Geeks.com sent over a few nice gadgets and computer parts for a review last week, so here we go.

* Western Digital Scorpio 80GB UDMA/100 5400RPM 8MB 2.5″ HDD

This is a great little notebook hard drive. You know, I got this Powerbook from 2003 and its 40 GB Toshiba 4400 RPM drive starts to do weird noises lately. I thought it was time to replace that drive, and the 80 GB WD 5400 RPM drive was a great candidate. Still compatible with the old IDE standard, UDMA/100 with 8 MB cache, was a great replacement. Performance is really high, I didn’t think that Mac OS X could load so fast on that G4 machine. Safari took 3 seconds to load in the past, it takes 2 now. The drive is silent, and runs well overall. A good upgrade over the older one.

* Cyber-Blue Bluetooth v2.0 EDR Class 1 USB Dongle

Oh, just another Bluetooth dongle, you might think. But this is not any BT dongle. It’s Class 1, meaning that it can transmit up to 100 meters in open space, with up to 2.1 mbps of transfer rate. I tried the dongle with both Windows and Linux, and it was auto-detected and used automatically. No funky business anywhere. The software it comes with adds additional profiles to the Windows XP installation, like headset support. The device is small and easy to carry with you. A great little gadget if your laptop or PC doesn’t already have bluetooth support.

* Adaptec AFW-4300 3-Port FireWire 1394 PCI Card

I got this new PC last week, and its specs said nothing about Firewire support (which I need for my camcorder usage). So this PCI firewire card could fill up a void (thankfully the PC did come with two Firewire ports). So I tested this card on another older PC I had around. It was recognized by the default Windows drivers automatically, as Adaptec and Microsoft usually work together. It supports hot-plugging and it has 3 external 6-pin IEEE 1394 FireWire ports. If your PC doesn’t come with Firewire, this $8 card is really the answer.

* Silicone Skin Protector for Apple iPhone (Black)

I already have a big case for my iPhone, but I hate to open and close it before I can use my phone. 1.5 seconds of fiddling with trying to open a case can make you miss a call. So this silicone-based case fits the iPhone 1st Gen as a glove, and it has all the right cuts to allow access to. It prevents scratches of the body, but it doesn’t protect the screen and it won’t help much if you drop your phone. Yet, it’s a more practical case than the one I already had. If anything, I can still use the older case and put inside the iPhone with this new case. This way everyone wins, no?