Electron Hut: Kyle Bedell’s Blog

Bigfoot Networks made something of a splash in 2007 with the release of their Killer M1 network card. The premise? That the Windows networking stack was never built for gaming. By offloading network traffic to a dedicated card with its own processor and RAM, you could cut down on a bit of latency, potentially improving your gaming performance. In practice, the M1 didn’t really do all that much to improve ping times. In certain cases, it actually made things worse! Early drivers were buggy, the card was expensive ($300 at launch!), and the M1 was widely regarded as expensive networking snake oil.

Fast forward three years. Bigfoot Networks has recently released their Killer 2100 gaming network card at a much more affordable price point of $129. Has Bigfoot made significant strides in the four years since the M1? Have the drivers improved? Is the card just another piece of networking hooey? Let’s find out!

Hardware and Packaging

I purchased VisionTek’s edition of the Killer 2100 from NewEgg (amazing service as always, thanks guys!). The contents of the box are fairly spartan, containing the card, a driver CD, and a short owner’s manual. The card itself isn’t nearly as flashy as the original Killer M1. I actually prefer the toned-down look; the mesh keeps you from accidentally touching the board when you install the card, and there’s a subtle red LED that lights up the interior when the card is plugged in. The card itself is a single slot PCI Express x1 affair, but it will install in any PCI Express slot size (mine’s in an x4).

Software

The Killer 2100 comes bundled with the Killer Network Manager, a combination benchmarking, tweaking, and monitoring utility that serves as a sort of command center for the card. The app is divided in to five sections: Overview, PC Monitor, Applications, Network, and Advanced.

The Overview section displays basic system information, along with average pings, network processor usage, and whether certain software features like bandwidth control and LAN Exceptions are enabled. The PC Monitor can graph NPU usage and other stats over time. The Applications section lets you prioritize applications and artificially limit their bandwidth (for example, I set my BitTorrent traffic to low priority and restrict it to using 30% of my available bandwidth, leaving plenty of bandwidth available for Katt and my other applications).

The other two sections allow for low-level tweaking. The Network section lets you test (or manually configure) your connection speed, toggle the LAN Exceptions feature (which prevents the card from throttling internal network traffic), and change built-in Windows TCP settings like TCPNoDelay and the TCP ACK frequency. The Advanced section allows for altering the behavior of the Killer 2100′s traffic prioritization rules and some miscellaneous options like turning the built-in LED on or off.

The drivers have been rock-solid. No crashes or bluescreens!

Performance

Snazzy software aside, I’m sure you want the answers to the only questions that really matter: Does it actually work? Does the card reduce latency in games? I’m actually quite pleased to report that the Killer 2100 delivers on its promises. Latency tests are difficult to replicate, since there are myriad variables that can affect that sort of performance. To try and gauge the card’s impact on the two games I play most often, DICE’s Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, I kept a spreadsheet of latencies across five days of playtime. The timeframes were relatively consistent, with most gameplay occurring between 8pm and 11pm, Monday through Friday.

My box has the following specs:

• ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard
• Intel Core i7 920 (2.6GHz)
• 6GB of Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600 RAM
• Western Digital RE3 1TB hard drive
• ATI Radeon 5870 1GB graphics card

In World of Warcraft, I had an average ping of 180ms running on my Marvell Yukon Gigabit Ethernet controller. In Battlefield: Bad Company 2, I had an average ping of 148ms on the same built-in NIC. Then I installed the Killer 2100, disabled my built-in NICs, and started tracking latencies again. I only have 3 days of sample data (compared to 5 for the Yukon), but the averages have definitely dropped. With the Killer 2100 installed, my average World of Warcraft latency is 98ms. That’s a 46% decrease. In Battlefield: Bad Company 2, my average ping is 101ms, a 32% decrease over the Yukon controller.

My connection in general feels a lot smoother — I used to get small latency spikes and hangups in Bad Company 2 when a helicopter would crash or I was riding shotgun in a vehicle. in World of Warcraft, I’d regularly experience the “teleportation effect” in the major cities where large numbers of players gather. Players would be standing in one spot, running in place, then appear 200 feet away in the blink of an eye. These problems have disappeared on the Killer 2100. The best part is that I didn’t have to manually prioritize my gaming traffic: the card takes care of that for you automatically.

So is the Killer 2100 worth its $129 cost? That depends on two things:

1. Is your connection at least mediocre?
2. Are there other upgrades (like extra RAM or a new video card) that you could put that $129 towards and get better performance?

