Cebit Coverage

Spode · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 12:16 am Post subject: Cebit Coverage

Hi there,

I will be using this thread to show anything interesting I see at Cebit or interesting news tidbits I pick up. I can imagine this will be rather picture heavy, but 640x480 at most in size.

If there is something you want more information on, just say and I will try my best to get your questions answered.

If you don't know what cebit is, see www.cebit.de

:arrow:

Allan · Joined: 07 Apr 2003 Posts: 185 Location: Denmark

Cool beans Spode! Perhaps if I'm not as busy next year I can come join you down there. For now I'll trust you to dig up some good stuff for us! Have a nice CeBit!

Spode · Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2004 5:15 pm Post subject:

Well, my first post!

Missed the first ferry on the way here so had to wait 4 hours and get the overnight crossing. Then when we got to Holland, the Land Rover needed repairing. Btw, We = Me and the eFestival team (www.e-fest.co.uk)

So we got it repaired, arrived late last night just in time for a party being held by Asus. But weren't there in time to report on any products.

So, today was my first day. I started in hall 22 which is where most of the interesting stuff is. I spent quite a few hours there inbetween meetings and managed to get some shots of some things.

CeBit is a trade show so tends to be full of Taiwanese companies trying to produce incredibly cheap replicas of products, to be sold on the cheap around the world. This, and considering how easily we can keep up with new products through the web, very little is new, interesting or innovative. So I'm not going to try and bore you with the same old stuff, I've only included photos of stuff that I believe is worth a mention..

I often forget to write down the company names on these things, so I may end up tagging them on later.

In order of taking... Prepare for a photo attack!

I thought this might interest people. Similar idea to those flashy dust caps you get for mountain bikes.

Finally you have no excuse to use your CD-ROM drive as a cup holder, because SunBeam have made both a cup holder and ashtray. Oh, and they make lots of pretty lights too.

About time someone did this. A ducting system for your CPU to make use of the 80mm fan hole above the CPU in most chassis.

This next company, irock had a general array of rather stylish products including EluminX style keyboards. But they had these rather nicely finished 6 in 1 card readers and hard drive enclosures.

I've put their business card in this photo to give you an idea of it's size. It takes an S-Video input and didn't need external power. I'm not sure if it gets power from a battery (most likely) or the S-Video cable. But rather nifty, and apparantly about $50. She said she may sell it at the end of the show, if I was here for the entire thing, I'd grab it!! Most cool.

This is a very small MP3 player (about the size of a business card). I'll have to find out what capacity it is next time I pass by.

Yet another ducting solution. This time taking the cooler air from the front of the computer.

A new board from Gigabyte, supporting both DDR2 and DDR, but not at the same time. Notice the PCI Express slot and the rather tiny new replacements for PCI next to them.

It is also hard to notice, but the ZIF socket has been inverted. The new 755 pin chips from Intel will be Female instead of Male. This is rather sneaky of intel, as instead of bent pins meaning they cover the cost of replacement, a bent pin will mean a motherboard replacement. Almost all the boards I saw on display had bent or damaged pins. Sad

This device from Gigabyte also, plugs straight into the back of any printer giving you bluetooth connectivity with no need for drivers. Very useful for laptop users and perhaps even a small office.

This is exactly what it says, a USB 2.0 to IDE convertor. Very small and compact. Very useful too. Perfect for testing harddrives for viruses e.t.c

Chyang, the makers of the fun cube bring us this rather small PC. It's pretty much the same size as an internal CD drive. Very nice.

This case is already on sale from Shuttle. I wanted to show this though. When you plug your cables into the front devices and then close the lid, it flips the whole thing back and has enough room to let the lid close without crushing the cables. Snazzy.

I then went to take a look at ECS. UK readers might find it interesting that eBuyer UK don't actually buy their motherboards directly from ECS but through other channels. Becuase of this, ECS boards they sell do not have technical support. But if you run into problems, most of their boards are dirt cheap, so you may as well buy another. I'm not sure how they deal with DOA's.

They have recently started their "extreme" range of motherboards offering more features and overclocking. It's a shame to see another company make use of this dying and increasingly annoying word....

Their new laptops now have the choice of a standard lid or a lid with a plastic face plate on. With the use of a screwdriver you can customize your laptop, with a company logo or perhaps a picture of your favourite cat. This should be a winner with the girlies!

