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Best Gaming Notebooks, April 2013by Jarred Walton on 4/12/2013 4:57 PM EST
63 Comments
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DemBones79 - Friday, April 12, 2013 - linkI'm surprised you didn't mention the Toshiba Qosmio X875Q7390 or something similar. It's a bit more expensive, but I find I'm drawn to Toshiba's slightly higher build quality. I have a 2-year old ASUS laptop that looks *exactly* like the CyberPower pictured and it is an absolute piece of garbage. The lid creaks and flexes, the keyboard is lousy, and the screen's bezel actually cuts off a sizable chunk of pixels in the upper corners. Not impressed. It was cheap and its guts work fine, but it's body is crap. YGWYPF. Reply
JarredWalton - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkMy personal experience with Qosmio is that they're in the same category as Clevo, ASUS, and MSI: big hunks of plastic that don't hold up all that well over time. Maybe newer models are better, but the last few times I've looked at a Qosmio the design and aesthetics have left me underwhelmed. If pricing is competitive with other options, sure, they're in the running, but right now it's $1600 for a model with i7-3610QM, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB HDD, and GTX 670M.
It's that last bit that really kills it for me. GTX 570M and 580M were awesome when they launched back in June 2011, but in April of 2013 they've lost most of their luster. The 670M is clocked just 4% higher than GTX 570M and is still a Fermi GF114 GPU, so unless pricing was down around $1000 I wouldn't even look at it these days. For the highest-end choices, I limited myself to GTX 670MX, 675MX, and 680M. YMMV Reply
will54 - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkI had a Toshiba with a core 2 duo and AMD 4570M in it for four years and it held up great, Not sure if they still use the shiny plastic but the aesthetics were horrendous. That's the main thing that stopped me from buying the fangbook as well. I'd be embarrassed to be seen in public with something that looks like a kids toy. Reply
JennyRogers - Friday, July 26, 2013 - linkI'm all for the Qosmio too. You're right, it is a bit pricer, but its build quality is spot on. I actually had the chance to use my cousins while he was visiting one weekend. I played Leauge of Legends like no tomorrow. I actually posted it on my blog where I compared it to other laptops. Check it out if you have time: http://bestgaminglaptopguide.com Reply
lightsout565 - Friday, April 12, 2013 - linkThe Y500 was on sale yesterday for $840. Worth keeping an eye on...
http://slickdeals.net/share/iphone_app/t/5962170 Reply
tviceman - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkSuch a great deal! Reply
dylan522p - Friday, April 12, 2013 - linkI really want you guys to do one for thin and light (aka Under 5/4 pounds, but not ultrabooks) Reply
Hubb1e - Friday, April 12, 2013 - linkTry checking out the Sony S series. It is thin and light with a 640m LE and an i5 or i7. My brother is enjoying his second one (the first was stolen) Reply
Tams80 - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkI've been looking at those. After hours of research the series seemed the best choice and quite well priced. With Haswell and whatever AMD have coming though, I couldn't quite get myself to bite the bullet and get one. I wish they did a 14" version.
The fanboy in me also wishes they'd stuck with the AMD GPU. Reply
JarredWalton - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkYou might want to tell that fanboy to read about all the issues people have had with Enduro laptops. Unless you get a great deal (or maybe you're really into BTC mining on your laptop? HD 7970M can do around 300-310MHash/s!), NVIDIA is the way to go right now. Hopefully AMD can truly fix the drivers in the next few months before Haswell so that I don't have to continue repeating this refrain. Reply
Tams80 - Sunday, April 14, 2013 - linkThe fanboy bit was supposed to be light hearted. ¬.¬
Anyway, now you've gone on the attack, I'll bite. It helps that you're wrong on several points.
The previous S series Vaio laptops had AMD GPU options. None were on the x9xx series, so commenting on the HD 7970, which would never have been in one (or at least the 13.3" one; I doubt Sony would use a high end GPU in the 15" anyway though) due to cooling issues is pointless. The S series also has a hardware GPU switch (which they kept for the current Nvidia ones), so your point is mute; unless of course you think your computer knows what you want to do better than you.
Oh, and why did you jump to the conclusion I like BTC mining on a laptop? Just because I like AMD GPUs? Grow up. Reply
JarredWalton - Monday, April 15, 2013 - linkNo attack was intended -- I mine BTC on my AMD GPUs. It's not enough to pay for a $1500 AMD laptop any time soon, but I'm serious about the 7970M doing 300MHash/s. :-) Sadly, at current difficulty that would only be around $60 per month, with around $10 in power cost... but it's dropping by about 15% every two weeks. A $200 dGPU would be a far better ROI, basically.
I understand people rooting for AMD (or whatever other company you want to name). I don't do that. I am just saying that no matter how much someone likes AMD, getting a "gaming laptop" with an AMD dGPU right now is asking for problems. I have a bunch of desktop AMD hardware, and even there drivers are not always 100% there. Case in point: install the 13.3 betas and then try to downgrade to the 13.1 WHQL drivers. How do you do that?
1) Uninstall all AMD software.
2) Run Driver Fusion (a non-AMD piece of software) to remove some of the crap that the Catalyst uninstaller misses.
3) Make sure all the OpenCL stuff got uninstalled as well (several files in the Windows\System32 and Windows\SysWOW64 folders).
4) If you want to reinstall the APP SDK, you also need to clean that out (at least rename ..\Documents\AMD APP folder).
5) Reboot.
6) Now install the other driver, and if you've done everything right you're now back on 13.1.
Contrast that with NVIDIA's downgrading of drivers:
1) Install old driver.
2) If you want to be "safe", check the option to do a clean install.
3) Reboot (maybe twice?) and you're done.
Going back to laptops with AMD dGPUs, here's something else: hardware switches are *worse* than Enduro in most cases because you never get any driver updates (or maybe one or two if you're lucky). The previous series VAIO S is still running drivers from within months of its launch date. If you want a gaming laptop (which is what this article is about), that is absolutely not going to fly. I wish I still had a VAIO S around so I could try Bioshock, Far Cry 3, Hitman, or any number of other games released in the last six months to see if they work properly. I bet half of the AAA titles need new drivers -- drivers that simply don't exist. Hardware switches are also going away for Windows 8, as Microsoft basically won't give you a Windows 8 sticker as an OEM if you have a hardware swich.
The reason I harp on AMD's drivers is because they're still broken, and until they're fixed they will continue to lose market share, get upset customers because of missing driver updates, which in turn leads to more lost market share. Do that long enough and you might have to leave the GPU race as well, just like they've basically left the CPU race. I do NOT want AMD to stop being competitive with Intel and NVIDIA. Fixing their mobile platform is a key item for me so that I can confidently recommend their products. Reply
NeoAks007 - Monday, April 15, 2013 - linkAnd I thought I was the only one mining BTC with AMD 7970M. 305 MHash/sec (on average) on my Alienware M17x seemed less to me as compared to similar desktop GPUs (HD 7870/7850); but happy to find out, I am not alone. :-)
With the difficulty level bitcoin network is at the moment, mining with mobile/single dGPU is almost a waste (my reward approx 0.02 BTC per day on Slush's pool). AISC based custom solutions is way forward for serious miners. Reply
crfog - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - linkI bought a Clevo with a 7970M upon release. I had lots of issues with drivers over the first 6-8 months, having followed your articles and the progress AMD was making and discovering myself that certain combinations of AMD/Intel drivers would fix my Enduro issues in some games but not others. I had all but given up when I came across some forums directing me to the "Leshcat" custom drivers. Visited this modders site, downloaded his drivers and followed the instructions - issues solved (though I haven't tried more than one of his releases, so maybe I got lucky?). For anyone still having Enduro issues, I direct them to look up the Leshcat drivers - everyone I've talked to has found their issues solved by them as well.
And I agree, the 7970M is a beast for bitcoin mining, though recently I've been hopping back and forth between LTC, PPC and TRC since the BTC difficulty went skyhigh. Reply
JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - linkSadly, Leshcat's drivers are a bit hit and miss with other Enduro laptops. I got the 13.1 release working okay on a Sony VAIO CA290X, but on Windows 8 when I tried installing the 13.3 I basically ended up with a system that refused to boot into Windows. I might have done something wrong in the configuring/installing process, but I suppose being forced to do a clean install and go back to Win7 can be seen as something of a blessing. :-) Reply
pellaeon - Monday, April 15, 2013 - linkI have the latest VAIO S15, it's pretty nice. One thing to note is that some guys created a GPU BIOS flash that got my GT640M up to 950mhz, It upped its performance to well over GT650M. Still wish they used the GDDR5 though. It's not like the thing was cheap to begin with. Reply
Wolfpup - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - linkWhile I typically love Sony's stuff, personally I'd avoid it so long as Sony blocks Nvidia/AMD from providing driver updates. Reply
Friendly0Fire - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkI pulled the trigger mere weeks ago on an Asus UX51Vz. Ivy Bridge i7, 8GB of RAM, RAID0 SSDs (total 256gb), GT650M, 1080p IPS matte screen, full metal body, 4.5lb.
