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Review Archive

About Our Reviews

From time to time, we’ll be reviewing products in a real-world setting: ours.

Our Office is Our Laboratory

Our office is our laboratory. Just like you, we have specific needs—functions, durability, price—that affect how we feel about the technology we use. At its most basic, the idea is to make our lives easier while completing the work at hand.

Stubbornly Independent

You should also know that, unlike many other (read: larger) technology review sites, these products were not supplied to us by the manufacturer for review—although let us also note, we read, and trust, those sites, too.

Everything we review has been purchased by NextTech Magazine for the purposes of using it—the review is always secondary to actually helping us with our heavy workload.

The Price of Happiness

And because we bought it, the price is always going to be a factor in our reviews. Just because something does what it says it’ll do and more doesn’t mean we’re happy about spending $500 USD for it.

 

Reviews

Review: Google Toolbar

There are a lot of search toolbars you can add to your web browser out there, pretty much all of them free and most of them not worth the cost.

Companies like Alexa and MySite give you their toolbars and in exchange you get to become an anonymous (so they say) number as they track your movements around the Internet or worse, turn your computer into an ad server for other users out on the web. More...

Review: The Perfect Browser

The media has recently noted a significant drop in the popularity of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) as the browser of choice for the world—reports vary, but most agree Firefox now owns somewhere between 10 to 15%—according to some reports, maybe as much as 20%—of the active browser market that used to belong to Microsoft.

But here’s the thing: this has never happened before. More...

Review: Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX 2004

We admit it: this review is not for everyone. This one is for our brothers and sisters in arms—the web-headed geeks. Unlike Microsoft’s user-friendly (and, in our view, over-simplified) FrontPage, Dreamweaver MX 2004 is professional website creation software at its finest. It is not for the faint of heart or the casual user. More...

Nvidia GeForce 5200

True innovation in computing today is rare. Given enough RAM, even a five-year old computer—one of the first Pentium 4’s or Athlon CPUs—can run Windows XP (itself released late 2001) and any productivity software, like Microsoft Office or Dreamweaver MX 2004. The rule of thumb is that software rarely challenges your computer’s hardware.

The exception to that rule is gaming software—like Half-Life or the upcoming DOOM III. These games create entire worlds in which to wander (and, OK, kill zombies) in hyperrealistic 3D color and 5.1 multi-channel sound. These games need more: more RAM, more processing power and, in many cases, video cards that cost as much as $500 USD. More...

Canon i860 Printer

We bought our last printer, the HP OfficeJet 600—a multi-function unit: printer, scanner, copier and fax machine—in 1997, some seven years ago at this writing. And while it did do all the things HP promised it could do, it did none of them well.

Or quickly.

Or quietly.

And it was not cheap.

And the software it insisted it needed, above and beyond a simple printer driver, brought even sturdy Windows XP to its knees. More...

Updated: November 18, 2005