Freecom, though unknown to the Indian market is an established player in the external storage arena. In the past, we have reviewed Freecom drives and now, we except them to be priced sanely.
The Tough Drive series, as the name suggests, is aimed at enduring shock. This particular drive is clad in pink rubber, which Freecom hopes will lure the fairer sex.
Thankfully, the Tough Drives are available in other color options. In terms of design, the drive is sleek but not portable, obviously due to the thick layer of rubber cladding it dons. The rubberized body feels good to hold, but the tyer pattern design on it doesn’t do anything to enhance its look.
On the brighter side, the Tough drives are indeed solidly put together and sport good design from the usability aspect. Apart from the rubber cladding, internally the hard drives are put on a spring suspended frame (anti-shock frame) for better shock absorption. The USB connector is integrated in the drives, and hence there is no need to carry along any cables. The drive can be directly connected to the PC. The USB connector lights up blue, and blinks during data transfer. The Tough Drive doesn’t require additional power and runs off a single USB port.

Freecom has bundled back-up software, namely NTI shadow. It can do real time continuous data backup, scheduled backup and has version control. Thus older files can be retrieved. The user interface is simple and the settings are granular to the point that you can even select the types of files to be backed up.
Internally, the Tough Drive comes with 5400 RMP Fujitsu hard drive and delivers good performance. 4 GB (1 DVD) of assorted data takes less than 3 min to copy whereas a 1 GB (one movie) took around 39 sec to copy. We say the drive is fast for most purpose it will be used for.
Priced at $250, the Tough drive is a reasonable buy. Ordinary 250 GB drives are available in the $125 region and the small premium of $40 for shock proofing is well worth it in the longer run. However, we would prefer to never see the pick version again black or black or blue please !

Specifications:
5400 RPM drive, 2 m drop shock proof, USB 2.0 and Integrated USB connector.

The D201GLY2 is the cheapset mother processor combo solution to came out of the Intel stable. Built to the Micro ATX from factor, the motherboard is mere 17 x 17 cm. This combo makes a lot of sense for people building linux nodes or low power downloading machines.
The motherboard comes with an Intel Celeron 220 processor soldered, which means no speed upgrade. The core 2-architecture based processor runs at Jurassic 1.2 GHz on a 533 MHz system bus. Thankfully, the motherboard supports DDR 2, but it has single memory slot-so no dual channel for you.
Though the mothebroad comes from Intel, both the chipsets are from SiS, namely, SiS662. The graphics driver for Windows works well, but with Ubuntu 7.10 and Linux Mint 4.0, we ran into display problems and needed a patch driver for the GUI to work properly.

Other features include two SATA ports, one IDE slot, six USB ports, one serial port and one parallel port. A 10/100 Ethernet comes onboard and it has only one PCI slot.
Considering the hardware, we didn’t run our usual heavy duty tests, but instead relied on same old ones to do the number crunching, The processor is reasonably fast and can handle three applications simultaneously.Running multimedia, we could see the system suffer a bit when switching between applications. Graphic engines on the motherboard are quite weak and don’t stand a chance when put to gaming. Reasonable resolution movies run fine, but high resolution ones occasionally stutter. The chipsets and processors are passively cooled and when put to task, get really hot. We suggest going for the actively cooled model (D201GLY2A).
Priced at Rs 3,300, the D201GLY2 offers excellent value and if you want to build a compact, low cost machine, the D201GLY2 is definitely the solution to go for. However don’t except to run games or any other heavy duty application. We suggest this for building a downloading machine, a print server or a file server.

Specifications:
17 x 17 cm size, Celeron 1.2 GHz, support DDR 2 up to 667 MHz, ADI AD1888 Audio (2 channel), 2 SATA ports and 10/100 Ethernet.

Logitech’s G (for gaming) series features the highest pixel count sensors, and classy aesthetics that includes grip-friendly curves, and slicks-as-teflon feet for a smooth glide-something that gamers will appreciate. The G9 goes a little high tech; and includes a laser sensor that allows a whopping accuracy of 3200 dpi. Although gamers will recognizes this as marketing rubbish (no gamer worth his salt plays at even 2000 dpi), the fact remains that the sensor on the G9 is sensitive indeed. Also, onboard is the micro precision scroll wheel, which we will recognize as a clone of the excellent unit on the MX revolution, and two working modes. One you can use as a regular wheel with clicky feedback. We did mention modular-the G9 has changeable grips-the two are the regular stripped down grip and an additional bezel-like unit which clicks on to the outer body of the mouse ,making it significantly wider and hence the name wide grip.There are also other grips that you can purchase from Logitech,each customized for a certain type of usage. From its predecessor-the G5, the G9 gets a Weight cartridge,only this time its cleverly removed by applying pressure on its notch at the rear. The Weights on the G5 had a tendency to rust.Thankfully, these seem to have been adequately treated.One issue that we noticed right away(and what is possibly a major flaw)is the slight play between the weight tray and its housing-truly annoying while using the mous.Also,if you remove the tray,you get an ugly hole at the rear of the body,whereas the G5 was neater with the tray sloting underneath the body.

Practically, the side buttons feel a little too soft, mainly because there is a slight gap between the outer body and inner body,which has contacts for the buttons. There is a DPI indicator (whose color can be changed via drivers-neat but useless!),that is useful to let you know how much to dial up for dial down the DPI.
At $150, the G9 is very expensive for the innovations and features it offers. 3,200 DPI is just gimmicky because nobody will use this mouse at that resolution. The Lachesis from Razer is another similar high DPI product (4,000 DPI) that does a better job, at a slightly higher price. The polling frequency of 1 kHz is something though,so is the ability to store and load profiles. This is a good mouse for the serious fragger, but not at its current price.

Specifications:
Sensor 3200 dpi, polling frequency 1 KHz, customizable grips, customizable weights.