Couldn't be happier really, and GPU performance is pretty good for the size and weight. I haven't had enough of a run with it to tell about battery though, just that Optimus beats AMD's solution anyday. Reply
tech.noob.fella - Sunday, April 14, 2013 - linksamsung series 7 chronos? at 5.1 pounds(2.3kg) and under 1inch thick(23mm), it packs in a radeon hd 8870m(gtx 670 equivalent).....only problem is it is not readily available yet except in uk Reply
Rassassin - Friday, April 12, 2013 - linkThe budget option provided is terrible. Why not the Acer Aspire V3-571G-6622 instead? It's $599 (on Newegg), with an Intel i5-3230M and Nvidia GT 730M. That blows the doors off of the Ideapad Z585's AMD APU solution. Reply
Rassassin - Friday, April 12, 2013 - linkIt's currently out of stock, but should be back. It's also on Amazon, but at a slightly higher price. Reply
coolhardware - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkThe V3-771G is a nice series of laptops too, I especially like the crazy expandable 32GB of RAM they support ! :-)
RAM upgrade photos/info:
Amazon as well as NewEgg carry the V3-771G line starting at $699 :-)
And the RAM upgrade info: Reply
JarredWalton - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkThose are more expensive, and while GT 630M is definitely faster than Trinity, battery life and thermals tend to be excellent on Trinity APU-only solutions. (I wouldn't do Dual Graphics, tough.) Anyway, with everything else being NVIDIA and Intel, Trinity was the only solution I could really get behind, and as a budget option it's not bad. Reply
anandrkris - Friday, April 12, 2013 - linkhttp://www.alienware.com/ubuntu/ for open-source lovers and even for others who are bored of windows. :-) Now with Steam on Linux, gaming is a viable alternative. Reply
nerd1 - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkI think it is extremely absurd to use linux on dedicated gaming rig. I do multi-boot into linux for work, but not for gaming at all. Reply
Kill16by9TN - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkSince I am no longer willing to consider anything without a matte IPS or PLS display with a resolution of less than 1920x1080 (better: x1200) and a luminescence of at least 400cd/m², I'd appreciate, if you could include those details in future notebook recommendations.
Info about the presence and type of ExpressCard and M.2 or mSATA slot(s) in addition to the regular HDD bay and if the keyboard being backlit, would be appreciated as well. Reply
nerd1 - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkToo bad all 1200p laptops are now gone, and you won't find too many laptops exceeding 300nits (except for some outdoor laptops) Reply
Tams80 - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkYep, 1200p has very sadly gone. The 17" Macbook Pro and I think a HP Elitebook (with a gorgeous DreamColor display) some years ago were the last. Well, I suppose the Retina Macbooks count, but the 13" doesn't have a dGPU and the 15"'s is rather weak.
The Chromebook Pixel is 400nits. XD Reply
Dribble - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkJust bought a high end notebook - custom build (pc specialist) - 16gb, SSD, i7-3740QM, GTX 675MX, AUO matt screen. Impressively fast cpu for mobile, not really that much slower then desktops these days, SSD also means HD just as quick as any desktop. Nvidia graphics just work - not had to do a thing with optimus just installed drivers and off we go. Geforce experience also v good - you just install a game and click optimize and instantly get some good settings - really is a step up on having to do everything manually. Reply
ShieTar - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkI wanted to protest the lack of options with an SSD, but then I went to check what options exist, and there admittedly aren't that many Notebooks with both an SSD and also a gaming-capable SSD. The ASUS 15" Zenbooks do have the SSD-Raid 0 which drives them to a 1500$ pricetag, which is a bit much for just getting a 650M to game with. There is the Schenker XMG A102 series, which may not even be sold outside of germany. With a Quad-Core CPU, 8GB of RAM, 250GB SSD and a 650M at a price of 1000€ they look pretty solid, but sadly just come in an 11.6" form factor, which isn't exactly ideal for gaming. It makes the 1366x768 resolution give a decent density though.
Other than that I really don't see any good options, you apparently have to choose between either an SSD or a gaming-capable GPU. Which I find rather annoying . Reply
Tams80 - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkUnless your after specific configurations, such as RAID 0, then the lack of an SSD is a mute point. These aren't laptops that have soldered drives, so you can easily replace the HDD with an SSD. In fact, for most of them there probably are options for them to come with SSDs, but in almost all cases, you'd be silly to pay the premiums demanded. Reply
ShieTar - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkYeah. I did replace the HDD in my current Notebook by an SSD. Wanted to reinstall Windows from the recovery DVD provided by ASUS, and was informed that "This version can not be installed on this computer, only on the Notebook you got it with."
So, not only did I buy a mechanical harddrive I did not want, I also bought a crippled Windows-License that is now useless for me.
So for my next Notebook I'd much rather buy it exactly as I need it. Reply
will54 - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkI had the same problem with my g75vx with win 8. I had to clone the drive than properly align the partitions which sent me to the error screen so I than had to reset it to factory and now it works. It was a pain but it's much quicker and I still have the 1TB drive for movies and pics. Reply
JCDNWarrior - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkExcellent article, nice information to have as to what laptop seems to be a good buy for this month. Saves a lot of time.
I however want to vent a pet peeve I've had ever since Crysis 1 came out. It was simply really badly optimized on release, by which I mean, the game ran slower and required more of the system than it should, since with the Ultra High Config mod (let alone other lighting mods for further eye candy without performance decrease) I could play the game's Very High settings just fine on a Intel E8400 at stock speed and Geforce 8800 GT on a P5Q Pro motherboard very properly around 30 FPS, only the first part of the first snow level forced medium settings to play well.
As such, in a perfect world, I'd really like every site that uses Crysis 1 as a benchmark/playthrough bench to apply that mod first. Then again, similarly the same could be said about mods that improve performance in games such as Skyrim.. slippery slope.. Reply
JarredWalton - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkCrysis Warhead was better optimized but still runs only marginally faster than the original at similar settings. Anyway, my main point is that there are games out there that will punish your GPU, and if you buy something that's good for 1080p and Medium settings there will inevitably be a game released that you want to play that will force you to lower your resolution and/or your settings -- and it always seems to happen sooner rather than later in my experience. Basically, if you're really into gaming and you want to play on a laptop, I'd suggest saving up for the fastest GPU you can reasonably afford or risk a Battlefield 3 or Crysis or Metro 2033 that simply can't be run well without seriously reducing the graphics quality. Reply
will54 - Saturday, April 13, 2013 - linkWhat happened to the 680M in the fangbook. A month ago I checked them out and they had the 680M for $230-250 more than 675mx. The Fangbook 100,200 or 300 has the one option (675mx) but I just read a review of it with the 680M. Reply
JarredWalton - Sunday, April 14, 2013 - linkProbably lack of inventory or sales. 675MX is actually pretty close in performance I think, and it uses less power, making it a potentially better balanced solution overall. Reply
kogunniyi - Sunday, April 14, 2013 - linkI have the chance to buy an m17x r4 with the 7970m for cheaper than a Clevo with the same hardware. This includes the prices of extended warranties on both. (With the 680m, it would be ~$150 more than the Clevo and MSI barebones.) Would you recommend it?
Also, has Anandtech benchmarked the m17x r4 with the 7970m (Intel GPU disabled)? Reply
JarredWalton - Sunday, April 14, 2013 - linkInterestingly, I have one that I'm playing with. Turning off the HD 4000 doesn't actually seem to work all that well for me. I got some screen corruption and other anomalies, so I turned Enduro back on -- though perhaps I missed some option for switching? I just used the keyboard shortcut.
Anyway, I think the M17x is the best built of the bunch, and personally I like the keyboard and aesthetics, but it's not perfect by any means. When it works right, 7970M is quite fast...but the 5-10% of the time when it goes wrong can be really frustrating. Reply
NeoAks007 - Monday, April 15, 2013 - linkI have recently purchased M17x-R4 with 7970M. Works fine with HD 4000 disabled but sometimes weird artifacts show up on screen (random triangles or black and white squares/rectangles - Catalyst 13.3 beta). More of a annoyance but nothing serious. Playing Crysis 3 with very high settings at 4xMSAA@1080p gives around 30 FPS on average.
Ignoring the excellent build quality and awesome AlienFX enabled keyboard, I do find some issues with this rig:
1. Too heavy and looks fat. I do believe that the design is now couple of years old and needs to be reviewed and toned. I prefer sleeker designs like Razer Blade and this is nowhere near that.
2. If you push GPU to limits, this laptop gets ready to take off like a fighter jet. Fan gets super angry and very noisy (as if it is complaining) as soon as temp hit 60 degrees (C) which can be disturbing on occasions.
3. Super Glossy screen is awkward for darker images/videos. You don't need mirror to do your hair as this screen takes care of that. You can even see your reflection on this screen with all lights turned off in room when video gets dark.
4. Alienware thinks that only millionaires buy M17x when you see their prices of Memory and other upgrades. Base config is at a decent price in my opinion considering sturdy build quality, but memory and disk upgrades do not make any sense for price being charged (prefer to upgrade RAM/SSD on your own).
Nevertheless, you'll love and hate it. Keyboard is really great with AlienFX (looked very strange in beginning but as you get used to it, you will start appreciating it). Trackpad is bit weird but again who won't use a mouse on a gaming machine. Screen is good except for darker tones described above. And performance? On par with the elites!
4. Reply
beck2448 - Sunday, April 14, 2013 - linkYou guy really need to check out AVA direct. They have EVERY option available and very competive prices.. Reply
JarredWalton - Monday, April 15, 2013 - linkWe've reviewed plenty of their systems. You might want to check out the Clevo P150EM and P170EM links in the article, as they point at AVADirect. Reply
Hrel - Monday, April 15, 2013 - linkW350ETQ: I'm amazed you guys missed this one. It is easily the best bang/buck of any laptop out there. Lenovo had a GREAT one for about 1100 on newegg with a GTX660M but it's gone now. Doesn't seem to be coming back, sadly.
Lower end Clevo (slightly) than the one you mentioned. GTX660M, which is built on a smaller manufacturing process than GTX675MX and actually performs faster in some cases due to higher clocks. AND it's cheaper!
