Cooler Master is a name well known not only to hardware enthusiasts, but also to the average joe who has cracked open a case or two before with an AMD processor running inside, as CM supplied AMD with CPU coolers during the Athlon XP era.

                                             The Cooler Master name is no accident.
 

Many new technologies over the years have played a chicken-and-egg parody with introducing and supporting a revolutionary new product, for the inventor and the manufacturer, respectively. A good example was the BTX specification. Thankfully, this does not seem to be the case for the Wi-Fi draft committee and for manufacturers pumping out products of a new Wi-Fi specification.

Ever seen a Japanese national or an anime character doing the victory sign and then saying “V”? Well, a chinese company has taken it as inspiration to “reverse engineer” (i.e. rip off) the Japanese-made Wii console, and they call it a “Vii”.

                                             I'm pretty sure Winnie Churchill wasn't referring to the "Vii". 

Looking like something from a Star Wars spectacular, the Philips MMS430 has looks enough to set it way apart from its contemporaries. The good news is, its good looks are backed up by a fair amount of performance for gamers and casual users.

                                             It's two X-wing fighters flanking the mother ship.

There are distinct periods in computer purchasing when most, if not all savvy buyers bought one particular size / configuration due to its best compromise of price and performance. A decade ago it was the 19” Sony (or Mitsubishi) CRT aperture grill behemoth. Five years ago you were king of the hill when you had any kind of affordable LCD. These were the display of their times. But today’s equivalents are the 22” 1680x1050 LCDs, of which the Hanns-G is a perfect example.

                                             I was taking pictures of the mounting bracket, but the logo got in the way.
 

HP has a lot to be happy about these days. With combined posted sales catapulting HP into the number one spot in the Asia Pacific Region in nearly all product categories they’re involved in, HP only reinforces its position by unveiling a veritable feast of new products.

                                              The settings where HP products are intended to be used.

Canon is on a roll this year as they give the imaging enthusiast an early Christmas present with the introduction of 8 new products spread across their many product lines.

                                             No wonder Santa keeps up the gift giving year in and year out.

Air cooling of pc components is considered a “traditional” means of cooling among jaded PC enthusiasts who dabble with the radiators, heating elements, pipes and TECS of water cooling and thermo-electric methods.

                                             This picture is still missing the reservoir and additional piping.
 

We attended the second exclusive Sony event in as many months this October 2. It seems that Sony is on the offensive with regards to market saturation, and make no mistake; Sony isn’t doing anything in half measures.

                                             It says a lot when buying Sony products requires its own credit card. 

Today marks the 30^th anniversary of the Atari 2600’s unveiling. This may not seem to mean a lot for most people, in fact, the Atari brand is hardly a household name these days, being credited with only a few noteworthy games the past few years.

                                              Part of Atari's original logo.
 

I stumbled upon a particularly apt term “ivory tower” years past and have been fascinated by its connotations ever since. It can denote many things, a lot of it derogatory in nature, and in the modern sense it serves to delineate a way of thinking that’s practical and another way of thinking that is removed from the “real” world.

                                              Errr... it's an ivory tower.

I was able to blog about HP’s new server infrastructure and the phenomena of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) just yesterday, and today I’m coincidentally covering something similar in spirit if not in target market. This time it is the Epson CX5500 MFD on the pedestal, and this is surely something more relevant to the average consumer than the half-million peso server infrastructure discussed yesterday.

Competition has been a way of life since prehistory. Societal tendencies among humans progressed to the point that communities of men and women started living together and comparing everything and anything to everyone else’s.

                                             Well, maybe not the size of the clubs...
 

HardwareMag is a publication that focuses more on the consumer – centric products, desirable and easily attainable by the regular Joe and Jenny. Yet at the same time, of interest to many tech savvy people are hardware products that serve and perform from the background, without fanfare and fancy packaging. A quick commentary can be found here.

                                             This is what we usually show to our readers...

There have been many classifications attached to the overriding definition of the word “gamer”. From the original tag for a player of board games, to the current whiz-bang, technology oriented geek description; gamers have come a long way.

                                              Grandfather gamers.