Navigate: Advice Beginners BIOS Guide CPUs Links Mainboards Memory Network Storage Video/Sound Cards Contact Forum SiteMap Sponsors WebNews Home	.	.
Prices: Mainboards ABIT ASUS Chaintech Shuttle Soyo Tyan CPU Intel P4 2.4C-800 P4 2.6C-800 P4 2.8C-800 P4 3.0-800 P4 3.2-800 AMD AthlonXP XP 1700+ XP 2000+ XP 2400+ XP 2500+ XP 2700+ XP 3000+ XP 3200+ Athlon64 Athlon64 3200+ Athlon64 FX-51 Opteron Opteron 240 Opteron 242 Opteron 244 Opteron 246 Memory Corsair Crucial Kingston Mushkin OCZ Search Prices:

Gaming Laptops

One often overlooked application for laptops has been 3DGaming, as funny as it may sound but on the train, on the plane, somebody still always plays games and in most cases, the graphics are still rather pedestrian. This market is targeted now by e.g. FIC with their dedicated MH47 gaming laptop using an AMD Athlon processor along with a real graphics card, that is the RADEON 9600 with discrete 64 MB of video memory on board. Screen resolution is fixed at 1280 x 800 with support for a whole range of external CRT and DFP screens. FIC also showed their "ladyslipper" system and brought some innovative knock-off of the old Mac's to the PC platform under the name "Condor", a completely screwless setup with push-buttons for the drive bays and similar ingenious details all across the case's interior.

                    

Left to right: Condor, Ladyslipper and MH47

Shuttle had their latest µForm Factor "Zen" system which runs about 20% smaller than the XPC, using an external power brick instead of an internal power supply. An interesting little box to say the least. Otherwise, there was the rainbow collection of standard XPCs from Barbie-Pink to Barney-Purple and Black.

ASUS

Located on the 11th floor in the Aladdin Hotel, ASUS had the probably slimmest of all slim-line entertainment computers dubbed DigMatrix, capable of running a P4 up to 2.4 GHz and using the proven SIS651-962 combination as core logic. The show unit was using a 1.7 GHz Celeron and ran basically noiseless. Asus further deserves some brownie points for one of the most useful gadgets of the entire show, that is, a pocket-size wireless access point targeting frequent travelers that are tired of being tied to the only table in the hotel room that is close enough to the Ehternet port.

      

DigiMatrix

Maxtor QuickView

Unbeknownst to most PC users, Maxtor is featuring a line of QuickView drives geared towards home entertainment systems and tuned for ultra low noise and cool operation. In a nutshell, the QuickView drives don't feature internal ECC (or CRC), the drives are running at 5400 rpm only and optimized for track-to-track seeks that are the most common scenario for any streaming video storage. In other words, those drives don't care about dropping a bit here or there, for video replay, it really does not matter at all, neither does it for audio. And never, ever, try random accesses .....

Gibson

As usual, Gibson had their own tent showing off the latest Gibson and Epiphone brand instruments with the classic LesPaul Deluxe in black finish with gold trim being the eternal centerpiece but they also had SG's, 335 replicas and a number of acoustic versions. Missing (maybe I just didn't see it) was the "Chet Atkins" electric version of a concert guitar, otherwise, it was the usual repertoire of some of the finest guitars that money can buy along with the necessary amplifier and recording equipment.

next page:    => Autombiles and Politics =>