$1070 after coupon (google it) and shipping. configured the way I like, Killer N wireless, 8x1GB DDR3 1600, 1TB hdd to sell cause I'm gonna put my own SSD in it, and another 8GB of RAM. One of my friends just bought this and it's awesome. I have P151hm model with the GTX560M, due to the process shrink the newer model is surprisingly thin and light and COOL. Runs even faster than mine, and even quieter. Reply
JarredWalton - Monday, April 15, 2013 - linkThe GTX 660M is decidedly NOT faster than a GTX 675MX -- not by a long shot! It's really just a highly clocked GK107 core, whereas the GTX 675MX uses the GK106 core (or sometimes GK104). In some cases the GTX 660M can surpass the performance of GTX 670M (GF114 based), but 670MX is generally 50% or more faster, never mind the 675MX (which is just higher clocked RAM than 670MX with a 256-bit memory interface instead of 192-bit). Reply
PubFiction - Monday, April 15, 2013 - linkAnandtech is really losing it honestly, high end gaming and no mention of 120hz screens? Also no mention of the key rollover state of the laptops. How can you have a top end gaming machine without 120hz. And how is it going to work when certain key presses don't even work. I guess when anandtech is too busy buying into the industry lameness of sealed battery phones, no SD slots and treating everything as a disposable appliance, they have completely lost sight of what is important to gamers and hard core enthusiasts. Reply
Drasca - Monday, April 15, 2013 - linkCare to name some of these dream machines, show their availablity and prices?
If there is a matte IPS 120 hz screens on a laptop, I want to know about it. I am personally aware of (there's probably more) two series of laptops Toshiba's and Asus doing 120hz screens. Those are TN and they don't have powerful enough GPU's to maintain over 60 fps for higher end games. Reply
ShieTar - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - linkThe Schenker XMG Ultra Series comes with an 120Hz Full-HD Screen, and at the very least a 670MX to feed it. Of course that comes with a starting price of at least 1850€ (~2500$), and you can easily raise that to >5000€ if you feel that you absolutely NEED an 8-core XEON, 32GB of RAM and two 680Ms in SLI.
But I think that kind of machine is just out of place in an overview-article that needs to consider normal budgets in order to be relevant to more than 0.1% of the readership. Reply
msahni - Monday, April 15, 2013 - linkHi there,
Lenovo has been shipping the GT750M and GT760M chipsets on their ideapad Y series for some time now. How much better are these compared to the previous generation..
Lenovo Ideapad Y580 Core i7 3630 16GB 1600Mhz GTX660M 2GB 256GB Plextor mSATA + 1TB HDD 15.6 FHD.... Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - linkGT 750M is basically just rebadged GT 650M/GTX 660M with modified clocks. (As far as I know, GT 760M doesn't exist yet -- and it would likely be a GTX part.) The 750M will have GPU core clocks of 967MHz plus Boost, with 5GHz GDDR5. GTX 660M by comparison is 835MHz core with 4GHz RAM. So the new model is definitely faster, to the tune of around 15% (more in some cases), but pricing is also higher since this is a new configuration ($1300 I think is the minimum, unless you get it on a short-term sale). Reply
Notmyusualid - Monday, April 15, 2013 - linkI'd like to add a comment about Alienware - with regards to warranty.
Week before last, Win8 on my M18x R2 crashed, and failed to repair its startup. Although I 'refreshed' it, (and lost all programs), I grew to hate Win8 anyway, and assumed Win8 was the culprit, and therefore I restored my Win7 backup.
On Wednesday morning my M18x R2 booted up, I checked mail, and then it crashed whilst idle. It didn't appear to boot again. My diagnosis was a failed primary 7970M GPU.
Disclosing my tech background to tech support over the phone, and then my diagnosis, they accepted my opinion, and the FOLLOWING DAY a tech was at my home - fitting a new 7970M graphics card, whom was not only a really nice guy, but skilled at his job too.
My computer now has zero graphic bugs (*which I've not been able to say before for crossfire 7970M*), and actually performs a few fps faster too (due to the Artic Silver used?). I wish I'd checked vbios versions before & after.
What other company do you know will come to your home within 24hrs of a tech support call, and honor that warranty internationally?
They have just ensured I am likely an Alienware customer for life.
Be sure to SEE, and HOLD an M18x before considering that purchase - fine for me, but too big for many tastes. Reply
Mr.Kornnugget - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - linkThe Fang III and the IBUYPOWER? Really? Other than it looking like they were made of the cheapest plastic they could find, they only has one fan to cool the CPU and GPU. They have to be noisy as all heck when your gaming with it. You can get the M17xR4 equipped with the 675m for $1749, so I am not sure why you would load it with the 680m to compare it with the Fang III. The 680m has always been way over priced. The m17x has far better cooling with a separate fan for the CPU and GPU plus the fans pull air from the keyboard bezel to cool your MB and HDD's. If you are over the $1000 mark on a laptop then spend the little extra and get a better built machine. Reply
kogunniyi - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - linkA side note, because buying a 675m for $1749 is in most cases ludicrous: ordering on the phone can yield a much better price. Reply
Mr.Kornnugget - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - linkI agree, I personally would call or look for a promotion, but my point was that in the article he makes it sound like the only comparable Alienware laptop to the Fang III or IBUYPOWER is the m17x with the 680m at $2200 bucks. Alienware is a bit more money when compared to the other brands but it doesn't need to be inflated. Reply
Wolfpup - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - linkI had no idea someone made a notebook with TWO GT 650s! Obviously I'd rather have 2 than 1, but it begs the question, why not just simply go for a single higher end GPU? I've never had a use for SLI as I don't need to be bleeding edge and don't miss any weirdness it brings, but I don't see it as useful unless a single of the best GPU just isn't good enough for you.
Still, the geek in my finds it awesome/hilarious that there's a notebook with two GT 650s! Reply
red-five - Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - linkI'd like to take up a couple of points around the MSI GT70, the Fang III X7-100.
Firstly, considering you have mentioned build quality a couple of times in relation to other notebooks listed in this article, it's worth pointing out that the build quality of the GT70 is poor. The plastics used are extremely fimble and there is noticeable flex in the underside of the chassis. Although it may have more "verve and style than Clevo's notebooks" as Dustin mentions in his referred review, it does look a lot more tackier than the P150EM in comparison.
Dustin also says "Ultimately I continue to be disappointed by the relatively cheap plastic used for the majority of the shell. It still feels much more solid than older Clevo units did" - worth pointing out that this article was written in August 2012 when the P150EM was available and the P150HM had been around for quite a while using the same eternal chassis. You have to go back to the W860 to have a partially valid point of criticising "older Clevo units" build quality - the P150 chassis is far from un-solid in comparison!
Secondly, the thermal design of the MSI chassis leaves a lot to be desired. Unlike the Clevo and Alienware alternatives, the MSI uses a single fan to cool both the CPU and GPU. This may just be acceptable with a 3630QM and 675MX but push both hard at the same time and you will loose clock speed on either component due to throttling. Install a 680M, which is available in the chassis, and pair it with any quad core CPU and you will see the 680M throttle heavily.
The "High End" choice really should have a 7970M (vast majority of driver issues have been resolved) or 680M included. The 675MX, although a capable card, is not going to let you play ultra at 1080 - the two more powerful cards will and you certainly wouldn't want either of these in an MSI chassis! IMO "High End" should mean the best of the single GPU solutions, if not higher.
This is one of the main reasons why people don't understand gaming laptops. A single GT 660M really should be the absolute lowest GPU option to render a notebook "Gaming". Yes you can play games at lower resolutions with lower spec GPUs but IMO a "Gaming notebook" should allow you to play at decent quality settings at 1080 - if you only play at 720 you may as well just buy a console. Reply
sdgul - Wednesday, April 17, 2013 - linkGreat timing of the article.
I have been considering buying a nice mid-range laptop, until I saw MSI GX60. It made me serious about buying a gaming laptop because of the perfect price. For that price, it has really good battery life, not overly heavy, and good cooling system (from what I could make out from other people's reviews/comments), great screen, multi-channel sound out, and of course, the prize inclusion:7950.
I still did not see any contenders for it in the article. Maybe I don't care about gaming at everything maxed out, or may the MSI GX60 laptop really is great...There was a mention about minimum frame rate issue in an earlier article at AT, but the laptop wasn't really reviewed. Hmm I wonder how it will do as my first gaming laptop... Reply
Jarblater - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - linkIn my honest opinion, those seeking a new laptop with a focus on playing games should try to avoid the Lenovo Ideapad Z585. The reason for that is because Acer has a system which should perform about 20% faster for only $20 more. Instead of having the AMD A10 4600m with Radeon HD 7660g, I would prefer, personally, to have an Intel Core i5 3230m with a Geforce GT 730. This laptop can be found here at Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8... Reply
Wixman666 - Wednesday, May 01, 2013 - linkBest bang for the buck for a pure gaming laptop right now has to be the Lenovo Y500, NOW with the Nvidia Geforce 750M, core i7 3630m, 12GB memory, 1TB HDD and 16GB SSD, 1920x1080 screen, win 8 pro. You can get it direct from lenovo for $879! That's cheap cheap... here's the slickdeal link, always updated. http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/94080/lenovo-lenov... Reply
Wixman666 - Wednesday, May 01, 2013 - linkNot to mention the chassis is aluminum clamshell, it has a red backlit keyboard and lenovo support is GREAT. Just say no to Dell. Reply
karbom - Wednesday, May 01, 2013 - linkDELL Inspiron 3421 under 700$ is a very good buy too for gaming. It comes with NVIDIA GT 730m. Reply
Dug - Tuesday, May 14, 2013 - linkIs there anywhere that lists the graphics cards along with some fps info for different resolutions?
For the uninitiated I don't know if a 650m will be enough for what I play.
And if it is, then would it be worth waiting for Haswell? Reply
Rommel Anaya - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - linkwhich for gaming G75VX or lenovo ideapad y500 or macbook md2012 13inch Reply
Rommel Anaya - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - linkwhich is the best for gaming G75VX or lenovo ideapad y500 or macbook md2012 13inch Reply


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HOUSTON - Two people were wounded in a drive-by shooting outside a southwest Houston house.
Around 1 a.m. Thursday, police responded to a call about a shooting on Fondren Village near Fondren Place and found a large crowd of people outside a house.
Witnesses said they were having a party inside the home when someone driving a dark-colored BMW drove by and opened fire.
"They broke the [car] window, and basically the next thing you know, one of them hopped out of the window with a big gun and just started shooting," one witness said.
