Product Pick: Rosewill NIC

     So, as the title suggests, our product pick for the evening is the Rosewill RC400-LX Gigabit network card.  First note on this pick, this is budget hardware, so if you're looking for top quality performance, I'd point you to my earlier post on the Linksys gigabit card.
     That being said, the Rosewill RC400-LX has to be the cheapest way to upgrade your network to anything resembling 1000mbs networking speeds.  At the ridiculously low price tag you can purchase these things for, they are amazing.  That's the good part.
     Now for the bad part: they have very little compatibility with operating systems that don't start with the word Windows.  Not a concern for most people, I know, but this is a major concern for some of us in the small-to-mid sized business sector.  There is supposed to be a way to get this card to work in Linux, but I have yet to have success installing it in any of the major distributions I use.  I wouldn't even suggest trying to install it in a Franken-Mac situation, unless your running it in a virtual machine.  Another downside is that this network card is from the very lowest end of the networking spectrum, so the performance isn't on par with things like Linksys and D-Link.
     Other than these few hang ups, this has been a pretty solid little piece of hardware.  I'll have to give it at least three out of five fruit.  If you are looking to get into the gigabit wired realm with out the tremendous price tag, this is your ticket.
     Until next time, I'll catch you on the flipside.