Well we’re back in rainy ol’ Taipei for another Computex. Worryingly rumours are rife that it has something of a sword of Damocles hanging over it. Next year, apparently, big hitters like Asus don’t want to pay the fortune it costs to attend anymore – it sees more value in paying for smaller targeted meetings.
 | | It’s far from the most picturesque city, but the centrepiece, the imposing ‘101’ building – the world’s tallest– gives Taipei character. |
Also, there’s talk of moving the exhibition out towards the mountains, forcing everyone onto the packed subway to get there. That’s just what the world’s tech buyers and Media needs to keep them coming back.
First stop on day one was Nvidia.
 | | Nvidia’s ‘Stacker’ PC Case, made by CoolerMaster. |
Here we saw two interesting PC cases, both made for Nvidia by CoolerMaster. The aluminium ‘Stacker’ looks gorgeous though reports suggest that its tool-less design makes components come loose when moving it around (like you’d really want to) even though two moulded handles are designed to facilitate this. At present it’s only available in the US but it’s coming to Australia soon.
 | | Nvidia’s Cosmos. |
We also got a look at the Cosmos, which is as bold and forthright as it seems in the picture. It’s still in development (again by CoolerMaster) though.
Nvidia also showed us its new tech demo – a stunningly-rendered, DirectX 10, face. Here, the number of layers and filters used gave a genuine waxy and oily texture to the skin, creating a stunningly lifelike model. The skin colour looked natural because the light passing through the graphics card’s shaders influenced what colour it was – rather than the old method of simply setting the skin colour. As you navigated around you could affect the lighting making the graphics cards process 1.2 billion pixels a second in order to render it.
| | Nvidia creates the best virtual human we’ve seen yet, though there’s no hair and the eyes are shut. |
We did note, however, that the face was still jerky in movement, even when it had two 8800 GTS cards, in SLI, rendering it. But it’s a great taste of things to come. Nvidia also showed us the new Crysis trailer. Absolutely stunning. It will be released soon! We were also told that there’s a stunning, brand new, rain-based tech demo on Nvidia’s developer website which blow’s ATI’s away. Have a look.
Beyond that, Notebooks are now available with PureVideo video rendering and Nvidia’s new motherboards, with onboard graphics, are now at a rival price point to Intel’s.
This, was exciting because, while not being powerful enough for games, the number of applications which now use 3D rendering is exploding. Obviously there’s Vista, but the 3D effects used by Picasa’s 3D photo organiser, iTunes’ jukebox-style album flipper, Microsoft Maps’ 3D buildings and watching HD movies, will all be enhanced.
We were also impressed with Zinio’s virtual magazine reader application. This makes reading a virtual magazine, in 3D a veritable joy, and could well be a shape of all magazines to come.
The following notebook, caught our eye too…
 | | Lenovo’s F41 with Nvidia 8400M GS graphics. |
 | | Downstairs AMD/ATI showed off a case with mascot, Ruby, impressively etched into it. |
 | | And another with an impressive custom paint job. |
 | | HP displayed a 20-inch notebook with a screen (powered by ATI graphics) that popped out like a monitor stand. |
Next stop was Intel.
 | | There doesn’t seem to be nearly as many ‘booth babes’ here as in previous years. But here are three lovelies from Intel. |
In previous years, Intel has irritated the pants off everyone with their whooping and hollering, over motherboards and processors. This year they kept it mercifully short. It opened with a ‘dance’ number.
 | | Intel’s dancers strut their funky stuff. |
 | | Intel’s dancers continue to strut their funky stuff. |
 | | You can’t even see this Intel deputy vice marketing sales executive guy’s discreet head mic. The biggest tech company here – and it didn’t work. |
| | All of the Intel bigwigs celebrate 45nm... And that was all we saw from Intel. |
 | | The first ‘interesting weird thing that we’ll never see in Australia’ was this sort of ring mouse. Answers on a postcard if you can guess how it works. |
 | | Robot gets thirsty; coolant administered. |
| | These visors allow up to VGA resolutions and give the impression of watching a 60in screen. No one else can see what you’re watching and it works with devices like iPod videos, PSPs, laptops and Nintendo’s Wii. The company hopes to introduce it to Australia. |
 | | She just wouldn’t stay still. |
 | | ADATA shows off its Express Card solid-state drives... |
 | | ...but PNY’s goes up to 128GB. |
 | | Scythe shows off a ridiculous, for display only, CPU heatsink with 30cm fan. |
 | | A TeleTubby type booth babe. |
 | | Pro game player, Jonathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendell, hides his jetlag and launches an ‘earth-shattering’, mid-range graphics card: the passively-cooled, XFX 8600 GT. |
That’s it for today. I am fighting serious jet lag and it’s very late. More tomorrow.
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