According to police reports, one man was shot in the leg. Emergency officials transported him to Memorial Hermann Hospital in stable condition.
Witnesses said another victim was also shot and taken to a local hospital.
"I don't know what happened," a second witness said. "I just heard somebody start screaming, and when I looked up, all I saw were shots being fired."
Police spent hours interviewing witnesses at the scene to try and determine a motive for the shooting. Witnesses said they believe "rival gang members" are responsible.
"We have our own private police patrol that comes through the community," resident Mike Lane said. "That's paid for by the homeowners' association. Something like this is very disturbing to me."
According to Houston police, there have been 43 robberies, 53 aggravated assaults and 174 burglaries in the area from September to November 2012.
"What we're going to have to do is establish a stronger rapport with the Houston Police substation, which is not too far from here, and step up our community patrols, especially during the early hours of the morning.
Police said they do not have a suspect in custody, and the investigation is ongoing.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.
Copyright 2013 by Click2Houston.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

subset: commoncrawl


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Call for papers!
The Modern American
A Scholarly Publication Dedicated to Diversity and the Law
The Modern American is American University Washington College of Law's scholarly publication dedicated to diversity and the law. TMA is a student-run publication founded in 2004. The Modern American is a name that conveys the nation's evolution as an increasingly diverse and complex place that is experiencing tremendous change, both exciting and frightening, in the era of twenty-first century politics.
Our mission is to provide a forum for frank, yet beneficial discussion of the law's treatment of marginalized and under-represented people in America. We publish articles with cutting-edge analysis of timely legal, social, and political issues affecting marginalized people and their communities. Our goal is to feature a spectrum of viewpoints in articles written by students, legal scholars, activists, and practitioners from all over the country.
Our mission is based on the fact that today we live in a time where the lines that separate issues of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender, and ability are rapidly moving closer together. Intersectionality is no longer an academic insight, but a lived reality for those who often experience marginality. As an increasingly diverse society the meanings of legal issues can longer be isolated to sound bites like "blacks vs. whites," "liberal vs. conservative," or "women vs. men." We, at The Modern American, have initiated a discussion about the issues that affect systemically marginalized people, marginalized experiences and voices, as well as the complexity within marginalized communities themselves, with a track-record of publishing articles offering unique perspectives and analysis of diversity and the law. It is our belief that issues of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender and ability are lens that are not reserved to any particular ideology—our philosophy is to provide an incisive and critical look into these issues from a variety of perspectives.
The Modern American is not a traditional scholarly law publication that is limited to technical, sometimes esoteric discussion of legal issues. Our publication believes legal writing must examine political, historical, and social contexts, to engage in complex and full legal analysis. TMA publishes legislative updates, book essays, interviews, conference reports, and other legal happenings, in addition to scholarly articles and essays that are relevant to people pushing for legal and social change.
Equally important, we aim to be accessible to a broad audience. Our articles are shorter and plainly written compared to traditional law publications. Similarly, our published issues are available online, in print by free subscription, and are archived in every major law database, including Hein Online, LexisNexis, Westlaw, and the Index to Legal Periodicals & Books. As a platform for traditionally under-represented scholarship, voices and views, we make an effort to publish cutting-edge work by students, emerging scholars, practitioners, and non-traditional scholarship and commentary by established legal minds and advocates.
TMA is one of the leading publications in the country on diversity and the law, and it continues to expand in its readership and visibility across the world.
TMA @ The Digital Commons & Blog
The Modern American is proud to announce that the publication is on the Digital Commons, the new legal scholarship repository and online publication destination. Visit this website for our most featured online content and to submit to The Modern American. Also, visit Modern America: The Modern American's New Law & Politics Blog.
Disclaimer: Any opinions appearing in The Modern American are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of American University Washington College of Law or The Modern American.


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Graphic Designers
Creatives to Watch in 2016
While it's never easy to predict the next big names in the worlds of art and design, with time and effort an editorial publication can compile a list of talent worthy of that potential acclaim. That's exactly what It's Nice That has done with their...
1 Page at a Time: A Daily Creative Companion
Graphic designer Adam J Kurtz has built his portfolio on uplifting but slightly cheeky missives printed on brightly colored objects ranging from balloons to books. His latest creation invites the rest of us to get inspired in 2015 with "1 Page at a...
Perfetto Pencils
Everything about esteemed graphic designer Louise Fili's Perfetto Pencil set is perfectly retro. Harkening the graphic exuberance of vintage Italian packaging design, the bunch includes 12 double-sided, two-color pencils in red and black.
Alex Trochut's Binary Prints
Illustrator, designer and typographer Alex Trochut creates art for some of the world's best-known brands including Coca-Cola, Nike and the New York Times. Working between Barcelona and Brooklyn, Trochut is admired for his ability to take simple...
Design Indaba: Paula Scher
Influential American artist and designer Paula Scher kicked off this year's Design Indaba with a talk she titled "Small Breakthroughs, and How They Came to Be." During her presentation, she detailed both the struggles and solutions involved in several...
Scout Regalia Bikes
Just one floor up from "Scale," Cool Hunting's curatorial contribution to Noho Design District at the Standard Hotel, the work of 12 West Coast designers was on view in the "Hotel California" exhibition. Among the group was Scout Regalia, a multidisciplinary...
Iron Curtain Graphics
The ideological imagery from the height of Communist rule in central and Eastern Europe has become a familiar motif in the west in the decades since its fall. From the illustrations of bourgeois fat cats to the classic "Niet" posters depicting a...
100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design
In the new chronologically ordered book "100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design", Steven Heller and Véronique Vienne explore the most important moments in an industry they themselves helped to define. Part of publisher Laurence King's popular...
On display through 15 April 2012, the exhibition "21—: 21 Years of Cultural Posters" celebrates the more intriguing covers of the quarterly Flemish design magazine Kwintessens since it started in 1992. Almost every issue reflects the vision...
Saul Bass for Anatomy of a Murder
Legendary graphic artist Saul Bass has created logos for some of the biggest brands—Girl Scouts, Kleenex, US Airways, AT&T—and designed some of the most iconic album covers and movie posters, but it's his movie title sequences he's most...
CH ExtraOrd
Sponsored content: We are well underway on a redesign of Cool Hunting that will bring you an extraordinary new interface to even further elevate the quality of the original content we create. Among the various components of this project is a custom...
Hisham Bharoocha
Sponsored content: Brooklyn-based visual artist and musician Hisham Bharoocha blurs the boundaries of artistic medium, creating multi-sensory anthems that deftly move between a daydream quality of images and sound. The skateboarding scenes in...
Tiger Translate Beijing: Double Vision
Following an event in Hanoi earlier this year, Tiger Beer brought its free art and music series, Tiger Translate, to Beijing. The most recent installment brought together artists from East and West to collaborate on the theme of the metropolis. This...
Commandments as legendary as the man who created them, Dieter Rams' ten principles of "good design" provide an essential guide for any creative seeking to produce high-quality work. In an effort to visualize the enduring concepts beyond the many...


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You won't be able to dismiss this by usual means (escape or click button), but you can close it programatically based on user choices or actions.
"I love this design and every time I order another piece of stationary for our big day, I fall in love with the design all over again."
"These are beautiful and coordinate perfectly with the other programs and menu cards in this line. We're using this for our nautical wedding. I should have paid more attention to the dimensions listed in the description, these are really small. We'll probably still use them but I would have preferred something with more room for the first and last names."


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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Racing fans started showing up at Daytona International Speedway on Wednesday night to prepare for a weekend headlined by the Coke Zero 400.
The speedway will host two races on Friday and Saturday -- the Subway Jalapeno 250 and the Coke Zero 400.
The weekend of racing kicks off Thursday with practice runs for both the Nationwide and Sprint Cup series at 2:30 p.m. Fans can start filing into the grandstands as practice begins. NASCAR stars are also expected to talk to fans and the media on Thursday. Jeff Gordon, Daytona 500 champion Matt Kenseth and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. are all expected to be in Daytona Beach for practice runs.
[Related: Full event schedule]
The grandstand will open at 2:00 p.m. on Friday for the Subway Jalapeno 250 qualifying laps. Qualifying for the Coke Zero 400 will follow at around 4:10 p.m. Fans can also get driver autographs during a session beginning at 4:30 p.m. Friday wraps up with the Subway Jalapeno 250, scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m.
On Saturday, racing fans will be treated to a concert by the band "Train" on the pit road stage at 5:00 p.m. The 54th running of the Coke Zero 400 will follow at 7:30 p.m.
[Related: Buy tickets to practice day and both races]
Saturday's race marks the first Sprint Cup event since a fiery crash at Daytona International Speedway during the Daytona 500.
Juan Pablo Montoya crashed into a jet dryer while returning to the race from pit row. The crash broke the jet dryer's fuel tank, spilling fuel onto the road. The fuel caught fire and sent flames shooting into the air.
Since the February 27th crash, NASCAR has required jet dryer drivers to wear fire suits and helmets while driving on any track. Crews at Daytona International Speedway repaved the damaged track at the end of March.
Copyright 2012 by ClickOrlando.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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A THORNBURY charity is organising a fundraiser to raise money for brain tumour patients in the south west.
Hammer Out based in Midland Way is urging members of the public, schools, clubs, pubs and workplaces in the region to show their support for Bandanas for Brain Tumours Day – by wearing a bandana and donating £1 to support the charity on March 7.
The charity was set up by Tina Mitchell Skinner from Alveston who lost her husband Paul to a brain tumour, when he was aged just 37. Mrs Mitchell Skinner now lives Rockhampton and campaigns endlessly to raise awareness.
She said: "There is no clear cause and no cure. Some brain tumours can now be treated or controlled by surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, but even those who are lucky enough to survive are likely to experience life-changing effects, both physical and emotional."
It is the second year in which Hammer Out has run the bandana campaign during March, which is designated Brain Tumour Awareness Month.
