Reviews

Just in time for the holidays, the TomTom XL 340S Live is hitting store shelves. The XL 340S Live is TomTom's second connected GPS device; the first was the Go 740 Live. Both feature a built-in GPRS radio module that promises to provide you with live traffic updates, weather reports, Google Local searches, and fuel prices.

At $300 (as of November 24, 2009)--$100 less than the Go 740 Live, and only $50 more than the unconnected XL 340S model--the XL 340S Live is a bargain for a connected GPS device. Both of TomTom's connected GPS devices include a three-month subscription to the Live services; but after that introductory period, a subscription will set you back $10 a month. Unfortunately, TomTom's connected services remain a mixed bag.

Norton Ghost, meet Backup Exec. Backup Exec, meet Ghost. That's right: Symantec's Backup Exec System Restore 2010 Desktop Version ($70, as of 11/23/2009; BESR for short) is an imaging product based on Norton Ghost. But it's also a substantially improved version that offers a compelling new feature as well finally addressing my longstanding and deal-killing complaint about Symantec imaging products: their inability to back up using the boot disc.

The compelling new feature of which I speak is the ability to convert BESR 2010 backup images to the VMWare .vmdk, Microsoft .vhd, and VMWare ESX server formats. If your system hardware goes belly up, you can mount these in a virtual machine on another PC and continue working. This is probably handiest for servers, but the server edition of BESR that also allows per-user restore of Exchange and Active Directory data is $800, too expensive for many small businesses.

With the addition of more processing power (2.5GHz versus 2.0GHz), HP's MediaSmart EX495 not only bested its EX487 stablemate that we reviewed earlier this year, but proved to be the fastest network-attached storage box we've ever tested. Move over, Synology DS209+ II! The EX495 was particularly fast during virus scans and at finding files thanks to the indexing feature of its Windows Home Server operating system.

The EX495 ships with one 1.5TB drive instead of the two 750GB units that the EX487 features--which means there's no possibility of data redundancy unless you add another drive. The EX495 is otherwise physically identical to the EX487, with four bays (three open) for internal storage expansion, as well as four USB ports and an eSATA port for external storage and printers. It's also one of the more attractive-looking units on the market.

Streaming media players that relay Internet video content to TVs are becoming increasingly common--but ones that do it well and reliably for HDTV over a wireless network are less so. That's why the Roku HD-XR is a real gem: For $130 (as of 11/24/09), it delivers high-definition content from Netflix, Amazon, MLB (Major League Baseball) TV, and several other Internet services.

The HD-XR is basically an upgrade to the original $100 Roku Digital Media Player (now renamed the Roku HD) that we reviewed earlier this year: The main new feature is support for 802.11n wireless on either the 2.4GHz band or the less interference-prone 5GHz band (the original supported only 802.11 b/g). Also new, throughout the Roku line, is support for adding and removing services via the Roku Channel Store. This feature is standard on newer units and is available for older boxes via a firmware upgrade.

A 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 processor powers the Pavilion Slimline S5160f. That's the slowest CPU in use on any recent value PC priced similarly to the S5160F ($880 as of November 15, 2009). An above-average amount of storage (750GB) and memory (6GB of DDR3-1333 RAM) are nice touches, but they can't prevent the S5160f from ambling to a pedestrian mark of 95 on our WorldBench 6 test suite. In addition, we had to dial back the S5160f's resolution to 1024 by 768 pixels to help it achieve barely playable frame rates of 39 frames per second and 32 fps, respectively, in our Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Unreal Tournament 3 tests (at high quality settings in each case).

As its name implies, this Slimline desktop emphasizes compactness. The glossy black case matches the look of other HP PCs--like the recent Pavilion P6130f and Pavilion Elite E9120f--but the system's single optical drive (occupied by a Blu-ray drive) is oriented vertically, and the other optical bays included in most Pavilion designs are absent. The system's single, filled hard drive bay hides behind a side-facing fan toward the front of the case, suggesting that future upgrades won't be easy.

The HP Pavilion Elite E9120f is built around a 2.6GHz Phenom II X4-910 processor--one of AMD's newer chips. Unfortunately, the Phenom II X4 CPU doesn't enable the E9120F to rise above its Intel-based value PC rivals--even after you factor in the system's 8GB of DDR3-1333 RAM and 1TB hard drive.

