm. (Blocked by heatsink/fan.) ISA 24 cm. (Blocked by heatsink/fan.) ISA 19 cm if any L2 cache is installed. Otherwise, full length if a small CPU heatsink/fan combo is used.

Length of add in slots are very important because some add in cards are so long that you can't fit them into your computer. All motherboard manufactures should include this information on their pages. Since they don't users like you and me will have to provide the values. These sizes are measured from the point that the back edge of the add in card fits into (AKA the metal slot cover), to the first obstruction on the board. BTW I define full length as a slot that is not obstructed by anything on the motherboard. Other obstructions in your case may limit the size of add in cards, severely if you don't have a tower. Some other facts: 16 bit ISA slots are 16.5 cm long. PCI slots are all 13 long. All cards of those lengths and shorter will fit in any motherboard that has an empty slot. Uncomfortable with centimeters? So am I, but I am working to change that. Just remember, there are 2.54 centimeters in an inch, if you need to convert these numbers. (You already knew that, right? :-)

There are a few flaws in this motherboard, but they are mostly universal, at least with modern motherboards.

1. There is no way to turn off the all OK beep heard every time the computer reboots, short of disconnecting the PC speaker.
2. When floppy check (which takes forever) is disabled, you can not boot from a floppy, no matter what the boot order is set to.
3. When rebooting, there is at least a 3 second delay between the [ctrl][alt][del] combo, and the clearing of the screen. My old 386 could do it instantly, why can't my Pentium? On the other hand I reboot much less than I did in those days.
4. No turbo switch! Geez, would it hurt that much to include one? This is Intel's fault, the PCIsets do not support turbo.

REVIEW: USR Sportster 28.8/33.6

I have tried two of these monsters, and both love to disconnect me from my internet provider. In all fairness, so have two Hayes modems (14.4 and 28.8), but considering that my old Intel 14.4 has no problem, I think this is no excuse. I may have line noise among other problems, but the Intel sure didn't care. I have tried everything with this thing, from running it at 300 baud, to trying almost ever AT command in the book, and a few that are not (ATWORKCURSEDMODEM, ATKILLKILLKILL, ...). You can't even say my operating system or the rest of my computer are at fault, since both an old MAC and really OLD PC have the same problem when connected to this beast. About the only thing I have done that has helped is write a program to make W95 war-dial the net.

REVIEW: Sony GDM 17SE1

This is a nice monitor, but with three faults:

1. The monitor has to warm up before the picture quality gets reasonable. The lower right hand corner of the screen gets a strong reddish glow when the tube is first turned on. After a few minutes the glow completely subsides.
2. While the monitor has convergence controls, the convergence changes notably from when it is first turned on, to about 30 minutes after that time, lowering the picture quality even more for a short period of time. Of course if you never turn your computer off you will never see this problem. As it is, you can just set it to the best setting for warmed up mode, and endure the convergence problems when it first starts up.
3. Video adjustment controls are hard to use and are poorly labeled.

On the other hand, once the monitor has warmed up, and the correct adjustments made (which you only have to do once) the picture quality is very nice, as good or better than any other I have seen. And can you say flat? After using an almost perfectly flat monitor like this you will hate all other curved monitors.

REVIEW: Microsoft Mouse 2.0

Everybody has seen one of these, it's the large "ergonomic" mouse made by MicroSoft. It has two flaws:

1. It has only two buttons,
2. Its mouse driver takes up more memory than any other mouse driver I have seen. On the other hand, all the smaller mouse drivers will crash one or more DOS programs I have, so all that extra memory must be doing something.

On the other hand, this mouse just plain feels good to use and to hold. No other mouse comes close. That is pretty important, and is the main reason I have not bought a 3 button replacement.

REVIEW: Intel 14.4i Faxmodem

The only downside to this wonder, which I paid only 70$ back when everybody else was paying $100 for 14.4, is that it is a 14.4. I never had any problems with this modem disconnecting without warning or good reason, and its manual was well written.

REVIEW: 300 Watt Generic Power Supply (HiPro HP-300PP)

I can't say that the 300 watt supply is really doing me any good, but more than once I have lost power to the house for long enough to faze the monitor, but not enough to make the computer reset. I like to think that with a normal power supply the entire computer would reset. On the other hand it is one noisy supply, more than other lower wattage supply I have listened to.