There are specially designed charity bandanas available to buy for just £3 each or people can wear their own.
Last year celebrities such as Olympic diver Tom Daley, Falklands hero Simon Weston, stylist Gok Wan and popular actor Ben Miller wore bandanas to show their backing for the campaign.
Money raised will enable Hammer Out to help brain tumour patients, their families, carers and loved ones who are facing and coping with a brain tumour diagnosis in the south west.
Demand for support services grows each year and the charity receives no statutory funding, relying solely on voluntary donations to raise the funds it needs to provide its services.
"We have been working with a family who lost their eight-year-old son without warning to a brain tumour last year. We are supporting a 17-year-old who is coming to terms with his dream of university being over because his brain tumour has affected his abilities to manage day to day activities. We are there for people whose brain tumour diagnoses mean that they have had to give up their job or driving or who suddenly suffer epilepsy which is a frequent side effect," said Mrs Mitchell Skinner.
"We are asking everyone if they would spare a thought - and a pound - next month for those whose lives have changed because of a brain tumour and to show their support by wearing a bandana on March 7 or running a bandana-themed fundraising event."
More information on the Bandanas for Brain Tumours Day can also be found at www.hammerout.co.uk/bandanas.


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Jeremy Larsen
TREINAMENTO: Acordo as 6h, corro e vou trabalhar. As 16h vou para a academia e faço condicionamento físico e as 16:30 faço wrestling, MMA ou Jiu jitsu.
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Episode 108: Minor League Memories
Peter Evans Posted on Sunday, December 23, 2012 at 10:06PM
Sorry about the lack of consistent updates. We should be back on track starting with this episode. Thanks for your support of our show.
In this episode, Brandon and Peter go down memory lane and discuss everything they loved growing up in minor league markets. Lots of conversation about silly team names, childhood heroes and everything else that comes with growing up going to minor league hockey games.
Links of Note:
Songs Featured In This Episode:
Intro: The Requiem of Frank Grimes by Elle
My Wonder Years Never Got Canceled by Dangers
The World in Front of You by Face To Face
True Believers by Bouncing Souls


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Karo Bio is currently dominated by the eprotirome project which has very large potential. At the same time, it is among the world leaders in drug development of pharmaceuticals that act through nuclear receptors. This drug class represents 10-15 per cent of the global pharmaceutical market and is expected to continue to grow.
Most of Karo Bio's operations that are currently conducted at the Huddinge campus are pre-clinical research and development along with several projects. Before these operations are transferred into a separate subsidiary, a cost efficiency program will be implemented. In order to do so, Karo Bio immediately initiates negotiations with labor unions about organizational changes. An independent management will be appointed in the subsidiary ahead of the spin-off.
The purpose of the spin-off is that, in both operations, sharpen the business focus, highlight values and create a platform for rational use of both companies' expertise and resources. The goal is to create two attractive investment options, a clear resource allocation and better business opportunities.
Karo Bio's financing is deemed sufficient to implement eprotirome's Phase III program, after which an application for marketing approval will be submitted. Karo Bio aims to finance the subsidiary under a transition period, but intends to seek new owners to the subsidiary for its future funding.
"We want to create two attractive companies with clear objectives and the right resources. In the stock market, Karo Bio is today synonymous with eprotirome which overshadows our other operations. Through the spin-off, we want to create increased value for shareholders and protect their interests," says CEO Per Bengtsson. "The name Karo Bio is a strong brand name in the field of nuclear receptors, both in academic and industrial circles. It makes sense from a business perspective that this name follows the pre-clinical activities."
The Board intends to, within six months, present a detailed plan on how the spin-off will take place. A proposal for change of name will be submitted to the general meeting.
About Karo Bio
Karo Bio is a pharmaceutical company focused on the research and development of innovative drugs for large medical needs. The company runs a number of drug development projects within the indication areas cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, neuropsychiatry, inflammation, autoimmune diseases, cancer and women's health. An important foundation for the company's activities is its unique knowledge of nuclear receptors as target proteins for the development of novel pharmaceuticals, as well as related mechanisms of action. Karo Bio is based in Huddinge, Sweden, has around 70 employees and is listed on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm.
Karo Bio publishes this information in accordance with the Swedish Securities Markets Act and/or the Swedish Financial Instruments Trading Act. The information was published on 24 October, 2011, at 08:30 am CET.
This press release is also available online at www.karobio.com and www.newsroom.cision.com
This information was brought to you by Cision http://www.cisionwire.com
CEO Per Bengtsson:phone: +46 8 608 6027, +46 734 474 128or by e-mail: email@example.com


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We pick our highlights of the product unveilings, bringing you the essential news from the 2013 International CES in Las Vegas (January 6 -11).
What it is: HAPIlabs' HAPIfork.
Key features: French outfit HAPIlabs has been showing off its "smart fork" at CES, in what appears to be the first example of connected cutlery. Read more


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The Carmelite Sisters in Kiev, Ukraine, Thank You for Your Support
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Success Story
The Carmelite Sisters in Kiev would like to say a big "thank you" to our benefactors for the support you have given them. "We are extremely grateful to ACN and all your staff and your benefactors, and we will make every effort to repay our debts by our prayers," says Sister Maria Celina, the Prioress of the Congregation of the Most Holy Trinity, speaking on behalf of all her fellow Sisters.Their convent was founded in 1991 after the great political changes in the former Soviet Union, when Carmelite Sisters from two Polish convents bravely and selflessly accepted the challenge of working, through their prayers and their presence, for the spiritual rebuilding of the post-communist society here. Initially they lived in very cramped conditions, close to the Church of the Holy Cross. This church, which was really more of a chapel, was at that time the only Catholic church in the Ukrainian capital in which Holy Mass was celebrated. The other two churches had been confiscated and converted, one into a museum of atheism and the other into an organ museum. Later, between 1994 and 1996, the Sisters were able to build a new convent of their own in the grounds of a former state-owned farm, or sovkhoz, in the midst of fields and fruit trees. However, shortly afterwards, the city authorities designated the surrounding area for building development, and that marked the end of silence and seclusion for the Sisters. Already in 1998 the Sisters had been obliged to increase the height of their enclosure wall on the southwest side of the convent. However, only a little later a new, multi-story building was constructed less than fourteen feet away, this time on the north side. So again the Sisters had to increase the height of the walls in order to protect the enclosure from being overlooked from outside. ACN helped for this work with a contribution of $16,300.Of the original five Sisters, two are still in the convent today, two have died, and three more have returned to Poland. Today most of the 10 Sisters living in the convent (nine of them professed Sisters, while one is still in training) are now local Ukrainian vocations. In fact, the convent is flourishing so well that, not even 10 years since it was founded, it has been able to send some of its Sisters to establish a new convent Carmel in Pokotylivka, near the town of Kharkiv.But the biggest challenge is how to support the community. For as contemplative religious they lead a life of ceaseless prayer in the seclusion of the enclosure, and it is difficult to find a means of supporting themselves that accords with this way of life. They grow fruit and vegetables in their garden for their own use, yet there are so many other things to pay for. Neither the manufacture of altar breads and liturgical vestments nor the production of wax crib figures, nor indeed the annual collection that is taken in the immediate area of the convent, is sufficient to cover their needs. Given this situation, ACN is providing help, with a contribution of $2,000 a year. That is why the Carmelites are so grateful to all the benefactors of ACN for your continuing support. And we are sure they are also remembering you in their prayers!
Aid to the Church in Need commits to invest your funds where they will have the greatest impact for the Church that we serve. Funds donated to Aid to the Church in Need's projects will be used towards the greatest need in our programs to help keep the Faith alive. Code: 438-06-19


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Thecus N2560: Intel's EvanSport NAS Platform Reviewby Ganesh T S on 11/25/2013 3:30 PM EST
75 Comments
Back to Article
SeeManRun - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkI do not understand why someone would buy a NAS with only 2 bays. They keep making these products, so obviously people are buying them, but if you are technically savvy enough to know you need a NAS, wouldn't you want one with more bays?
I have been toying with building my own, and I could not bother for less than 6 drives in a RAID 5 solution. Reply
brucek2 - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkI was wondering this exact thing. Plus, what's the marginal cost for an extra bay or two anyway? I'd expect the hard manufacturing costs for a 2 drive unit would be 80-90% of the 4 drive unit? Reply
kelstertx - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkI agree too, but the thing that comes to mind in favor of a 2 bay over 4 bay is if you wanted separate arrays for redundancy. A 2 bay with Raid 0 for size, and a second 2 bay with the same config lets you do backups and upgrade arrays as drive sizes get more affordable -- without having to wipe out your only array of data. Nice NAS boxes should allow addition of more drives and automatic resize for you, but this one can't even rebuild its own array from a failed drive in Raid 1, so it probably can't be trusted to resize either. So if basic storage was reliable, a pair of 2 bay boxes gets around the issue of trusting advanced things like recovery and resizing. Just guessing tho... I'd still get a 4 bay myself. Reply
Integr8d - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkWhy not get a 4-bay and create two separate volumes for disks 0 and 1 and then 2 and 3? As far as I know, these are all software raid. I own an 8-bay Synology that uses no hardware for the storage math. And it's all resizable. So I'd think that RAID 0 on two volumes within the same box should be no problemo.
The question on my mind is what RAID 0 even buys you in these systems. Unless you're running dual or quad Gig-E or 10Gig, what are you buying, besides a larger volume (and the added possibility of something going wanky)? I think that for the average user, four drives, with two each in RAID 1, makes more sense. Reply
Morawka - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkincreased writes and read speeds on RAID 0 even with 2 drives..