The system above is the soon to be launched EzBuddie 2. Designed as a home entertainment system is dual boots Linux and Windows as standard. The linux is their own system (I assume) allowing you to play DVD's, MP3's and other such media functions (taking full advantage of the in built 6 in 1 card reader. But, at the press of a button on the remote control it boots into Windows where you can take full advantage of this Pentium 4 solution.

This is a picture frame with support for a compact flash card full of pictures. I have seen these around but I still think it's quite a new product. Once they come down in price, I think I'd like one in my room. Put some of my favourite photos on there to brighten up my day.

MSI had quite a lot of new MP3 and storage devices that were interesting. Such as this 1.5gb Toshiba mini-hard drive technology. It should be quite reasonable priced at under £100.

I found this was clever (MSI again), the USB lead used to transfer to the device is tucked nicely inside the chassis, so you never have to forget your lead.

UPDATE: Missed photos from yesterday:

These are some rather nifty looking speakers, that light up with the beat of the music. I expect some cool effects in a dark room could be acheived.

This is the closer shot of the 755 socket..

And then, I ran out of space for photos. So I shall stop for today. Apologies for typos e.t.c as I am using a german keyboard and I'm a bit rushed for time. Let us see what I can find tomorrow.

Spode · Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2004 9:41 am Post subject:

Also, worth mentioning when talking to ATI yesterday, is if you have a 9100 IGP chipset board with the onboard graphics, look out for a BIOS update. A new function they have added, is when inserting an AGP card it will run alongside your onboard graphics. A very cheap way of having triple head output Smile

pdawalibi · Joined: 21 Mar 2004 Posts: 1

What's the company that makes that tiny LCD? I'd love to get my hands on one of those!

Any extra information would be appreciated!

Spode · Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2004 4:30 pm Post subject:

PDAWalabi - don't have their card on me right now (in the press center), but I'll post it soon. But you're right, looks pretty cool Smile

Well, not much to report on yesterday, as well as Spode's Abode, I've been quite busy with eFestival after all...

I also had trouble finding software to resize the images on these machines. So I can't put anything up today either. I'll try and do it this evening on the rather expensive GPRS connection we have..

I had a briefing with nVidia today about NV40. Which was interesting. Unfortunately I had to sign an NDA so I can't talk about it. But it was impressive. Will have to wait and see how it shapes up against the competition.

GLOC · Joined: 14 Jan 2004 Posts: 141 Location: Ashford, Kent

very nice! i especially liked the bit about the new intel cpus being mother as opposed to fater, yet more reason to avoid intel and hopefully fewer motherboard manufactuers will support intel chipsets in future as they will have to fund the replacements. (good or bad thing i supose depends if the board is under a warrenty)

GLOC · Joined: 14 Jan 2004 Posts: 141 Location: Ashford, Kent

i have been after a ide-usb for ages cheap and cheerful hopefully i can easily mod my case to a have a 4 pin powerconverter on the outside. with all these external hard drives and hard drive casings all you pay for is the bus between usb and ide.

Spode · Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2004 1:11 pm Post subject:

I'm afraid I shall have to post the rest of my findings on my return. These laptops have been locked down and I can't resize the images Sad

Hope you can wait 2 days!

Spode · Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2004 7:30 pm Post subject:

First of all, PDAWalabi, the company selling that LCD can be found at http://www.taiwanlcd.com.tw/ but I couldn't get their website to work. So I would e-mail sales@taiwanswitch.com.tw to see what you get. I tried to buy it off them at the end but they needed it to take to Russia Sad

If I hadn't been so rushed off my feet, there were a lot of things I wanted to go around a haggle for Razz

Things I haven't got pictures of. A company called Pretec had 12gb compact flash cards. Globalwin showed me the desigs for their latest water cooler, using a bong cooler type system. Very nicely done.

Now, onto the pics.

Finally, someone who has done a Microsoft Media Center the way it should have been done. This beautiful system from Digital Logic is small, silent and powerful. They also have a lot of other products in their line up, both small and quiet and even water submersible!

An Idea I have had churning in the back of my mind for a while now. 4 EPIA style systems in a 1U chasis. Put some crossover cables between them and with the right software you could have a rather nifty set up. Both for performance and not to mention redundancy.

I saw a couple of these type of things around, but show Pretecs because they had a lot of excellent products, such as this 3gb IDE flash memory module above, but also 12gb compact flash cards or 8gb PCMCIA cards. It's really coming to the point now that removable flash media is coming into size where it can do almost anything we need.