Its "elite" designation notwithstanding, this $830 (as of November 15, 2009) system can barely run modern games at playable speeds. We had to dial down our Enemy Territory: Quake Wars tests to 1024 by 768 resolution to achieve a frame rate of 43 frames per second at high quality. Likewise, on our Unreal Tournament 3 tests, the Pavilion Elite E9120f sputtered through frame rates of 39 fps and 27 fps, respectively at resolutions of 1024 by 768 and 1680 by 1050 resolutions (and high quality). The $800 Gateway LX6810-01 value desktop fared much better at these lower resolutions.

HP's Pavilion P6130f desktop ($600, as of November 15, 2009) goes toe-to-toe against the Gateway DX4200-11 value PC, but loses out to the Gateway's better design and stronger overall configuration. Elsewhere in the value PC category, similarly priced PCs--including one of HP's own Pavilions--outperform the P6130F as well.

HP slips one of AMD's older chips, the 2.4GHz Phenom X4 9750, inside the slick, black shell of this midsize tower system. That CPU is slightly more powerful than the Gateway DX4200-11's 2.2GHz Phenom X4 9550 processor, but it falls short of the 2.6GHz Dual-Core E5300 found in the HP Pavilion A6710T desktop--a system that outperforms the P6130f for roughly 80 percent of its price. Rounding out the P6130F's core components are 8GB of DDR2-800 memory and a single 750GB hard drive.

This is the first desktop we've reviewed from New Jersey-based Electronics and Computing--and judging by what we've seen from this machine, the boutique PC maker sure knows how to build a power PC. The Black Mamba is designed for gaming first and foremost, but that's not to say that you're paying extra for features you might not use. The desktop's superspeedy general performance places it among the top power PCs we've tested, and its $1980 price tag (as of 11/15/09) makes it one of the least expensive models on that list.

You don't have to do much digging to find this system's secret. Staying true to gaming PC design concepts, the Black Mamba has a standard 2.66GHz Intel Core i7 920 processor jacked up to 3.6GHz--quite a dramatic overclock, as evidenced by the sheer size of the Noctua CPU cooler attached to the motherboard. The 6GB of DDR3-1600 memory is average in size but unique in speed for the category. As for storage capacity, the Black Mamba has a total of 2.28TB (three drives in a RAID 0 array), the second-highest total capacity of any system on our power-PC chart.

The Polywell Poly P5500C power desktop PC has a 2.93GHz Intel Core i7 870 processor. That isn't the fastest CPU on the charts, but it's swift enough to help the system come within 7 percent of the category's speed leader, the Xi MTower PCIe 965. Supporting this Windows 7 Ultimate-based system is 4GB of DDR3-1333 RAM; two additional DIMM slots remain empty, for future upgrading. This compact machine's most impressive feature, though, is the storage space: Three hard drives in a RAID 0 array give you a total capacity of 3.5TB. It's funny that the smallest system on our current power PC chart delivers the most capacity of any PC we've reviewed, period.

Power and size limitations undoubtedly prevented Polywell from placing a dual-GPU card in the P5500C, let alone some kind of CrossFire or SLI setup. The system's single ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics board generated 79 frames per second on in our Unreal Tournament 3 test, and 68 fps in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (both at 2560 by 2100 resolution and high quality). That's as good as it gets with ATI's single-GPU cards. Other power PCs based on single-GPU nVidia cards, such as the Polywell Poly 790GX3 (with an nVidia GTX 275 board), delivered five to ten additional frames per second on these benchmarks.

Gateway's LX6820-01 is a sensible "next step up" in the company's LX series of desktop PCs. Compared with the company's $800 LX6810-01 value PC, the LX6820-01 gives you a little more power in the processor, significantly more hard-drive space, and increased frame rates for your games, all for a bit more cash (the price is $980 as of 11/15/09). The downside? Pitted against some of the bigger systems in the value PC arena, the LX6820-01 falls short in features and performance.

Interestingly, though Gateway stuck 8GB of memory in its LX6820-01 configuration, it didn't push forward into the triple-channel architecture of Intel's Core i7 platform--a move that surely would have given the system a boost in general performance and increased its ability to compete with other similar desktops. The LX6820-01's 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad Q9400 processor is a smaller advance from the LX6810-01's 2.33GHz Core 2 Quad Q8200 CPU. Fortunately, in storage capacity the LX6820-01 is a definite improvement over its predecessor: Its 1TB hard drive gives you 360GB of additional space to work with.