Computex 2008 Preview

[cas]

While scouting the exhibition halls of Computex 2008 for the latest scoops and news, our eyes spotted a strangely familiar sight. Lo and behold! Netbooks galore! Here's a quick peek before tomorrow's full coverage of Computex 2008.


The ASUS Eee Box isn't a netbook; it's a Nettop that's bound to wow users with it's sleek form and affordable price.


Running on a 1.6Ghz VIA C7-M is Everex's 8.9-inch OpenBook which features Windows XP, 2GB DDR2 and a 80GB HDD.


Gigabyte joins in the netbook fray with the Gigabyte Netbook 912. Featuring a 8.9-inch screen, Gigabyte's offering is most likely running on Intel's Atom (1.6Ghz), though we can't be sure at this point of time.


Kohjinsha's offering differs from its other competitors by using AMD instead of VIA or Intel processor. Running on an AMD Geode LX800, and has a slightly larger 10.2-inch screen.

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MSI's Wind Notebook U100 bears a striking resemblance to the ASUS Eee PC series, though we're sure it's bound to have its own unique characteristics. The specs of the unit have been pretty much disseminated by almost everyone, but yes: it uses Atom.


Packbard Bell's Easynote XS is bound to make most Europeans happy as chances are, you'll probably find this VIA powered netbook available there first (we guess).


Last but not least is the OLPC, which as you all know, is now running on Windows XP (as you can see).

[cas]

Following are some picture from computex, since John hasn't posted his video yet, i though might as well share some picture with u guys first


The start of Computex 2008.

abit's Booth

Motherboards have been abit's strong suit and unsurprisingly, the booth was all about that, with the latest chipsets for both AMD and Intel processors.



The first abit's P45 motherboards that we saw is the IP45-MAX, which has four DDR3 DIMM slots (1600/1333MHz). The rest of the specifications look typical for a P45 board, with abit including only one Gigabit Ethernet unlike some other vendors. abit does include its own patented uGuru and Silent OTES technology. However, there is no exotic cooling solution for the board besides the now common heat pipe based cooler.


Similar to the MAX except for its use of DDR2 instead of DDR3 memory, the IP45 Pro has a more appealing color scheme in our opinion. The feature set remains however

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Eschewing the Silent OTES and heat pipes on the MAX or Pro, this is the basic P45 model from abit. There's no uGuru either and the DDR2 memory support is 1066/800 and not 1200/1066 like on the Pro.


While it has been available already, let's not forget the X48 chipsets amidst all the P45/43 releases. Here's abit's IX48-MAX, which supports up to 4 DIMM of DDR3 1600 memory and has 2 PCIe x 16 Gen 2 slots but no CrossFireX (no dual x8). It does have abit's proprietary uGuru and OTES technologies.


The abit IP43 Pro has the associated abit technologies but since it's based on Intel's P43 and ICH10 chipsets, there's no RAID functionality. Only one PCIe x 16 is also found instead of two.


Remove the abit technologies and degrade the DDR2 memory support to 1066/800 from the IP43 Pro and you'll get the base model, IP43. See the trend here?