I myself would slap 2X 4GB drives in Raid 1. You wont get Double write but you would get double read speeds. Reply
Minion4Hire - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkYou don't see read improvements in RAID1. Nothing tangible or useful anyhow. But that's what he's getting at; modern hard drives can saturate gigabit ethernet with sequential reads. There isn't really a need for RAID0. Reply
Doomtomb - Monday, December 02, 2013 - linkYou'd slap 2x 4GB hard drives together? My flash drive has more space than that. Reply
vol7ron - Wednesday, December 04, 2013 - linkPretty sure he meant TB, not GB, which is the norm with home-based NAS. Reply
ace240 - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkYou might expect that, but you'd be wrong. One example:
DS213j (entry level Synology 2-bay NAS): $199
DS413j (entry level Synology 4-bay NAS): $379 Reply
brucek2 - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkThose are retail prices to consumers. My question ran to, how much did Synology have to pay to include those two extra bays? My guess is, unless they upgraded the cpu / networking / other chipsets to support more simultaneous clients (which would not be a necessity for me), a unit built on the same platform as the 2 drive unit but just offering space for 2 more drives should not cost much more. Reply
chizow - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkIt's not just the extra "physical" bays, it's the extra support for the extra features as well as the additional CPU grunt and RAM you generally get with these upgraded units. These add up to additional premium that you undoubtedly see in review results whne jumping up from entry level 2-bay to 4-6-8 bay SOHO NAS units. Reply
otherwise - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkFor the two NAS' ace240; the software; CPU; and Memory is the same. Reply
Gigaplex - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkWhat they charge and how much it costs them to make are separate things. Reply
Solandri - Wednesday, November 27, 2013 - linkBut addressing the GP's original question, the cost to make these things does not matter. People keep buying the 2-bay NASes because the manufacturers keep pricing them 4-bay NASes substantially higher.
The price premium was big enough for me to build my own 4-drive homebrew NAS. For non-techy people (e.g. my parents) I just get them a 2-bay off-the-shelf NAS. Reply
Hrel - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkI'm sure you're right on actual cost. But the 4 bay ones start $200 higher than the 2 bay NAS's. So it makes a lot more sense to buy a 2 bay NAS in RAID 0 and if you want your data backed up beyond that to just use the cloud or external hdd's. Reply
easp - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkWhy do people continue to think that products are or should be priced on marginal cost? The up-front engineering and product development costs are often a significant consideration.
These engineering efforts are generally focused on an entire product family, and the overall economics of the product family are often predicated on the fact that some of the members of the product line will have larger margins, and others will have smaller margins. Moreover, it is the lower-end items that tend to have the smallest margins, so taking the low-end products as the baseline further distorts the conclusions. Reply
brucek2 - Wednesday, November 27, 2013 - linkThis website caters to many hardware enthusiasts who frequently build their own systems, including servers and/or storage systems. If a manufacturer is going to arbitrarily add phantom costs to build(s) with certain configurations, it means that enthusiasts who want those configurations will be more likely to build vs buy in those cases (or switch to the more cost effective configurations.)
I have no problem with manufacturers recovering their R&D and making profits. It just sounds in this case like both the hardware BOM and the R&D are very similar for the two models, leading to what I feel is a legitimate question why one would be priced at double the cost of the other. Reply
easp - Thursday, December 05, 2013 - linkEnthusiasts often make the mistake of thinking that they are the target market for every product they see. They aren't, particularly when they don't value their time very highly. I'm guilty of the latter (I buy cheap Xyzel NASs when they are on sale for the purpose of running debian), but I try hard to avoid the former.
As to your sense that both hardware BOM and R&D are very similar for the two models, my original point is that reaching that conclusion suggests deeply flawed assumptions. R&D (and marketing costs) costs aren't distributed equally across all members of product families. Some models will have lower prices, lower cost of goods sold and lower margins, while others have higher cost of goods, and disproportionately higher margins and final selling price.
If it helps, look at it this way, if every tier in a product family bore an equal share of R&D and marketing costs, with consistent margins, then the higher-tier models would be somewhat cheaper, but the lower-tier models would be more expensive. Reply
ShieTar - Wednesday, November 27, 2013 - linkDifficult to say. With four drives instead of two, you get more heat, more vibrations, more mass. You might hit some design threshold, where all of a sudden you need to have a wider base, use different screws for fixation or add another cooling component.
I also think that there are actually plenty of customers who are happy with even a single drive in one of those. Just something to put movies and music on for all family members, and if the drive fails, so what. Its not like anybody made backups of his videotapes in the last century. So for the mass market, it probably makes sense to have a inexpensive 2-Bay unit, plenty of people will check for the cheapest unit which supports what they plan to do. Reply
puremind - Saturday, November 30, 2013 - linkWhy would you want an extra Bay if you are not prepared to purchase extra drives anyways? Reply
emacjohnson - Sunday, December 29, 2013 - linkbefore I looked at the paycheck of $8548, I accept that my friend was like realey bringing home money part time on their apple labtop.. there best friend has been doing this for only about twenty one months and recently cleard the mortgage on there place and bourt a great new Alfa Romeo. look at this site,,,,,,,,, Reply
OzzieGT - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkCloud backup...I use cloud backup, I don't need 6 drives. That's just insanity. Reply
Gigaplex - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkData caps. I can't back up 5+TB of data via the internet, and even if I could, it would take well over a month. Reply
Morawka - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkthe idea behind a good cloud backup system is file revisioning. You upload the bulk of your data one time, and only the files that have been changed or added, are uploaded each day. Reply
ace240 - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkErr, money?
A 2-bay NAS with 2 drives is almost exactly half the cost of a 4-bay NAS with 4 drives. If money is no object, get as much storage as you like. I love my 2-bay NAS -- spending $1000 was out of my budget to move to get 4 bays w/ 4 drives. Reply
swizeus - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkActually there is footprint thing though. For everyone who wants a lower profile NAS it will go with the 2 bays. Just want a centralize storage, not too much data going on anyway Reply
SetiroN - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkThis.
Home NAS devices are a joke and it's ridiculous to spend money on them.
To someone with any actual storage needs, anything less than RAID 6 is a joke and devices with 6+ slots actually cost more than 3x 2-slot, which doesn't make any sense.
Unless you want to spend a silly amount of money, you're much better off with something self built, although it does require a little expertise. Reply
hero4hire - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkZfs then? Reply
Namisecond - Friday, December 20, 2013 - linkIt actually makes a lot of sense to me. You mention it yourself: RAID 6.
A 2 drive NAS is only going to support JBOD, striping and RAID 1. Fairly easy to implement as far as hardware goes. Once you get to 4-bay and plus units, you start getting real redundancy with RAID 5 and 6, with hot swap spares and data error correction. This stuff doesn't come cheap.
If you want to see the difference between them, take apart a 2 port NAS. It's a single circuit board with a few low level IO chips. Take apart a Synology DS1511 or something similar and it's a full blown micro server on the inside with a real RAID controller card.
Even building your own unit isn't a cheap affair, especially if you factor in your own time. Up to a 4 or 5 bay unit, you may actually save some money building your own. Try building your own 8 or 12 bay unit and watch your build cost skyrocket. Reply
DanNeely - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkNot everyone is using their NAS to store thousands of DVD/BlueRay rips or tens of thousands of high megapixel raw images from their SLR. If you're just using one because you want your backups on something a bit more fault tolerant than a USB drive sitting on your desk and with a faster restore capability than pulling an entire system image down from the cloud, a 2 bay option is more than plenty.
I built my current NAS with a 4 bay mITX enclosure; but after a year I'd give even money odds that the system will be old enough I'll decide on a precautionary replacement before needing to add a 3rd data drive. The 4th bay is almost certainly going to remain empty unless I undergo a lifestyle change and greatly accelerate my rate of data retention.
In particular I suspect that 2 bay NASes sold with drives preinstalled are primarily marketed to people who want an appliance; not something they can tinker with. For them smaller is almost universally better since it takes up less room on the shelf in the corner where their modem and router are. If it fills up in a few years they wouldn't know how to add more disks to it, and the price the local computer shop would gouge them for labor to work on is high enough to make just getting a new one seem really appealing. Reply
Bob Todd - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkYou nailed it with the appliance reference. There's a lot of people out there who know enough, or have been screwed by a lack of backups when disaster struck before, that want a simple redundant backup solution. They don't have 20TB of blu-ray rips, they just want to keep their documents/family photos/etc. safe from hardware failures. I bought a cheap 2 bay Iomega ix2 for my parents when Newegg had them on sale for $80 and it's already saved me from a data related headache. For myself I built a much more capable home server, but our needs are completely different. Reply
JeffS - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkI have been using a 2-bay Synology NAS for years now. It draws very little power, takes up minimal space in my networking closet, and was ridiculously easy to configure. Even this older NAS supports 2 TB drives, and I'm running them in RAID 1. Just the other day, one died on me, and I was alerted by an alarm and yellow LEDs. I popped in a new drive, the RAID rebuilt, and I was good to go. When I've got 10,000 images from my cameras on a system, I do not want to tinker with it- I just want it to work. This little 2-bay box let me remove the local storage from all of the PCs in the house and put it in a place where I can easily back it up and where there's redundancy. Access is slower than on a local drive, but it's not bad over gigabit wired Ethernet.
In short, I have enough other things to tinker with that I don't want to fuss with my NAS. The software is polished & convenient, and all I really need is redundancy in a small footprint, so a 2-bay unit is perfect for me. Reply
Namisecond - Friday, December 20, 2013 - linkMight want to check your data for corruption after a drive goes south. RAID 1 doesn't offer data correction. Reply
Duodecim - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkI'm very technical, and I want a 2-bay NAS or enclosure. Two reasons:
I don't trust cheap non-battery backed RAID controllers, nor their rebuild procedures; RAID adds complexity with dubious benefits in a lot of end-consumer situations. You'd be better off manually sync'ing disks or creating snapshots (by means of hardlinks like rsync or Time Machine, or by means of filesystems like btrfs and zfs) and having the benefit that you can retrieve files that you accidentally deleted. Even if the RAID itself works fine, if you knock over the NAS, lightning strikes, you burn down your house or somebody runs off with all your gadgets, you better have backups somewhere else – you'd be better off with 2-bay non-RAID enclosures in different places than putting all your eggs in one basket.
