Ξ March 29th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
At 3pm I took a phone call, along with Riyad, Editor of TrustedReviews. NDA was a mere 6 hours later at 9pm. Yeesh cheers, Intel. So I ended up hammering out 3,000 factually accurate words until 10:30pm. After being edited (by Riyad, Benny (Dep. Ed) and Tim) and then pictures being added it ended up being posted for Thursdays content.
It really grates me about some of the blogroll that got spewed with merely a few hundred words on some sites, counts for content on the topic. “SENSATIONALISM++ forget about the details, no one cares”. And then digg is full of what hits first, not what has had the effort, unfortunately.
Anyhow, it was interesting to find out that Intel are going the way of the green team and using an integrated memory controller and including a graphics chip on CPU, hopefully we’ll get more out of them at IDF.
Ξ March 29th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
I’ve been adding to this for a while, but from a first experience here’s a bit on how to survive a trade show:
Camera: dSLRs are fantastic for taking great photos but HUGE in comparison to a point-and-shoot.
Watch: Needed, unless you particularly enjoy asking for the time, which isn’t all bad if you pick the right people ;). The next best thing is finding your phone in the bottom of your pocket.
Phone: Again, communication and organisation is key.
Rollerbag: Essential. Who cares if you roll over a few toes, as long as it’s beefy enough to withstand being kicked it’s better than breaking your back hauling stuff.
Trade/Press versus End User: End users suck. Get as much done on the days when they aren’t around otherwise they fill the place and make the job 10x harder.
Thankfully for CeBIT 08 the first four days will be trade and press only.
The Press Room versus doing it at home: Do it at home, get as much done in the day as possible because by the time you’ve walked to the press room, found a place to perch yourself and logged on that’s 30 minutes eaten up, so to do the same process in reverse it’s a whole hour out of your day.
Organising pockets! So you know where you put everything and you don’t look like a tit searching for your cards to give to someone.
Take only what you need (inc. clothes): Don’t dress for winter if you don’t need to, but are you going out in the evening? It’s a balance between finding somewhere to put unused things and not going the way of the Mammoth.
Good shoes: Because you’ll be walking miles, but you also need to look presentable.
Good breakfast, snacks, caffeine and sugar: Anything to keep you going from start to finish.
Organisation: Knowing where you’re going and the quickest way to get there, what you’ve got to do, what you need to ask & who you need to talk to.
My next one will be “Surviving IDF” although I think that might be a little easier as Intel has put us up in a 5-star hotel 
Ξ March 26th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
I’ve just reviewed NVIDIA’s new reference 680i LT SLI mobo from EVGA and compared it to a load of other boards, as well as giving details of the new chipset itself. £130 for £180++ 680i SLI technology??
read more | digg story
Ξ March 18th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
I don’t drink so a hangover is hardly the correct term, however the weeks activities had finally caught up with me and I felt very much worse for ware this morning. The other guys got back at 4:30am, and having to get up at 8am to start our journey home meant the other guys literally looked like they’d been hit with bricks. HAHAHA
We had some morning shenanigans and nearly missed the train to Hamburg-hoff which would have meant missing our flight, but by the skin of our teeth and ruthless German efficiency (their public transport system kicks the crap out of ours) we got there on time 
Anyway, some extra titbits I can remember off the top of my head:
MSI had some G86/G84 on their stand as Tim wrote about here, but what Tim didn’t say was that as we were being shown round the stand, the NVIDIA product manager (PM) came over and was seriously pissed off, demanding MSI take them down as no other company had any on show. 2+2 together: NVIDIA were meant to launch their G84/86 at CeBit but put it back to increase production and subsequently availability on launch, since AMD put back their R6xx range in the first place.
Creative charge $40 per X-Fi chip on the MSI 680i motherboard that includes it. The 680i is already an expensive chipset, so this means MSI will probably have to charge a lot or make next to nothing on it.
The news through the CeBit grapevine is that NVIDIA has stopped production of its 680i chipset and is now only clearing inventory in preference for its new, cheaper 680i LT.