The Killer 2100 won’t fix a crummy connection, although it can make a mediocre one good and a good one great. It’s definitely geared towards the PC gamer who already has the essentials taken care of (processing power, RAM, and a good video card). If you’re lacking in one of those departments, save your money. However, if you’re searching for a product that will give you an edge that’s next to impossible to gain with other hardware, the Killer 2100 is the upgrade for you. The automatic application prioritization and Windows network stack bypass features really do work, decreasing latency and improving overall network performance. You’ll notice a difference!

You can buy the Killer 2100 from Newegg for $129, but I get a small cut through Amazon Affiliates if you pick it up from Amazon.com.

Say what you will about the abundance of crappy merchandise and a television series that degraded rapidly in quality, but the core Pokemon games (not the spin-offs) have been nothing short of excellent.

When I was twelve years old on September 30th, 1998, Nintendo introduced me to a role-playing game the likes of which I had never seen before: Pokemon Blue for the original Game Boy. Those 150 pixelated monsters gave my brother, sister, and I hours of fun battling, trading, and leveling. Every few years, the company would introduce new features and more monsters until it became apparent that they were “missing” (sales/exposure-wise) a generation of gamers who had never played the originals. Then the remakes started. Nintendo looks at them as a way to introduce new gamers to the older entries in the series. For me, it’s more about reliving the “golden years” of playing the games with my siblings.

Enter the latest entries in the 4th Generation of Pokemon games: Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver for the Nintendo DS.

Remakes of my favorite entries in the series, Pokemon Gold and Silver, the DS editions add most of the “next generation” technical improvements seen in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum (wireless trading over the Global Trading System, WiFi battles, etc.) while keeping the setting and story from the original titles. Oh, and there’s the bundled Pokewalker accessory.

This handy little pedometer has become the best ‘gimmick’ I’ve seen from Nintendo in ages. By making use of the device’s built-in IR port, you can offload Pokemon on to the Pokewalker. Each step you take makes the monster inside a bit stronger, and every 10 steps or so generates a Watt. You can spend Watts on the Pokewalker itself to use the Poke Radar (allowing you to catch monsters specific to the route you’re walking on) or the Dowsing Machine (a sort of ‘find the item’ game that lets you obtain various medicines and power-ups). Any monsters or items you get will transfer back in to the game when you return from a stroll. Alternatively, you can transfer the Watts back to the DS cartridge without spending them. When you hit certain totals, you open up new routes to walk your Pokemon on. Each route has different items to find and different Pokemon to catch. To make things even more interesting, Pokewalkers can ‘connect’ to each other to share data — every person you connect with each day earns you an item.

Thanks for putting Skinner’s research to good use again, Nintendo.

In all seriousness though, if you like the Pokemon series, you won’t go wrong with the latest remakes. If you’ve never played, try to forget about all of the marketing and merchandise and give it a shot. You might be surprised!

A special thanks to Noah at Kanguru for providing a drive for review!

Flash drives are mostly commodity items at this point; the cost per megabyte on these portable storage devices has plummeted in recent years. I can remember paying $79 for a 16 megabyte USB key around 1999/2000. Now, you can buy a 16 gigabyte key for $39 if you shop around. In a world full of similar products, how do you differentiate yourself? As it turns out, there’s a sizable demand for secure flash drives, especially in the government sector. Armed with 256-bit AES hardware encryption, a built-in antivirus scanner (BitDefender with a year of updates included), and a durable case, the Defender Elite fits the bill. For government security buffs, the drive meets FIPS 140-2 standards.

The first thing you notice about the Defender Elite is its construction. Made out of anodized aluminum, its build quality is tier above the myriad plastic drives out there. In addition, the drive has been filled with epoxy to make it more difficult to access the flash memory chips inside. If yellow isn’t your style, you can also get the drive in green, red, blue, and tan.

The Defender Elite’s key differentiator is its software bundle: a combination authorization/authentication/antivirus app called Kanguru Defender Manager. When you first plug the drive in to a machine, the Kanguru Defender Manager automatically launches. A few quick setup steps later (including setting a password and configuring the update schedule for the built-in antivirus), and you’re ready to go.

