AMD has been bucking convention from the very first, and AMD’s latest Technology Forum proves that they are intending to continue the trend, not the least because it gives them an edge over their bigger competitor. Yes, you heard right – besides their admittedly tumultuous performance in 2007 and early 2008, AMD has every intention to settle down and start regaining lost ground and regaining a competitive edge with what they term as their leadership agenda.

Gigabyte is a brand well-known for its insistence on quality and its focus on the high-end. With the recent movement of various industries into the “green” revolution and ecological sensitivity, Gigabyte has applied their brand of quality and approached this movement in the same way they approach their PC component production – in a no-holds barred insistence on doing things all the way, particularly in the case of DES, or Dynamic Energy Saver.

Asus’ videocard lineup has always included an overclocked version of their vanilla offerings, and even with the 9800GX2’s relative complexity and newness to the market, it proved no deterrent to Asus. The EN9800GX2 TOP is currently on top of the heap of high-end videocards being offered by Asus, at least in their marketing spiel. Just how much does this product deserve the title “fastest”?

                                             Most monoliths deserve a commemorative plaque of some kind.
 

Lester Co is HWM’s Associate Editor for print, and a one-man army looking for legions of articles and reviews to beat into submission. He recently came back from an HP – sponsored press briefing held in Shanghai, China, and here he shares his thoughts and observations in the first “celebrity” guest – written blog entry in hardwarezone.com in recent history. Take a look at HP’s latest innovations and productivity concepts with the intrepid editor from HWM.

As kitchen appliances go, this glorified filter/cleaner combination takes the cake for ostentatious displays of excess, but I mean that in a good way. I had no idea what it was for when I first laid eyes on it, but my second thought after this was that I wouldn’t mind owning one, nonetheless.

If Dr. Seuss wrote on a Macbook Pro and was born a few decades closer to the present, this wouldn’t be too out of place. As it is though, this “Body-Laptop Interface” is too much of a good thing – privacy, and too little of something else – err.. street-cred? Regardless, I wouldn’t want to sport that “Interface” in public, on-the-go productivity be damned.

                                             Watch out for overheating laptop!

Dell has big plans for our local market, and the HWM team was able to witness their official entry into the Philippines in the form of an event with a dazzling display of versatility and color – more than representative of Dell’s excitement and bullish attitude towards the potential for growth locally.

HP is relentlessly moving down the path of providing a laptop for each and every person who wants/needs one (sometimes the two are interchangeable to the tech and style – conscious), and doing so in the smartest way possible – giving the buyer a sense of style and individuality in each and every laptop choice as opposed to the staid and cookie-cutter looks of the competition.

                                              The Embassy, at the Fort.
 

We’re getting there. Like answering the kids in the backseat nearing the end of a long trip, or proofing the final page of that thousand-page thesis, we can say the same to the development of the powered exoskeleton. I know, I know, the intro was a bit off to the left field, but I couldn’t help pointing this out since a new movie called “Iron Man” is coming out soon in theatres – something firmly entrenched in the science fiction pulp culture of the 1960’s but is now being shown, right here in 2008, where the “Real” Iron Man is out walking around in Utah. Present reality and the science fiction of the 60’s collide.

                                             The Exoskeleton's creator, Steve Jacobsen. To the right. 

Plugging in your devices is as utilitarian as it goes. As our devices ramp up the style and move into the same “accessory status” as jewelry and handbags, it gets harder to maintain the veneer of sophistication when it comes time to plug in and recharge or synchronize. I mean, have you seen one of those huge power plugs recently? They’re not real pretty, especially for a stylish device.

                                             Understated simplicity, or overpriced box?
 

The allure of the high-end has always been the bane of the enthusiast on a tight budget. While we all lust after the full-featured videocards and motherboards, we balk at the price point necessitating a wallet flatter than EDSA billboards. So, what most enthusiasts do is lower their own over-hyped high-end requirement and settle for a part that’s a little less meaty on the reputation – who needs reputation if it means a stable, fast-running computer?

                                             Black series with the black PCB for easy identification.

Asus’ premium motherboard is named in such a way as to make it convenient to call it by its name and  mean several different things, all of them positive in nature. The Asus  P5E3 Premium motherboard is a member of the AI Lifestyle product grouping devised by Asus to differentiate it from, say, the Republic of Gamer’s motherboards. As such, this motherboard competes with its peers in a different way when compared to the RoG series. We explore just how “premium” this motherboard is and how it achieves this naming distinction.

                                             CPU area is as usual surrounded by the Asus heatpipe system.

Ever felt like your daily routine’s weighing you down? Think how much worse it is for kids, with their never-ending schedule of schoolwork, piano lessons, basketball games, and doting parents insisting on the best care they can afford for their kids.

                                              A daily chore not always appreciated nor enjoyed.
 

AMD’s Phenom has so far had a short but eventful life – starting from its debut November of last year, it has encountered a poor response from enthusiasts due to its performance delta compared to Intel Core 2 series of processors, had to pull out higher-clocked Phenoms in favor of the underwhelming 9600 and 9500s, and finally had to contend with the TLB (Translation Lookaside Buffer) and L3 cache error that was giving fits to the benchmarking community with system crashes and an early BIOS fix that brought down performance by a large amount.

                                             The fixed, B3 revision Phenom X4 9850.
 

The Chimei that landed on my desk is a mix of positive and negative attributes. Initial impressions for this panel  was good – mainly due to its sub P10k price and the fact that it sports a 1680 x 1050 resolution on a 19" widescreen format. This being a 19” wide LCD, its imposing size combined with the delectable price gave it a good amount of desirability, and cynicism at the same time.

                                              Simple or utilitarian? It's your call.