Well, someone had to do it. Tits on a mouse pad. Razz

This strange looking device caught my attention. The keys are on the sides of the keyboard and the mirrors are supposed to help you input the data. A little like playing the accordian. It felt quite nice to use, and somehow I could already type my name. But it was far from easy.

For the life of me, I can't remember which company was doing this. Some cheap case manufacturer (and there are lot of those at Cebt). But it is about time somebody did something like that as standard.

Encer, who also make some nice cases, make this power supply. First I've seen with a blower in. A good way to go if you ask me.

This is an internal 6 in 1 reader with a twist. Press a button and..

Voila! It's an external reader with USB lead built in! Thank you GMC Very Happy

High Power were showing this silent power supply off. A couple of manufacturers had similar designs to this. Who knows how well it will work...

BeanTech show off this case. I've never been a huge fan of Acrlyic cases, but I think this works well. You can still have cool glowing lights, while being able to hide your ugly components Smile

While having a meeting with VIA, Tim pulled this little baby out of his wallet. It's a 1ghz C3. a 5 cent coin is about the same size as a penny. And it uses 7w of power. The way of the future...

Lucky Star were hiding this product away, but it sill caught my eye. It's a pen that is also a thumb drive. Annoyingly though, the thread to screw the two peices together is so fine that it takes an age. A nice concept though.

This company had a variety of very well designed thumb drives. This micro-thin drive holds 2gb of data. Impressive.

Zalman were showing off a variety of silent systems, such as fanless watercoolers. This case is one big heatsink with heatpipes spreading all the heat straight to the case. Be interesting to see how this works. I've been told it is rather pricey.

This is a close up the 755 socket. Thanks to Intels Sex Change.

There has been talk of these for a while. Apparantly they are now on sale. I personally didn't feel like I was using a finished product though. It was very innacurate. Probably becuase I have a habit of brushing my fingers lightly across the surface of the other keys as I type. I'm sure I could get used to it. But it certainly wasn't nice the first time round.

In general, Cebit was stressful and tiring. I hope I have bought to your attention some interesting products and up and coming technologies.

For all the spin and hype from Cebit, go and read the inquirer Razz

ClubBarf · Joined: 26 Apr 2003 Posts: 2135 Location: London, UK

Those 3GB flash ide drives will probably be finding their way into my firewall box eventually. Been thinking about getting a flash to ide converter, which is probably roughly what that Pretec device is, but they are so very, very...

s l o w

Smile

Spode · Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2004 1:01 am Post subject:

Well, they must be getting better. One company was using these devices to make a Thin-Client solution with fast boot up times...

mrplow · Joined: 27 Mar 2004 Posts: 1

Spode · Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2004 2:17 pm Post subject:

I'm hearing more and more complaints of people not getting their AIW to work. It's worrying me.

As to the BIOS being out. I'll shoot em an e-mail..

matty c · Joined: 03 Jul 2003 Posts: 1191 Location: NW London, UK

That mouse mat... Very Happy

I've seen summat similar in Maplin tho.

Spode · Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2004 12:15 pm Post subject:

From ATI regarding SURROUNDVIEW (triple head)

robbie · Joined: 06 Apr 2003 Posts: 29 Location: Desert of Cali

WOW thanks for the pix!!!
Rob

Chilliwilli · Joined: 29 Mar 2004 Posts: 2

Those inverted pins you talk about are infact BGA ZIF sockets.. BGA is ball grid array and allow pins to be more closely spaced than traditional PGA (pin grid array) designs. It also means that embedded cpu's and desktop cpus can use the same packaging.. In the case of embedded they just slap the chip straight onto pads on the PCB and heat it up.. Voila permanently place chip.

I doubt very much that this was a dirty trick by intel to offload cpu replacement cost onto mobo makers (but I could be wrong)

Chilliwilli · Joined: 29 Mar 2004 Posts: 2

What's so special about those flash to IDE converters? Compact flash supports IDE as standard.. all you'd need to make your own converter is fifty odd pieces of wire.

Spode · Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2004 5:55 pm Post subject:

It's nothing special, it's just nifty. The best things are simple. But I don't see many people doing them...

I'm not 100% sure you're right about the BGA. What you seem to be describing is an idea that was scrapped. It was going to be the balls of solder on the bottom of the chip, which sit inside a concave ball shape. Like a ball and socket. But they couldn't manufacturer it properly.

I could be wrong mind you, and what you are suggesting was a more economical way around this idea. I can't really comment unless I a) ask intel for a picture of a chip b) get a chip myself..