Award-winning PC enthusiasts mainstay Creative, a company that could always grab attention just with their name, has been around for a very long time. Anyone who knows them will know them as Creative Labs, and also acknowledge how they changed hum-drum Personal Computers into a PC with amazing sound capabilities in the mid-'90s. Creative Labs, or Creative as they are now known, have been around for longer than most current PC brands, with humble beginnings in the early eighties, when the likes of Apple, Atari and Intel were becoming household names.
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Network-attached Storage products are everywhere these days. It’s still a relatively new area for the end user market, but NASes have been around for a while. Normally the main market was for the serious networking fan, or your typical AV engineer who needed a lot of network storage without too much of a fuss. In the last few years the popularity of NASes has grown a lot, and number of consumer-focused companies have seen this, one of them being Asus. In 2011 Asus established Asustor, with the name describing “ASUS” and “Storage”. Though a little later than their main rivals, there was still plenty of market space available for a NAS rookie, albeit, with the strength of Asus behind them.
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Theresa May’s controversial Investigatory Powers Bill, the so called “snoopers charter”, has been passed despite over 145,000 signatures on the UK government's own UK Petitions website. While it's going to be UK law from the 31st December 2016, a law that demands all UK ISPs to record all internet traffic history for 12 months, it’s not the only threat to your privacy, you still have the United States federal government ‘legal hacking’ bill due to become available for federal usage on the 1st December 2016. All a bit right wing for us, and a lot of people around the world.
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We had a look at the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 last year and we were left unimpressed. It was an amazing piece of technology, but software issues, screen door effect and overall lack of readiness meant the DK2 was a bit of a struggle. We did end the quick look with the statement “2016 will be a very antisocial year for most gamers” with the full product Oculus Rift in mind. We didn’t really expect to see another player in the VR market; HTC. We couldn't be hard on the Rift because it was a development kit, and it did give a glimpse of the future, albeit with caveats like, higher resolution, better compatibility and no screen door effect!
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We haven’t reviewed a mouse mat, or surface, in a while. Well the boys and girls at XTracGear have put paid to that and sent over a Carbonic XXL Surface. If you have not heard of XTracGear, you need to check out their website and products, you will no doubt find something there you will like. Also, we have reviewed a couple of XTracGear products and we liked them, so it is nice to see a Carbonic XXL Surface in our mail room waiting for Hardwareslave to use and abuse.
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XTracGear, who you may know as XTracPads, started making precision mouse surfaces for gamers since the brand was created in 1999. The now more familiar XTracGear was created in 2003 when PCXmods.com was started and XTracPads brand went worldwide. XTracGear look like they are a company who are genuinely interested in mouse mats aimed at the gamer. Today we are looking at the XtracGear Carbonic. We are serious gamers here in Hardwareslave, over 210 games on Steam and counting, all the Battlefield series on Origin and not to mention World Of Warcraft.
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Today we are looking at two extremes of a product range, the XTracGear Ripper and the Ripper XXL mouse surfaces. XTracGear, who you may know as XTracPads, started making precision mouse surfaces for gamers brand was created in 1999.
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Enter stage left Boogie Bug, created at the turn of the century and dedicated to PC Tuning. We need to admit not always thinking of them when kitting out our rigs, we hope to make amends today.
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Founded in 1992, Cooler Master have become a mainstay in PC component, peripheral and modding arenas. In more recent years Cooler Master have branched out into mouse mats, or surfaces as they are now known.
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It wasn't long ago that all mouse mats were boring afterthoughts you received and never spent much time thinking about. For the past 5 years there have been some companies looking to change this and have made great in roads into the design and production of products that would catch your eye and attention.
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