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.
 

You have to wonder why it took so long. HP’s Elite Auto Focus Webcam finally reaches the 3-megapixel sensor level and breaks the 2MP barrier – for webcams at least. Webcams have been with us for so long, and is so familiar to even the most novice of computer users that this iconic piece of equipment tends to become a little lost behind the high-tech specs of other computer parts.

                                             No, it's not a projector. It's HP's new Elite Webcam.

Confused motorists and permanently lost drivers rejoice! Do you find yourself squinting at a street sign which is turned juuust enough by a vandal for you to not be able to see it from the stoplights? Or perhaps you’re one of thousands who get lost after getting diverted to unfamiliar roads by the MMDA/PLDT/Meralco/Flooding/Fiesta/People Power Presentation. In whichever case, many solutions exist, most of which I doubt will be of any assistance in our tortuous network of roads and alleyways.

                                              Hopefully, this is just a representation of where to drive, instead of a recommendation of driving on the middle of the road...

In a rare boy’s night out, three editors became groupies for the night when they attended a Creative-backed event presenting the band named Reklamo – a socially-aware rock-band endorsing the world-renowned audio and peripherals solutions company. Although no product was launched, nor initiatives announced, being present for a night of powerful music opened our hardware-acclimated eyes to another facet of our industry – something that doesn’t work on specifications, features or gadgets alone.

                                             Migs, LC and Ciro on the hot seat(s).

Samsung Electronics has always been lacking in one of the more important member in its family of electronic devices. While they have great market penetration and recognition in devices like displays, cellphones, and printers, the imaging device palette has never been as complete as Samsung would have wanted it.

Asus’ EAH 3870 X2 TOP Edition came late to our party – we weren’t able to receive it along with the initial rush of top-end cards from AMD/ATI. Fortunately, this gives us a base for comparison, specifically with GeCube’s similarly off-the-wall designed HD 3870 X2.

                                            Design convention continues to advance from the simple PCB+Fan of yore.
 

Not to further confuse followers of technology minutiae and the merely curious, but the memory gods has seen fit to further muddle up the waters with a new kind of memory technology to add to the confusing alphabet soup of memory types like RAM, DDR, NAND, SSD, DRAM and the like. This time, this new addition is potentially something to really look forward to.

A heads-up to any and all potential buyers of entry-level but infinitely practical notebooks – a well-known laptop from a well-known company, specifically Intel’s Classmate PC, has been re-named and has appeared in some Philippine store shelves. Nothing alarmist about this post, as this is all above-board and legal.

                                             Neo Xplore X1 sporting the distinctive Classmate PC strap. Photo courtesy of bravekn1ght.

This new Altec Lansing product reminds me of two things: one, Altec Lansing’s resurrected “The Voice of the Theatre” one-liner that was used by the company back in the 1940’s – 50’s, and KITT’s red running light-bar.  But instead of LEDs lighting up one after the other and a muted “whom-woom” sound, this bar speaker gets much, much louder. And looks cooler too.

                                             Altec Lansing is rightly proud of its longevity and continued success. 

What’s all the fuss about? This thought kept running around in my head as I examined the MSI PR200 Notebook twelve-incher. Conceived as a business ultra-portable, this 1.8 kg black-and-silver creation looks handsome and functional, and the specifications are quite satisfying.

To Apple, design has always been paramount. The products that come out of their collective creativity always carry a certain sleekness and simplicity that appeals to techie and non-techie alike. However, it is up to the modding community to come up with a creation that is equal parts cuteness and ingenuity, while still being guided by Apple’s two main design philosophies.

                                            The Mac Mini.

Only one in a thousand can be described as having “photographic memory”. These people are those who go to a place once and then can describe to you turn-for-turn how to get to the same place, what model car you drove, and even perhaps what clothes you were wearing on that day – even after a year. Well, perhaps that was a little bit exaggerated, but the opposite kind of person certainly needs no exaggeration.