This is supplemental information to the article: Featured Product - FrontX by T.J. Lee This article first appeared in TNPC #3.23 Click here to return to the Jim Page.

The FrontX product is a simple idea that has been executed very well. When I first heard of it I thought, heck, I could cobble together some cables and velcro them to the front or side of my system myself. But I have to tell you that once I saw FrontX all thoughts of doing it myself fled.

Above you see the pieces that make up the FrontX kit. The Front Casing takes up about 3 inches of an empty 5 1/2 drive bay (comes with screws). In the picture here the cover panel is dropped down. This panel closes, covering the ports when they're not in use. Note the plastic plate covers. These slide into slots on the front casing and makes each cabel a modular piece. The kit came with four cables but would accomodate four more.

It's not apparent from this picture but the cables are 2 1/2 feet in length and easily reached the back of the chassis of the tower system I installed this on.

Installation was very easy and the fact that the color coded connectors matched the color coding of the jacks on my SoundBlaster Live! sound card was a nice bonus. Note the female receptacle on the slot cover. By plugging in my speakers here I could plug my headphones in on the front panel and they would override the speakers. Unplugging the headphones would cut the speakers back in. Since I make a lot of phone calls over the Internet using a headset this feature alone make the FrontX worthwhile.

Above you see the final result with the cover panel down exposing the speaker, headphone, microphone, and joystick ports.

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