First up is Intel’s VIIV platform. I caught a demo of box hooked up to a Haier plasma display. It’s basically a Windows Media Center PC paired with a couple of Intel hardware - motherboard, CPU and LAN controller - with MCE compliant wireless keyboard and mouse. Runs an Intel P4 Dual-Core processor. Didn’t bother to find out the memory configuration though, these kind of setups is out of my graps for now ;). I also doubt that I’ll buy such a box when I can afford such a setup. It’s much more satisfying to build it from scratch, not to mention get cheaper parts, better performance and flexibility.

Also caught a glimpse of Sony VAIO Micro PC running Windows XP. A bunch of booth girls were demoing the unit. Again, it’s not something I would categorize as must-have because I’m not so sure I want Windows running on such a device. A portable computer must have excellent battery life. To run Windows, you need fast hardware which means poor battery life. So what’s the point? Another problem is the tiny display, the fonts and graphical items looks tiny on the 800×600 display. Better try next time, Sony.

An Asus booth was running demos of 3D Mark 2006 of powerful Radeon cards. Never having owned any SM3 capable card, I never bothered installing 3D Mark 2006. Even 3D Mark 2005 refused to run completely on my aging Radeon 9700. While waiting for the demos to load (there was a series of demos actually), I snapped some pics of the hardware used, and of course their “wall of glory” depicting their latest range of motherboards and graphic cards.

And finally, I was surprised to see a couple of a whole slew of vendors selling Core 2 Duo processor systems. This means that the CPU is already available, and it’s just been announced for the past, what, 3 weeks? Intel is definitely getting it right this time. And I’m Core 2 Duo envy. The system doesn’t come cheap though, at least a couple of hundred ringgit more expensive than their AMD counterpart. But this time around, I know that the extra dough buys extra performance. AMD is the underdog again. Core 2 Duo is the processor to own for 2006!