Personal Tech Tips

The Flash Voyager Mini line of USB flash cards from Corsair Memory has been around for a few months without much ado on its release. After all, a flash card is a flash card is a flash card, right? Au contraire! This particular line of cards has a 4 GB model and an 8 GB model to hold all your data and then some!

The Mini is significantly smaller than your typical flash drive considering how much data it’s capable of storing. It’s less than half the size of a typical flash drive such as a Verbatim Store ‘n’ Go but just a hair larger than a Kingston microSD. It weighs just 5.4 grams and is just under 1.5 inches long. The Mini also has an all rubber casing for added protection from moisture and shock.

The Voyager Mini 4 GB version (PN CMFUSBMINI-4GB) and the 8 GB version (PN CMFUSBMINI-8GB) both come with a 10 Year Limited Warranty. If they fail, well you won’t get your stuff back but you will at least get a new drive for your trouble.

Corsair went with a capless design, which is nice. You just pop the USB connector out using your thumb. As a downside, however, there is no activity light on the drive so you don’t really know what’s going on. You’ll have to be careful so you don’t lose data by pulling the drive too early while transferring data.

Another downside to the Mini is the groove in the bottom side allowing a view of the “inner workings,” not that there are any. The problem is, all the lint, fuzz, hard candy ooze and anything else in your pocket winds up in your drive.

Performance-wise, the Minis aren’t exactly speed demons. But that’s not really their fault. They were designed for size not performance. 4 GB Read speeds on the 256KB test were around 17 MB/sec and write speeds a drab 5 MB/sec. The 8 GB was a bit slower.

The 4 GB Mini performed slightly better on the 64 MB test.  On the other hand, the 8 GB Mini shined on the 64 MB test at 31 MB/sec read and 9 MB/sec write. On the up side, you’re not going to be using these to play WoW on, right? In real world, this translates into a few seconds longer waiting for data to load. No big deal.

Overall, the Corsair Voyager Mini series is a great pair of high volume USB flash drives. The performance was a bit anemic but all in all not that bad. The 4GB version will set you back around $20 and the 8 GB roughly twice that so even the price won’t take food off the table. They support Windows Me, 2000, XP and Vista. They also support Linux as well as Mac OS 9 and up so they should work for just about everyone.

If you have need for a high volume flash drive in an extremely compact size, the Voyager Mini series is made just for you!!

The Antec Solo Midtower ATX Computer Case falls in the “under $100” category at $89 + shipping and any applicable taxes. It does not include a power supply, which is a little disappointing at this price level. But the Antec Solo almost makes up for it with some of its other features.

The Solo came well-packaged. Although the box was scuffed and banged up, the case itself was perfectly fine. The documentation was a little hard to understand, follow and implement. But overall, with a little intuition, the build went together pretty smoothly.

The first thing is the case itself. The Antec Solo almost qualifies as a “work of art” in its appearance. The Solo has a striking color scheme combining a silver front panel with black sides and top. While that may not sound particularly outstanding in writing, the black sides and top of the Solo have a “Piano Finish” which results in the case looking like a heavily polished black lacquered wood.

You can literally see your reflection in the sides of the case. That was a little disconcerting for my cat who wandered over to see what I was doing…until she saw herself in the Solo’s side panel. Then she hissed and ran away.

Installing the OCX 600 watt power supply and GIGABYTE motherboard in the Solo was straight-forward with no issues to mention.

When installing the drives, this Antec case has a couple other features which, in my opinion, are either “love’em” or “hate’em.”  First, the front panel swings open to reveal the (4) 3.5” and (4) 5.25” drive bays. The catch is that it will only swing open when the side panel is removed. The door almost doesn’t swing open far enough to access the bays. That was quite irritating while installing the optical drives.

The Solo drive mounting came with two options: Standard Tray Mounting and “Suspension” Mounting. The latter uses bungees to “suspend” the drives in a floating environment. If you never move your computer, that’d probably be OK but if you do and you choose this mounting method, it is recommended that you removed your drive(s) to prevent damage before moving the case.

I recommend the Solo’s tray mount option as you can use the included rubber bushings with the screws which also make the drives feel like they are floating.

The included 120mm case fan is a wonderful addition. But the control for the fan is a bit moronic. I’ve seen this ridiculous set up on other Antec cases, too. The cord is long enough to reach outside the case, alas, there’s not really anyplace to run it outside the case. On the Solo, I finally ran it through the opening for the power supply.

Working with the Antec Solo was basically easy with the few above mentioned caveats. The Solo is very solid and there are very few, if any, sharp edges on which to nick or slice open your hands or fingers. When you power up the system for the first time is when the Solo really shines.

Even with the side panel off the Solo, I still had to visually check the fans to see if they were running. There was almost total silence from both the cpu and the case fans. I really had to strain to hear the fans running. Even switching the case fans power to “High” produced only a slight noise. After I put the side panel back in place, I could only barely hear the case fan. Amazing. The soft blue lighting on the front panel is a nice touch, too.

One note: I did not have a higher-end graphics card such as an 8800 GT to compare fan noise. That might overpower the soundproofing.

The Antec Solo is a very good case for the money. It is absolutely gorgeous to look at and offers extremely quiet performance for the price. I still think it should include a power supply unit, but still an excellent choice for a midrange computer case.

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