Anytime the Defender Elite is plugged in after the initial setup, you’ll be asked to input your password before the drive’s data can be accessed. Before the password is entered, only a separate, unencrypted partition containing the Defender Manager software is available:

After entering your password, the secure partition is decrypted and this tray icon appears in the system tray:

A right click brings up a menu you can use to configure various features of the drive:

By default, the antivirus is configured to scan everything on the drive in real time; each time a file is added, the Defender Elite automatically scans it for viruses and malware. Definition updates are painless and handled automatically. Actual Defender updates are a breeze as well, although the process is a manual one. When an update was available during this review, the Defender Elite downloaded and launched an Update Wizard. I just clicked Next on the two pages of the Wizard, allowed the update to run, then un/replugged the drive. The whole process took less than a minute.

For those who are curious, the included software is 64-bit compatible (I tested on Windows 7 Ultimate) and DPI-aware. This was an unexpected bonus — I run my machine at 125% DPI (the resolution of my screen doesn’t change, but everything is approximately 25% larger). Many applications with fixed windows sizes that aren’t DPI-aware have buttons that are cut off. The Defender Manager, however, worked perfectly with no UI issues in that regard.

Ah, but what about performance? What good is an encrypted flash drive if it takes forever to read and write data? While far from the fastest drive I’ve ever seen (that honor goes to Patriot’s Xporter series, which I’ve seen read and write around 30Mb/sec), the Defender Elite 1Gb turned in decent numbers for an encrypted drive when I benched it with USBDeview. With write speeds around 6Mb/sec and read speeds around 20Mb/sec, the Defender is an average performer. Still, the write speeds are much better than any bargain bin USB drive (I know of a popular brand with a swiveling metal clip that gets 2Mb/sec), and the read speeds are up there with many 5400RPM notebook drives.

The Bottom Line: if you’re looking for a solid performer in the arena of encrypted flash drives, the Kanguru Defender Elite won’t let you down. With an easy-to-use software package, built-in antivirus, and solid construction, it stands up to physical and digital security requirements. The read and write speeds won’t blow you away, but they’re acceptable considering the overhead of the virus scanner and encryption. Available now directly from Kanguru with a starting price of $49 for a 1Gb drive.

A finalist at TechCrunch’s TC50 2008, the Fitbit has been a long time coming. A year after its debut, the wireless pedometer is finally shipping to the public! A few days ago, I received mine in the mail courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service. So, what makes the Fitbit different from a $10 pedometer you can buy at the store, you ask?

• Improved step and activity tracking (courtesy of a gyroscopic motion sensor, the same one in the Nintendo Wii’s controller)
• Sleep tracking (measures when you fall asleep, how many times you wake up, etc.)
• Wireless uploading to Fitbit.com through the included base station
• Rechargable battery (the Fitbit clips on to the supplied base station)

The uploaded data is sent to your personal Dashboard at Fitbit.com, which takes your information and turns it in to this (click to enlarge):

In addition, the Fitbit.com site also offers a  meal tracking system with a user-maintained database and the ability to manually record activities that the pedometer isn’t particularly good at figuring out (lifting weights, for example). You can sign up and use all of the manual features for free, even if you don’t buy a Fitbit tracker. For the more competitive folks, there’s even a friends-based Leaderboard for comparing statistics.

Speaking of the tracker, the build quality is excellent. Good plastics and a bit of metal for structural integrity. If you pry open the clip a bit, you’ll see a set of electrical contacts (for charging, initial setup, and firmware updates) lining both ends. One of the nifty things about this is that you can just push the clip over the top of the base station for charging, no need to worry about orientation. As far as buttons go, there’s just one on the back! It serves two purposes: flipping between the various trackable statistics (calories, steps, miles walked, and the fitness flower)…

…and toggling Activity Mode on and off (which allows you to track specific step/calorie/distance counts for a span of time and track sleep). The first three statistics will reset at midnight every day, but the flower shrinks and grows based on your recent activity level. It you’ve been sitting in your office chair for 4 hours, it will resemble a small weed. Climb to the summit of Everest and you’ll see a flower that fills the tracker’s screen.

So is it worth it? There’s a lot of subjectivity in reviewing a gadget like this. The Fitbit is only as useful as you make it. If you wear it all the time, keep it charged (mine’s been running for four days and it still has a 90% full battery), and make use of the information you get on your Dashboard, $99 is a steal for insight in to your exercise habits and sleep quality. If you leave it at home all the time, it’s a waste of money. My honest opinion? The automatic data uploading and “put it on and forget about it” usage model is perfect for me. It’s like I say:

The best technology is the kind you don’t realize you’re using.

If you’re interested in learning more about your sleep and activity levels, and the idea of automated data collection seems cool to you, the Fitbit comes with my highest recommendation.