Still no news on the AMD K7 front. No motherboard manufacturer that we've yet spoken too has 'officially' committed to doing a board specifically designed around the K7. The strategy seemed to be more of a 'sit on the fence and see if AMD ships this product and when they do, is it any good?'

Here's a quick overview of some of the other interesting stuff we saw:

Did we mention how many i810 based motherboards we'd seen yesterday? Hold that thought and then literally double it. Whitney has been included in the majority of motherboard product line-ups. Whilst Whitney is not exactly high-end material it's certainly an improvement over the EX based mainboard and will not be sniffed at by low-cost system integrators for the sub-$700 PC market.

We visited the Viewsonic stand and noticed a distinct marketing push towards the new CRT standard. Basically this is a mix and match between a monitor (in terms of size) and a flat screen (just like an LCD) instead of a curved glass surface.

Currently Sony, SHARP and Fujitsu own the three-pound mini-laptop notebook corner. But the likes of ASUS, FIC and Soyo (whose laptop we saw today), are howling at the door. At some 3 pounds, the SOYO will harbor a 10.4 inch TFT screen, the Intel Banister chipset and anywhere from a Pentium II 300-366MHz with support for up to 96MB. And all for a possible $1400 by late July…

We saw an iMAC on the Logitech stand. Cor blimey!

We also saw Quake III: Arena on a notebook today. Cool. Skywell Technologies was also showing off a new 3D sound card that should support both the EAX and A3D standards.

And that's a wrap. If you're ever out and about in Taipei try avoiding the West Side. We saw a one-eyed dog running rings around a stall selling chicken feet (yum).

Alex "Sharky" Ross
Editor-in-Chief

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