OCZ
Rally2 USB Flash Drive 2GB: $49
www.ocztechnology.com

OCZ made its first concerted effort to shake up the USB flash drive market a few months back with its Rally. According to representatives at the company, an optimized memory controller and dual-channel configuration helped generate higher performance than any other flash drive out there. Despite its successes as a compact mobile storage device, though, OCZ worked on ways to improve the Rally, resulting in a new, improved Rally2 USB Flash Drive.

One of the issues we discovered with the original Rally was that, after several months of use, the chassis took quite a beating and the keychain connector would stress and break. According to Alex Mei of OCZ, the Rally2 should have no trouble standing up to the rigors of everyday use. Hard to believe as it may be, OCZ also shaved the drive’s dimensions down some, yielding an even sleeker Rally2 drive that won’t interfere with neighboring USB connectors. The housing is still built of aluminum and incredibly light.

While read performance gets a nice bump up to 28 MBps, performance isn’t OCZ’s top selling point this time around. Instead, OCZ is focusing on service and support that outpaces every competitor. The Rally2 comes with a lifetime warranty and direct 800 number for contacting a service rep. Other vendors protect their drives from between 1 and 10 years, making OCZ’s lifetime coverage particularly reseller-friendly. Available under $50, it’d be hard to go wrong with such a robust little 2GB drive.

ASUS
P5B Deluxe Motherboard: $199
www.asus.com

It’s always good to have go-to products when YOUR customer doesn’t know exactly what they’re looking for, be it a motherboard, graphics card, or wireless router. The ASUS P5B Deluxe fits that mold perfectly. Because it’s based on Intel’s recently released P965 chipset, the board benefits from a few new noteworthy features. ASUS throws in a handful of its own extras and then goes on to offer a slimmed-down version at a significantly lower price point.

The board’s chipset-based basics are fairly standard. Support for the Core 2 Duo processor is perhaps the most exciting selling point; though dual PCI Express x16 graphics slots (one running at x16 and one at x4) present some interesting opportunities for expansion through two graphics cards. Four DIMM slots accommodate up to 8GB of unbuffered DDR2 memory—the platform’s ceiling.

ASUS mates the P965 to Intel’s ICH8 controller, replete with six SATA 3.0 GHz ports, eight USB 2.0 connectors, 7.1 HD Audio, and an additional PCI Express x1 slot. ASUS contributes a PATA/SATA controller with internal and external connectivity, two Gigabit Ethernet chips, a FireWire 1394 chip, and 54 Mbps 802.11g, pretty much taking care of every peripheral save for graphics your customer could add to a competent digital home box.

Much of the value ASUS adds comes from attention to detail. Noise is mitigated by a network of heat pipes instead of the typical miniature fans. Bundled software helps simplify BIOS updates, wireless network access, and customizable BIOS images. And of course, a particularly clean board layout makes it easy for resellers to make connections and route cables. For those who see the $199 price tag and gawk, ASUS also offers the vanilla P5B at $149. Though it sacrifices wireless access and FireWire, the P5B sports the same exciting core features inherent to the P965.

Logitech
MX Revolution Mouse: $99
www.logitech.com

When’s the last time we had anything interesting to say about a mouse? Well, today’s the day, and Logitech is once again the company making it happen. The MX Revolution picks up where prior MX models leave off, with a finely contoured ergonomic feel, high-resolution laser optics, rechargeable Li-Ion battery, wireless USB charging cradle, and so on. The MX was already head and shoulders above any other mainstream mouse.

Now add the overstated “Revolution.” Instead of having to pan a half-page with each flick of the center-mounted scroll wheel, the new MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel spins freely for up to seven seconds with one flick, skimming through long documents and stopping on a dime. As someone used to handling documents with scores of pages, this is a big deal to me. Alternatively, the wheel can snap back into line-by-line scrolling. Driver software can also detect your application type and set the scroll mode automatically.

Below the scroll wheel is a button that launches the user’s favorite search engine. But it’s not just a link shortcut. If you highlight a word or phrase then hit the button, the page that pops up contains the results for the highlighted phrase search. Slick. Document/application flipping has now moved to a side wheel rather than a button, too. Otherwise, it’s still more or less the same MX wireless mouse. These innovations alone probably don’t justify $100, but for productivity nuts stepping up from a corded or basic wireless mouse, this is definitely the way to fly.

Diamond
XtremeTV PVR560: $99
www.diamondmm.com

Selling TV tuners based on hardware is tough work—most packages perform similar functions, receiving whatever cable or antenna signal to which your customer has access and encoding basic MPEG-2 streams. At one time, pausing, recording, and skipping commercials were all cutting-edge extras. But we’re long past those days and any tuner worth selling comes with those features.

Instead of leaning on hardware, Diamond Multimedia uses SnapStream’s Beyond TV software package as its differentiator. Normally a $70 suite, Beyond TV is one of the most highly regarded tuning apps available, so Diamond’s decision to include it with the XtremeTV PVR560 should let your customers use the software they’d want to buy anyway. In addition to standard PVR functionality, Beyond TV helps organize media files, schedule recording remotely, and deliver program guide information free of charge. Beyond Media, a companion app also thrown in, plays back recorded files plus MP3s, radio stations, and DVD movies.

Of course, the XtremeTV PVR 560’s hardware specs are also excellent—hardware-accelerated encoding, built-in FM tuning, and a bundled remote control are all part of the package. The card takes composite, coaxial, and S-Video inputs. It also accepts RCA-style audio inputs, a combination well-suited for connecting game consoles and digital camcorders. The XtremeTV PVR560 ducks in at a price point just under $100. And as any college student living in a dorm room could tell you, that’s a great alternative to buying a PC and TV separately.