CeBIT 2009 Highlights
SHOWCASE: The Singapore team at HardwareZone.com has chronicled the launches, excitement and events held at Deutsche Messe’s CeBIT 2009 in Hannover, Germany. Held from 3-8 March 2009, the event brings together the latest in digital IT and telecommunications solutions together, with the aim to strengthen relationships in business, find new opportunities and showcase the best in IT.
The show had over 4300 exhibitors from 69 countries. What’s different this year is that the U.S. State of California is the official Partner ‘State’ of CeBIT and Germany’s IT and telecommunications industry association, BITKOM.
For some highlights of the products shown on the showfloor, hit the jump.
- cebit-logo-tradeshow
- Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California was one of the key dignitaries to welcome the media and industry delegates at the opening highlights of CeBIT 2009, as California was the first ever Partner State to CeBIT.
- Intel Chairman Craig Barrett brought along a robot hand shown in IDF Fall 2008. Built with electric field pre-touch technology to sense objects before even touching them, the hand greeted Governor Schwarzenegger and Dr. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.
- The ASUS Eee Top PC ET1602 is an all-in-one nettop system soon to be available in 20- and 22-inch screen versions.
- The ASUS Eee PC T91 is a mini-notebook tablet that uses the Intel Atom Z520 processor, sports an 8.9-inch LED backlit touch panel, 1GB DDR2 memory, 16GB flash storage and Windows XP Home OS.
- ASUS has extended the Eee branding to its Eee Station PC NAS. Powered by an Atom platform, it has 2GB of DDR2 memory, 512MB Flash ROM, 2x 3.5-inch hard drives and supports RAID 0, 1 and JBOD. Definitely a centralized solution for file storage and sharing.
- ASUS' highly talked about Eee Keyboard PC is a fully functional PC based on the Atom platform with a 5-inch touch screen beside it.
- ASUS unveiled the new Lamborghini VX5 notebook, which as mentioned in a prior entry, supports an Intel P45M chipset with Core 2 Quad processor, 4GB DDR3 memory and a 1-terabyte solid state disk. It weighs 3.3kg and is slated to be out by H1 2009. No price info yet.
- For mini HTPC system builders, Cooler Master showcased a mini ITX-1 chassis measuring 280 x 95 x 330mm and equipped with a TFX power supply for up to 200W. It is able to house a single 5.25-inch optical drive, 3.5-inch hard drive and perhaps a GeForce 9300 mGPU mini ITX board.
- Cooler Master also closed the gap between its Elite series and the rest with this new Gladiator series of casings called the Gladiator 600. Made from steel, it is a mid-sized tower casing measuring 202 x 435 x 480mm and accommodates five 5.25-inch devices and six 3.5-inch devices.
- Cooler Master also whipped up a special demo using their ATCS840 casing. Inside, they stacked five sets of systems consisting of a Core 2 Quad 9400 2.66GHz processor each, giving a total theoretical processing speed of up to 53GHz. What's great is that they're powered by a single 1 kilowatt power supply unit.
- Antec Skeleton Proto II, is a fusion of two of Antec's famous enthusiast open-air casings - the Skeleton.
- Coming soon in April, Artic Cooling will introduce a new cooling addition for the Radeon 4870 X2. With 320 watts of cooling capacity, this eight heat-pipe behemoth is probably its most powerful to date.
- The HTC Touch Diamond 2 makes a reappearance after Mobile World Congress. It has a larger 3.2-inch WVGA touch-screen, updated TouchFlo 3D interface and a sliding zoom control feature.
- The Sonim XP3 Quest sets yet another bar in rugged performance for mobile phones. With a 2-megapixel camera, A-GPS tracking, scratchproof screen, it is completely waterproof.
- T-Mobile had huge touch-screen interactive panels at its booth to keep customers glued. It works similarly to Microsoft's Surface.
- Canon showed the PowerShot A1100 IS and A2100 IS in pink and black.
- The Canon PowerShot A1100 IS is a 12.1-megapixel camera utilizing a 35-140mm lens with up to 4x optical zoom. ISO support goes up to 1600. The A2100 IS has a higher optical zoom at 6x with 36-216mm film lens equivalent. It sports a 12.1-megapixel sensor as well.