The X38 was discussed in places at CeBit and is due to take the place of the 975X, but will only support DDR3 (see bit for full news sometime within the next 24 hours). The details are under NDA for a long while yet, however.
DFI are due to bring out a couple more boards in the near future! And their Infinity board is looking less industrial and more consumer with a black PCB. After talking to the Tony, the technical guru at OCZ who did a load of memory testing and debugging for DFI RD600, he said that 2V through the RD600 chipset will cause serious electromigration and will kill it in a week. AMD has only rated it to 1.5V, but the DFI allows 2.++ through it. Intreaged, I asked if DFI had had many back because of this and they said no, none had burnt out. The only few they had had RMA’d were from stupid people popping off the northbridge heatsink improperly, cracking the chipset.
Even though Asus are preparing a 680i LT board (like everyone else), they still plan to sell their P5N32-E SLI Plus board and market it aggressively. This will put a lot of pressure on other manufacturers selling 680i LTs, and might bring prices down across the board: win win for the consumer.
What I’m most excited about:
Razor Mavo speakers: For engineering samples the audio demo was seriously kick ass. They won’t be that cheap, but the technology behind them sounds incredible. The people at the company are probably the most laid back I met when I was there; if you haven’t met people before you have to engage your PR-filter in order to get the true facts out of what they are saying about a product, but Razor seemed very straight up and honest.
Asus soundcard: I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Silverstone cases: Some of these looked incredible.
The “50″ 1333FSB Intel CPUs: For OC-goodness. I want to roll about the floor in glee like we did when we first saw Core 2.
Barcelona: Same as above.
OCZ NIA headband thingy: Simply because it looks crazy and unique, and to find out if it really makes a difference.
NVIDIA has it’s 70-series integrated chipset to compete with the 690G coming out soon, and these boards were being shown off at CeBit. In the coming weeks were putting together a new test suite, system directed at integrated graphics performance to look at and properly compare 690G, NVIDIA-70xx and Intel GMA3000 platforms. Hopefully this will make things more relevant for everyone.
Ξ March 16th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
Jeees it’s been a crazy day. I’ve met so many people I have a fist sized stack of business cards. Thankfully it was better than yesterday, now I seem to have the hang of the whole trade show thing a bit better. To cap it all off, I’m an E6700 richer also Thank you, Intel.
Excuse me, but I think a quick “Woot” is in order.
Themes of the show so far:
“50″ Intel CPUs seem to be good FSB overclockers, although I’ve only seen one unofficial demonstration.
DDR3 will have the impact of a nat on a car windshield. No one has samples, samples are ridiculously expensive and everyone is complaining. People are still highly focused on DDR2 across the channel.
Overall it’s mostly much of the same, Asus’ soundcard and external graphics for laptops looks great. Albatron have a mini-itx AMD 690G board and clear case, there’s a FT of Bearlake P35 boards on the stands, the Commadore gaming PC looks completely awesome and most of the Asian ladies are serrrrrrrrrrrriously fine.
You want PCI-Express x1 cards? EVERYONE has them: USB, Firewire, SATA, eSATA, Sound, Analouge/Digital/Dual tuner TV cards, and Vista ready everything.
The biggest thing to piss me off (and a lot of people on the stands)? People just there to blag free shit. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my journalistic perks (the E6700 I won! there’s a difference), but people pay money to go to CeBit and basically walk round all day and get CRAP. Badges, stickers, a T-shirt or memory if they are lucky, bouncy balls, crappy bags, hats, pens, media. Basically everything you could imagine people could give away. It’s like some sort of sport.
Anyway, back to work.
Ξ March 15th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
So far my phone has run out of credit and the battery is close to death, despite charging it the day before we left and I’ve forgotten my EU adapter for my laptop so I have 10 minutes of battery left, at least 3 news stories on a go and no means of publishing them. It’s 4:40pm, I’ve still yet to go around 99% of the show and the last time I ate was 7:45am this morning \o/
I’m doing quite well, I think.
