cooler master

Choiix? Who's Choiix you ask? Choiix is a new subsidiary of Cooler Master, providing, as they describe it, "simple and practical yet stylish notebook accessories." Strange brand title aside, they do provide some decent accessories, and today we have the Choiix Power Fort accessory, aimed at road warriors with limited access to an outlet and tons of USB gadgets. Sounds like a fairly big market, right? That appears to be what Cooler Master was thinking too.

If there's one thing that chaps our hide, it's lousy drivers. But coming in at a close second are the craptastic speakers that manage to infiltrate almost every notebook on the planet, including the so-called desktop replacements. Would it kill OEMs to shove a decent pair of cans into their laptops?

Apparently that's not a chance many are willing to take, so it's up to third-party peripheral makers to fill the void. Enter Choiix, a company you probably never heard of, but hold your horses before you go gallopping off. Choiix isn't some generic brand you'll find in the clearance section of Walmart, it's actually a subsidiary of Cooler Master, which we're willing to bet you have heard of (and if not, then welcome to the world of computers, junior!). Cooler Master's Choiix division focuses on lifestyle products, including the BoomBoom Slim Travel Speaker we're looking at today.

As Choiix describes it, the BoomBoom is a "cleverly designed" external speaker accessory offering "rich sound" in a slim package. Given our experience with laptop speakers, that sounds good to us. But can they deliver? Let's just see, or hear, as the case may be.

You can walk out of Walmart with a bag of cat litter, a bottle of ketchup, and a serviceable dual-core notebook with ample hard drive space and still have only spent around $600. This has made hulking towers, and even mid-tower PCs, a less attractive option to the mainstream shopper who just wants to hop online and fire off a few Facebook updates, but this isn't without its drawbacks, namely heat and ergonomics.

That's where Cooler Master's NotePal ErgoStand comes into the picture. The ErgoStand is one of many notebook stands promising better cooling and improved ergonomics by raising your notebook's display to eye level, just as if you were staring at a PC monitor. It's also one of the few that can accommodate 17-inch notebooks. How does it fare? You know the drill - click through to find out, homeslice.

The Scout enclosure, from Cooler Master, is one of their mid-tower releases in the Storm line of products. As with most of the products in this line, dark paint and/or a brushed metal look is the norm. But, unlike many of them, the Scout doesn't have that out-of-the-box flare that we are familiar with. Does that mean Cooler Master is hiding something underneath the hood? We intend to find out - join us as we take a closer look at Cooler Master's Storm Scout.