-Cold Fusion AND Dragon Drive coverage in New York Jewish Times
Upgrade Your Computer this Summer with Power and Portability. US Modular presents two great new products that will help turbo-charge your desktop PC and make anyone’s computer experience much easier and even secure: Cold Fusion (Dual Channel DDR) RAM and the Dragon Drive pocket-sized portable hard disk. US Modular promises Cold Fusion to be blistering fast and designed for the serious gamer and compares their Dragon Drive to well a fire-breathing dragon. Let’s take a look!
COLD FUSION
Cold Fusion RAM come in kits containing two sticks of RAM, the two most widely available kits on-line are the 1GB kit and the 2GB kit. We here tried out the 1GB kit with a new custom gaming computer, using AMD’s new Athlon 3400+ 64bit microprocessor and NVidia’s GeForce FX 5700 video card. For those wondering, gaming computers are really like normal computers except they are made in general for guys who like to "sup" them up. The 20th Century was marked with muscle-cars being a summer hobby, and now in the 21st Century we have muscle-computers. Like guys who love their cars, guys who love their computers have two things in mind: looks and power. Cold Fusion should be a perfect fit; at first glance it already has the good looks with its gold/copper casing and a cool little nuclear symbol on both sticks of RAM.
Before opening the case of our test computer, we started up with the basic 1GB run-of-the-mill RAM available at Staples. Then, we fired up a couple of games and tried out one very demanding application. The new driving game Juiced and the adventure game Pirates of the Caribbean performed decently, however we took note that a few hiccups occurred while playing both games. Sometimes there would be slowdowns when cars packed together in Juiced, and sometimes in Pirates, walking through a complex town was a little sluggish. For regular computing, we loaded the basic Microsoft products of Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. While those programs were still running, we loaded the newest version of Photoshop CS2. Photoshop was not happy and expectedly crashed after it looked like it was going to load.
Time now for Cold Fusion After opening the case and placing the two little 512MB gold bars into the motherboard and reconnecting the cables, the computer was ready to go. Amazingly, our test computer started Windows XP in just about 10.5 seconds after the computer POST beep, as opposed to the 30-40 seconds with the other RAM. We ran the same scenario in trying to load Photoshop with the gamut of Microsoft products running in the background and not only did Photoshop load, but we were able to scan a picture and do some editing without any trouble. Back to the games, we loaded up Juiced and were able to drive smoothly over the courses without any trouble and in Pirates, we were able to enjoy town life without feeling like our character had too many pints of ale.
On the technical side, no matter what we tried, we could not get the Cold Fusion RAM to overclock-- or run faster than is normal for a computer. After a lot of time tinkering with BIOS settings, the diagnostic programs CPU-z and SIS Sandra reported that the RAM’s speed could only reach 400MHz. Though we were not able to see the advertised speed of 500MHz, computers are temperamental and it may be possible to reach such a speed with specific hardware configurations. The RAM is designed for the dangers of overclocking and has been tested by US Modular in extreme hot and cold environments while taking on heavy loads of work. For those who don’t know what a liquid cooling system is for a computer, don’t worry about the overclocking features of Cold Fusion, because it performs excellently for gamers and power computer users alike.
Features:
# Memory Size: 2 x 256MB
# Memory Speed: 500MHz PC4000
# Memory Type: Dual Channel DDR
# Pins: 184
# One Year Warranty with 24/7 tech support
DRAGON DRIVE
Dragon Drive is the ultimate in storage and portability. For those concerned with securing sensitive data, nothing is safer than having a portable hard disk that can go anywhere you go. Fitting the size of your hand, this little drive works very fast and is a perfect solution for people who use flash drives but need to store more files or larger files and don’t want to lug around a laptop. Flash drives and disks can only hold about 1-2GB, where the top of the line Dragon Drive can hold up to 100GB, plus you’ll never have to worry that you’ve made too many writes to your Dragon Drive Street>, as flash disks wear out.
US Modular makes a great presentation with the Dragon Drive placing it in an accessible soft leather case that looks and opens like a Day Runner scheduling book. The case also contains a compartment for the provided USB or Firewire cable--the drive can use either interface. Hookup couldn’t be easier. Just plug it in while running Windows XP and in less than 10 seconds the drive is ready and shows up as an accessible hard disk. For users still running Windows 98, just use the USB cable and install the supplied driver from CD one time and that computer will recognize the Dragon Drive as quickly as Windows XP does in the future.
The drive gets all its power from the computer so there is no clunky adapter to plug into the wall. The USB cable for the drive has a special two-head design, so if your computer doesn’t provide enough electricity through the main head from one USB port, then all you have to do is plug in the supporting head. While working, the drive heats up, but its shell is made of aluminum to help keep it cool and prevent damage, so you can keep it plugged in all day.
We tested the drive and it performed flawlessly through multiple formats, repartitioning, large file copying, and hot-swapping. We even got it to boot MSDOS, Windows 98, and Linux. The drive overall is a reliable workhorse that performs with great speed. Dragon has so many uses that business professionals shouldn’t be without. No longer will take home work be a hassle. Instead of e-mailing yourself countless file attachments or playing around with burned discs, just place it all on the Dragon Drive and then take it with you when you go home.
Features:
FireWire Features:
# Compatible with 1394-1995 and 1394A Phys
# SBP-2 Target Revision 4 Compliant Interface
# Fully ATA-7 Compliant
# Supports UDMA5 (ATA100)
# Supports ATA PIO Modes 0-4, DMA Modes 0-2 and Ultra DMD Modes 0-5
# ORB Co-processor to Accelerate Translation of ORBs to ATAPI Commands
# Supports ORB Chaining for Increased Performance
# Transfer Rate for High-speed IEEE1394 Interface: up to 400 Mbps
# Driver-less: Easy installation support Windows® 98SE/Me/2000/XP, Mac OS® 8.6 or later without driver
USB 2.0 Features:
# USB 2.0 Transfer Rates up to 400 Mbps (40 Times Faster Transfer Rate than that of USB 1.1)
# USB 2.0/IDE Compliant: Integrated USB Transceiver; High Speed (400Mbit) and Full Speed (12Mbit)
# USB Suspend /Resume, Remote Wake Up
# Easy Installation
# Windows 98SE; Windows Me/2000/XP, Linux® and Mac OS (without driver)
# ATA PIO modes 0-4: ATA Interface Operation Mode is automatically configured through firmware
# UDMA modes 0-5 operation
# Backwards Compatible with USB1.1
Power Supply:
# Power-less: Power by FireWire or USB bus power. No external power is required
Dimensions:
# LxWxH: 140x80x16 mm (cable not included) or 5.51"x3.15"x0.63"
# Weight: 4.6 ounces
# Cable Length: Approx. 3-feet (1-FireWire and 1-USB 2.0 cable included)
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