The other reason is the added heat, noise, power consumption and space when running a loaded 4, 5 or even 8-bay enclosure. That's assuming your data fits in a 2-bay enclosure, of course. Reply
Oscarcharliezulu - Wednesday, November 27, 2013 - linkYou are exactly right about snapshots vs raid. When you share data with the family and especially kids, being able to restore previous versions or accidentally deleted files is the biggest benefit. Then having 2 nas boxes means if one dies due to its power supply or some other hardware (non disk) problem, you have a redundant backup. Do people really need raid 6 for their torrent files? For photos yes but really for your ripped off media? No. Reply
Namisecond - Friday, December 20, 2013 - linkDepends on what you're torrenting...For any archival purpose, RAID 6 is recommended. It really sucks when that snapshot you took turns out to be unreadable because 1 of your mirrored drives was going and spread the corruption to the other drives. Reply
easp - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - link1. Two bay devices are significantly cheaper, and accommodates enough storage for me now.
2. Buying excess capacity now is foolish, because it will generally be cheaper when I actually need it. Moreover, I'd rather age out older drives and replace them, rather than keep them around and add to them.
3. Having two two-bay devices provides me with more redundancy than one four bay device. I generally duplicated data between devices, rather than between drives in the same device.
4. I'm not convinced that the upsides of RAID5/6 make up for the downsides, especially since I don't need 4-5 drives worth of raw storage. Reply
CSMR - Wednesday, November 27, 2013 - linkFor a lot of people 1 bay is sufficient. Most people's family data will fit on 4TB. Having a NAS is just as advantageous in this situation.
Just because you are technically savvy does not mean you have more than 4TB of data you need to put on your network. Reply
puremind - Saturday, November 30, 2013 - linkAgainst 4+ bays:
-Cost of upgrading hard drives
Increased cooling need
With 2 bay:
You ALREADY get access to all of the features that NAS has to offeI, i.e. DNS, Home Media Streaming Server, Android Apps to access media and files from your smartphone, detached storage that your laptop can access wirelessly from you sleeping room to stream HD content to your home cinema.
That's why 2bay is so popular. Consumers don't buy NAS systems for redundancy but for the features and convenienceof accessing all bulky media wirelessly. It is a kind of storage extension for laptops that can't afford that kind of space and bulkiness. Reply
Silma - Sunday, December 01, 2013 - linkI agree absolutely it is an enigma for me.
A non-tech person would be better buying a LaCie (or whatever) 2-mirrored drive solution which he would plug in directly.
Tech people would be better off with much more hard drive.
I did study the market 3 years ago and came to the conclusion that I would have to build it myself to stay within budget.
So I bought 6 1.5 TB hard drives (best GB/$ at the time) plus an LSI raid controller, and configured the drives in RAID 6 for maximum availability. This setup was less expensive than an enclosure with 0 drive and a much less powerful much slower raid system.
Today I don't think anything has changed. What's more I don't see any enclosure specialized in 2.5 (e.g. SSD) but I didn't research much. Reply
JoannWDean - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - linkmy buddy's aunt earned 14958 dollar past week. she been working on the laptop and got a 510900 dollar home. All she did was get blessed and put into action the information leaked on this site... http://cpl.pw/OKeIJo Reply
JEmlay - Monday, May 19, 2014 - linkNo, I do not need more than 2 slots. 2 Drives, RAID0 with an external NTFS backup. Reply
xdrol - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkSomeone please enlighten me. Why does a NAS platform need a H.264 _encoder_? Reply
OzzieGT - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkTranscode content into H.264 for devices which might not be able to read the native format. Reply
jwcalla - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkAre there really devices out there that can't do H.264 Full HD? Reply
ganeshts - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkBandwidth constraints? You probably don't want a 1080p video streamed to your smartphone (which probably may not support the original H.264 profile) in full bit-rate. Transcoding to a smaller bitrate is often the reason why people use media servers. Reply
jwcalla - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkAren't we talking about like 10 Mb/s? What modern wifi couldn't handle that? Reply
ganeshts - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkBlu-ray uncompressed MKVs can go up to 54 Mbps for non-3D titles. Couple this with multiple streams being played via different mobile devices simultaneously -- it still makes sense to transcode to a lower bitrate in situations (read, small screens) where the quality difference is not noticeable. Reply
jwcalla - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkPeople are storing uncompressed Blu-ray on their two-bay NAS? Reply
ganeshts - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkWhy not? 4 TB + 4 TB in RAID-1 will get you a pretty big library, considering that the average Blu-ray size without the extras and stuff will probably be inbetween 20 - 30 GB. Reply
Namisecond - Friday, December 20, 2013 - linkwhen your wifi software reports a connection at 54mb/s your actual throughput is not going to be or anywhere near 54mb/s. Reply
npz - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkWhat do you mean by "Full HD"? If you mean capable of handling the h.264 spec for higher quality settings, then no, there are almost no devices with cheap, fixed function decoders than can do that. You would be relying on software decoding only that would be pushing even high end quad-core portables to its limits (and sometimes, even that is not enough). Reply
npz - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkAlso, there is a problem with transcoding such files with these Atoms: the hw decoder may not be able to handle your format either, so you would end up using the weak cpu for decoding Reply
Jaybus - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkSo you would have the even weaker smartphone do the transcode? Reply
jwcalla - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkBy "Full HD" I simply mean 1080p. My three year old phone can handle that.
What device doesn't have hw-accelerated video decoding? And who would own such a device for media display if it can't handle such a simple task?
Asking a NAS to do it seems out of character. Reply
brucek2 - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkEven if there's never a bandwidth problem inside your home, there's almost surely going to be one when you're traveling outside your home.
I also think you are overestimating what 3 year old and older devices can do. I'm sure there are plenty of streams that have been labeled "1080p" that they can play, but I'm equally sure there are plenty of 10+gb bluray rips they can not.
Finally, if your primary consumption is via a multi-format capable device like a HTPC, you may not know for sure or want to deal with making sure all your files are decodable in hardware by all your devices. That's why you have a transcoder in between for those cases when you are going out to less capable devices to make sure that the bandwidth used and the format sent is going to work for that application. Reply
robinthakur - Thursday, November 28, 2013 - linkThere are many many devices (such as PS3, 360 etc) which cannot access MKV containers where transcoding is the only option from a NAS or building an XBMC frontend box, which is still quite expensive and leads to one more power hungry device on the network. Being able to run XBMC with a media output from the NAS itself would actually be a much better solution for me as long as the CPU isn't getting hit constantly and the deive is near silent. Some people use Android based XBMC, but if you need lossless HD Audio, codec support and proper refresh rate support, your best, quietest, smallest option is actually a Mac mini running XBMC, but they do cost... Reply
YaBaBom - Monday, November 25, 2013 - linkThink users who have laptops/tablets/phones--if they have different devices with different capabilities, it's nice to be able to transcode the content from a high-bitrate original to something that best fits the mobile device. Plex does this automatically via software encoding on Windows boxes--i was really hoping to read that it could use the hardware encoder to do the same thing for multiple users (My old Core2Duo server struggles to do this for just one stream). Reply
Nephelai - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkTwo pc's each with a data disk. /robocopy once per week. Job done. NAS /shrug Reply
ganeshts - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkFor the average household, 2 PCs at idle will probably consume upward of 40 W (minimum -- assuming they are Atom / Brazos based ones). This one, at load, consumes less than 35 W. You will still miss the mobile app data access functionality and lot of other perks provided by a NAS. Reply
Mumrik - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - link"However, we never got around to publishing a dedicated review due to severe usability issues with the firmware."
No idea how that logic works out. Sounds like it should be a negative review. Reply
ganeshts - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkThat was for the Thecus N4800, not the N2560 ; The latter being a 2-bay NAS -- as I mentioned in the summary -- can be an ideal backup target. Reply
Hrel - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - link"The Thecus N2560 is a 2-bay NAS, and most users are going to use it in a RAID-1 configuration." Based on what? I would only use RAID 0 for a 2 bay NAS. If you mirror you lose half your storage and gain no speed.
I've never had a hdd fail on me, so that's not really a concern. But even if I did all the data is backed up to external hdd's as well as the NAS.
What good is a NAS if you have to buy 2 to hold all your stuff? Makes much more sense to have external hdd's as data backup. Reply
Gumby_ - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - linkFor a lot of home users and I'd hedge a guess that for the majority purchasing a 2 bay NAS enclosure, it IS their backup device as well as network attached storage. Should it be? No, is it, probably. Running raid0 would be insanity for this use case. Reply
ChoppedBroccoli - Wednesday, November 27, 2013 - link2 bay NAS with two 1-3TB drives in RAID1 + a service like crashplan is what I am going for (and seems what the majority of users should probably go for).
With this you get the following:
* Disk drive failure protection
* Location disaster protection via offsite backup (either Crashplan's servers or your house can burn down)
* 1-3TB of backup space (more than enough for the majority of people)
* Ability to do time machine/windows backups to a partition on these drives wirelessly
* Ability to stream this data to any mobile device
Basically these 2 bay NAS systems really shine when you have a cloud backup service running on the NAS itself. Reply
zach1 - Saturday, November 30, 2013 - linkSo do you, at anandtech, have something against the nexus 5 or something? Reply
Xajel - Sunday, December 01, 2013 - link@AnandTech, I would love to see a roundup review for Home NAS, 2 & 4 bays... most NAS makers actually target Small offices rather than homes, making the NAS expensive and not friendly enough for the home user... I believe the market for Home only NAS is big but they need to know how to make it works and function... most home users want it for backup, storage and media streaming... no need for these advanced networking things required by business and small offices... Reply
eek2121 - Sunday, December 01, 2013 - linkI will never buy another Thecus product, after their lack of support for their W12000 product left us high and dry. Support was so bad, we even got the certain (major) vendor we purchased it from to give us a $100 gift card and cease carrying the product altogether. They shipped the remaining units back to Thecus and immediately discontinued selling the product. Reply
eek2121 - Sunday, December 01, 2013 - linkbtw...I just want to add, don't buy Thecus's windows storage server solutions. I'll give you a hint: It does not come with a Windows Storage Server license (regardless of what various companies like newegg, etc. claim) and you cannot buy one from Thecus. Where does that leave you? OSless. Reply
azazel1024 - Monday, December 02, 2013 - linkInterestingly my server at home, which is based around a G1610 Celeron, mATX board, 8GB of 1.25v DDR3 1600 and a pair of Intel GbE CT NICs, a 60GB SATAIII SSD for the boot/app drive and a pair of Samsung F4EG 2TB drives in RAID0 idles only slightly higer than the Thecus NAS does and actually STREAMS at lower power consumption (by 1W, but still lower).