- Canon also introduced a trio of new IXUS cameras - (from left) the 110 IS, 100 IS and 95 IS respectively. The IXUS 110 IS and 100 IS (gold and red) are 12.1MPs with Smart Auto mode and HD (720p) movie recording. However, the IXUS 110 IS is better for wide angle with its 28-112mm lens. The 95 IS is the successor to the IXUS 80 IS, with a 10-megapixel sensor. All three comes with the DIGIC 4 processor.
- The Canon PowerShot A480 (red) uses a 1/2.3-inch 10-megapixel sensor, shoots 3.3x optical zoom and has a 2.5-inch LCD screen. The PowerShot E1 (white) also uses a 10-megapixel sensor but gets friendlier with its Easy mode shooting feature.
- The Blaupunkt New Jersey 600i is claimed to be the world's first Internet car radio system. Partnering miRoamer for free Net radio content, the 600i links to the Net via Bluetooth on your mobile phone.
- Car tech specialist Dension showed a concept called Wi-drive, which syncs content from connected devices within the car with your home's network using the car's A/V head-unit via Wi-Fi. The interface is seamless and fuss-free, and personalized to the user everytime you start or park your car at home.
- Clarion showcased its next car navigator device called the Clarion Mind. Powered by an Intel Atom 800MHz platform, the device features an intuitive 4.8-inch WVGA touch-screen, 4GB SSD, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS Receiver, DVB-T receiver, integrated TV antenna, microSD slot, headphones output and two USB ports. A premium model even sports a 3G module, 8GB SSD and Bluetooth hands-free telephone. Expect cost to hover around US$800.
- Fancy a mini with full electric power? This Mini E is just that with electric propulsion and battery tech from AC Propulsion. The technology is called tzero and helps the Mini E generate 150kW of power or 204 horse-power. It can accelerate from 0 to 100km/h in 8.5 seconds with a top speed of 152km/h.
- MSI's X-Slim series of notebooks come in three main models - the X320, X340 and X340 Pro. With all sporting the same 13-inch WXGA screen (1366 x 768), 4-cell battery and 1.3kg weight, the difference is that the X320 uses an Intel Atom Z530 1.6GHz processor, newer Intel Poulsbo US15W chipset with GMA500 graphics and 3.5G (HSDPA) radio embedded.
- The MSI X340 and X340 Pro uses Intel's Consumer ULV processors (Core 2 Solo), based on the SU2700 (1.3GHz) and SU3500 (1.4GHz) platforms with an Intel GS40 and GS45 chipsets respectively. All three X-Slim notebooks are MacBook Air contenders as they are 1.98cm at their thickest and tapers to just 0.6cm thin. Expect them in April 2009.
- The MSI Wind Top AE2010 all-in-one system has a 20-inch 16:9 widescreen display, 1600 x 900 resolution, 1.3-megapixel webcam and sports 320GB of storage. It utilizes the AMD 780G platform powered by an Athlon 2650e 1.5GHz processor but is available in other sizes and Intel platforms too.
- Probably the most elite GeForce GTX 260 from MSI, this dual-fan overclockable N260GTX Lightning is the world's first 10-phase power design for a single-GPU graphics card. With 1.8GB of GDDR3 memory and a monitoring panel known as AirForce, it has native HDMI outputs and an LED display readout.
- The Thecus N5500 is a SOHO/SME-level network-attached storage device. With a speedier Intel IOP processor, RAID 6 support with compatibility for XFS, EXT3 and ZFS file systems, it's iSCSI ready with dual Gigabit LAN ports for link aggregation with 802.3ad. Businesses can expect this in May 2009.
- The Thecus N0204 miniNAS supports two 2.5-inch hard drives, giving RAID levels 0, 1 and JBOD. Supports wireless LAN with a dongle.
- The Gigabyte Booktop M1022 can be docked onto a station so that you can conveniently use the mini-notebook on a bigger screen with a proper sized USB keyboard and mouse.
- Gigabyte's Thin Note M1024 is a mini-notebook with a 10.1-inch widescreen display, Intel Atom platform, and comes with a 6-cell 3600mAh battery. It uses a 1.8-inch hard drive, weighs only 860g and has a 1GB fixed memory.
Copyright © 2012 SPH Magazines Pte Ltd. Co. Regn. No. 196900476M. All rights reserved.