Jun 07
Is every hardware reviewer smoking crack?
I happened to have occasion to purchase a new case lately. The last case I purchased was my Antec SX1030 almost three years ago. It’s an amazing case, and its downside is that it’s rather large and really fucking heavy. I wanted something more compact and something a little lighter. So I started looking at the Antec Super Lanboy. It’s light, aluminum, has a fair amount of drive space, comes with extra fans and a Gear Grip-style carrier. So I googled it and read pretty much every review on the first three pages. I read the reviews (few, but still) on Newegg. I figured, hey, it’s Antec, they make quality shit.
I got the case today, and based on what I’ve seen, one of these two things must be true:
A. Most hardware reviewers are fucking worthless and dumb as posts;
B. Antec is paying everybody off.
The Antec Super Lanboy isn’t a good case. It’s an average case, with a few unique features and a few goddamn large flaws. Apparently most of the reviewers I read were too busy looking at the amenities to examine the fairly substantial flaws.
The side panels. One side has a window, the other does not. My old Antec 1030’s side panel swings out and is held in place with a neat latch. The Lanboy is held in place with shitty little tabs and pulls off hard, like a cheap Chinese knockoff. The sides are held on with thumbscrews, which is good, because if either of the Reynolds Wrap-thick panels were to fall off and plunge the massive distance of one centimeter, they would undoubtedly crumple like a soda can smashed on a redneck’s forehead. Whomever designed these micron-thick panels should be pummeled until seriously injured. And then run over with a big truck. Several times.
The rest of the case, with the notable exception of the hard drive cage, exhibits the same tinfoil-thick construction. For those of you who have unfortunately been present when I have let loose with one of my allergy sneezes, let me assure you that were this computer to be immediately downwind during one of these extremely painful nose blasts, it would immediately crumple in on itself like a car in a crusher and I would have to dremel the few remaining working components out of the resulting computer-wad.
The front fan mount is damn clever, and a 3-pin power connector is neatly supplied so that you need not pass through a power cable to the inside of the case. However, there is no way *to* pass a connector through to the rest of the case, so if you want to use a 4-pin fan you’re pretty much boned.
The door, one of my favorte parts of my 1030 and one of the main selling points of the Lanboy, is non-removable. NON FUCKING REMOVABLE. With a snap of the clasp, I could pull the 1030 door right off. What happened?
The case does have some good points, but even the good points are ambiguous. It has two 120MM fan holes, and comes with fans for them. The hard drives are rubber-grommet mounted (I resist calling simple rubber grommets “shock mounted” - anybody who does has never seen an oil-filled shockmount, but they do seem to help a lot insofar as noise is concerned. The tool drawer keeps track of all the cover slots and odd-shaped screws necessary for the drive mounts. but in a rather odd oversight they didn’t make the drawer isn’t quite long enough for the 5.25″ cover plates. Odd. The front panel has USB but not FireWire.
Also, in a moment of pure fucking weirdness, the front panel has a spare LED labeled “Turbo LED.” Since even five years ago the turbo LED was pointless, I don’t have a clue why anybody would try to bring the Turbo LED back now.
Photos soon. Until then, I’m going to sit here and contemplate my life and my poor choices of hardware.