A heck of a lot more capable...pretty much the same price when all was said and done for the hardware.
It'll saturate both GbE links (running Windows 8, so SMB3.0 loveliness) for 240MB/sec reads/writes.
Back-up is my desktop, which has all of the data mirrored (but of course isn't on all the time and also is a much higher spec machine).
NAS are interesting, but I just don't see the place for them except
A) Needing a set spec machine
B) Not wanting/needing/able to build and roll your own server
C) going for a lower end 1 or 2 bay unit
Looking at the price of a 4 bay unit, my server suddenly goes from price parity to much cheaper, and I have room for 2 more disks in my server than what a 4 bay machine has. More than that if I don't mind a cheap RAID card, which doesn't add much cost.
You do have to deal with "managing" a "real" computer then and it doesn't build itself, but the cost is much lower and until you get to a very high end NAS (costing MUCH more), it generally isn't as capable in terms of overall through-put, number of users, etc. At that, a slight increase in price on the "server" hardware would easily get a core i3 or i5 to increase that capability substantially, low hot data on the SSD(s), etc.
Again, unless you are looking at limited IT support ability (personally or for your company) or going for a very budget NAS, I don't see the point. They are more limited and they tend to cost more (sometimes substantially). For the right build, they also don't tend to save much power (mine idles at 19w and active runs at 31w. With the proper 80+ Gold or Platnium PSU, it would likely idle more like 14-15w and active run around 28 or so). Reply
no_nonsense4857 - Monday, December 02, 2013 - linkFor a person using an external HDD and robocopy to perform scheduled synchs isn't a 2bay NAS a good value for money option in addition to the streaming capabilites and also RAID 1 option.
I never knew what NAS is until a year back.
I am looking for a backup solution which has redundancy and can be scheduled. All other additional features are perks for which i do not care much and would be happy if they are taken off and the product is discounted. Reply
azazel1024 - Tuesday, December 03, 2013 - linkIt depends. If it is a real budget 2-bay, yes. However the one reviewed isn't particularly low cost (at least in my opinion).
15 minutes of time with synchtoy and task scheduler and all my back-ups are scheduled for my desktop to my file server.
It probably isn't quite as straight forward as some of the NAS OSs are for things like scheduled back-up if you are a very novice user of Windows or other OSs, but it is not an advance process at all for setting up a basic windows server and setting up scheduled back-ups.
If you really don't need much, then your best bet is going for pretty much the lowest price NAS you can, that has at least some hardware reliability. If you want anything more than that, you are probably best off building your own, unless you are generally just a basic computer user and it would be beyond your capabilities. Reply
azazel1024 - Tuesday, December 03, 2013 - linkGanesh, for the mobile data access...why would you be missing that? On my home network I can access anything over Wifi with any of my SMB clients. On the road, if I cared to (I have set it up before, but it isn't currently setup) I can setup my server with Webdav and do port forwarding from my router and hit it with the same iOS client I use to access my data on my home wifi network (iOS File Browser. Awesome and cheap app).
I fail to see any thing at all that this NAS can do that my server can't. My server is also a lot more capable, for example I have it running my Calibre server, which I haven't seen any NAS which has the functionality built in, so I can access my library anywhere. I can do other webserving off it if I want to. It does all my back-ups and I even RDP in to it on occasion when I want to run something a lot faster while using low spec hardware (admittedly, when I usually want to do that, I'll wake my desktop and RDP in to that).
If there happens to be something on my desktop, say I just transcoded a large video, and I want to get it on the server to access it from something else, again, like a large movie, it takes just a few seconds over the dual GbE link. Half the time, or probably less, than it would to almost any dual bay NAS, or most any NAS (are any NAS OSs currently running SMB3.0 and capable of SMB multichannel? I am not aware of any, yet).
If I want higher bandwidth to the server, I can link aggregate my two Intel GbE NICs AND re-enable the realtek GbE onboard NIC and connect it up to the switch for 2Gbps of max speed to my desktop and 3Gbps of total through-put to the server. Though the disk array isn't capable of saturating that. I could setup part of the SSD in caching mode though and in that case, the smaller frequently accessed files (which wouldn't be much since it is generally the big files that are being accessed on the server) could easily saturate all links. With the native Windows SMB/disk caching, the disk array probably could handle 3Gbps writes for a period of time though (perks of 8GB of RAM in the machine).
I get the use case for A) a user who doesn't have the spare time to roll their own B) A user who is a novice computer user/one who has set computer use cases and doesn't deviate so wouldn't technically be able to setup any of it C) Needs to roll multiple instances of the same hardware and OS and want it to be more or less identical for support reasons
Outside of those three, it is generally not cheaper or as capable as rolling your own file server. At least in the instance of the reviewed NAS or other higher end 2-bay NAS. If you don't need the capabilities of a higher end NAS AND you go with a lower end 2-bay NAS because of this, then that is probably a better bet as you aren't paying for features you don't need and probably would be at least slightly cheaper than rolling your own inexpensive server. Reply
azazel1024 - Tuesday, December 03, 2013 - linkGanesh, for the mobile data access...why would you be missing that? On my home network I can access anything over Wifi with any of my SMB clients. On the road, if I cared to (I have set it up before, but it isn't currently setup) I can setup my server with Webdav and do port forwarding from my router and hit it with the same iOS client I use to access my data on my home wifi network (iOS File Browser. Awesome and cheap app).
I fail to see any thing at all that this NAS can do that my server can't. My server is also a lot more capable, for example I have it running my Calibre server, which I haven't seen any NAS which has the functionality built in, so I can access my library anywhere. I can do other webserving off it if I want to. It does all my back-ups and I even RDP in to it on occasion when I want to run something a lot faster while using low spec hardware (admittedly, when I usually want to do that, I'll wake my desktop and RDP in to that).
If there happens to be something on my desktop, say I just transcoded a large video, and I want to get it on the server to access it from something else, again, like a large movie, it takes just a few seconds over the dual GbE link. Half the time, or probably less, than it would to almost any dual bay NAS, or most any NAS (are any NAS OSs currently running SMB3.0 and capable of SMB multichannel? I am not aware of any, yet).
If I want higher bandwidth to the server, I can link aggregate my two Intel GbE NICs AND re-enable the realtek GbE onboard NIC and connect it up to the switch for 2Gbps of max speed to my desktop and 3Gbps of total through-put to the server. Though the disk array isn't capable of saturating that. I could setup part of the SSD in caching mode though and in that case, the smaller frequently accessed files (which wouldn't be much since it is generally the big files that are being accessed on the server) could easily saturate all links. With the native Windows SMB/disk caching, the disk array probably could handle 3Gbps writes for a period of time though (perks of 8GB of RAM in the machine).
I get the use case for A) a user who doesn't have the spare time to roll their own B) A user who is a novice computer user/one who has set computer use cases and doesn't deviate so wouldn't technically be able to setup any of it C) Needs to roll multiple instances of the same hardware and OS and want it to be more or less identical for support reasons
Outside of those three, it is generally not cheaper or as capable as rolling your own file server. At least in the instance of the reviewed NAS or other higher end 2-bay NAS. If you don't need the capabilities of a higher end NAS AND you go with a lower end 2-bay NAS because of this, then that is probably a better bet as you aren't paying for features you don't need and probably would be at least slightly cheaper than rolling your own inexpensive server. Reply
SerinaxD - Wednesday, December 04, 2013 - linkthis looks incredible~ Reply


text:
2011's Fashion Newsmakers
Tribal Wisdom
Street Art: Classic graffiti murals like this one in Bushwick, Brooklyn, have become a rarity over the years.
Street Style: This Dior dress is a tease for the spring season ahead, when ethnic influences will be everywhere. Add a sun hat, Converse, and a graffiti bag (like this from Coach) to keep it from looking too on-trend.
Dior dress, Missoni hat, Ariel Gordon Jewelry bracelets, CC Skye bracelets, Melinda Maria ring, Coach bag (customized by Jose Roldan and Erin Fallon, visit brushdecor.com), and Converse shoes.
Wish You Were Here
Street Art: A simple scenic mural painted on a brick wall in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is the kind of piece you wish could hang in your living room.
Street Style: If you're doing that silk-screened trompe l'oeil print—like this Alberta Ferretti look—then go for broke and add the bold necklace and, yes, even that turban!
Alberta Ferretti cardigan and pants, Missoni turban, Shourouk necklace, VBH clutch, and Dior heels.
It's the Little Things: Perfect Stocking Stuffers


text:
Alphabetical ConundrumsRiddles are little poems or phrases that pose a question that needs answering. Riddles frequently rhyme, but this is not a requirement.
Why is K like a sunrise?
Why is L like a warm furnace?
Why is M a favorite with miners?
Why is N like a pig?
Why is O the only of five vowels that you can hear?
AnswerK is like a sunrise because it appears at the end of DARK.
L is like a warm furnace because it makes IT LIT.
M is a favorite with miners because it makes ORE MORE.
N is like a pig because it makes A STY NASTY.
O is the only one of the five vowels that you can hear because all the others are in AUDIBLE (INAUDIBLE).
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