Ξ March 13th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
Well I’m off to CeBit tomorrow for my first real tradeshow as a proper journalist, rather than a visitor who blagged his way in cause he “once wrote some stuff for a website”. I currently exist in a state of curious excitement with a hint of self importance.
The preparation has been hammered out the last few weeks and I’m still unsure if I’ve remembered everything. After getting a “Hitchhikers Guide to Trade Shows” from those in Bit and TR who have been before I’m well kitted on the camera front, except for the Macro lens, well kitted on the warm clothes and comfy shoes, but I’ve resorted to taking a four year old, 3.86kg Dell Inspirion 8600. Just walking the 20 minute trek to work gives me shoulder ache and I get here with the reminiscent pains of my teenage years as a paper boy. Now I expect to spend three whole days in the same mental state.
On a purely sociological front, I’m interested to see the type of people that are due to frequent this consumer electronics paradise. If the great unwashed perpetuate the crowds, or will it be a diverse mix?
It’s also been a month and a half since I started full time at bit and it’s been pretty manic. I currently sit in bitHQ at 8pm, again, after starting at 8:30am and both Tim and I don’t expect to be done with tomorrows content for a few hours yet (he’s doing image processing which takes more time, hence my blogging). I have to say doing a job you thoroughly enjoy overrules entirely my fiscal concerns. I really don’t care if I do almost double the hours full timers do in a 7 day week, and I hope it lasts for a while yet.
Getting to review the Vadim PC was freakin’ awesome, even if it was a ball breaking experience. That thing is seriously kick ass. He only sells something in the region of a dozen a week, but his attitude to a niche market to simply make the absoulte best PCs is one I’m thoroughly glad exists.
I’m turning over motherboards like there’s no tomorrow, and still enjoying it, although I know I have to work on my memory testing and I wasn’t particularly happy with my AMD 690G review. The next one will be better planned, that’s for sure.
I watched Andy (my house and workmate) play 23hrs of STALKER through its entirety and all the highs and eventual low he came through. It certainly looks like a great game worth splashing the cash out for, but I hope other multiple endings prove better than the one I’ve seen. For a games reviewer to go from saying something is a “9.5″ to “now a fucking 7″ after he completes just the main quests is not a good sign. It totally misses out on a single-player co-op mode as well. For details though, you’ll have to wait for his full review.
I’ve been bashing through Lego Star Wars 2 on the 360 in the evenings and weekends when I get a few hours free with Geoff in the office, and it’s just SOO much fun. It’s surprising how great it looks on the 360 at 1080i (even better on a £3k Fujitsu Plasma Screen :D)
NBS-Review was finally handed off to Brett the other day, so he can do with it what he likes now. I hope he makes a blog cause he’s full of rants, and I think if he doesn’t actually vent regularly, somewhat akin to a Volcano, he might actually pop. 
This means on the podcast front there won’t be any more NBS-Review, but eventually there is talk of doing some Bit-TR podcast shorts. The idea is for some quick but regular 10 minute ‘casts about issues or products both sites are doing. Hopefully it’ll be of interest, but undoubtedly it’ll be quite tame compared to NBS.
For a hectic weekend off two weeks ago, I managed to organise myself into seeing Ludovico Einaudi in Bristol, then NIN in Brum the day after. Both were fantastic in their own right. I’m actually huge fan of classical piano and my mate and I went to see him (he actually introduced me to his CD) and it was really very good. Certainly a different crowd to what my mate and I are used to but it was nice to sit and take in music for two and a half hours, rather than have it hammered into our heads. Not that I’ve got much against being at Gigs with loud music and NIN certainly didn’t disappoint. They played all their most violent tracks and a fair few classics, which made for a much better experience than the last time I saw them in ‘05.
Anyway, I’ll try to hammer out a “Behind the scenes CeBit: what we couldn’t post on Bit” sometime after I get back.
