AMD's CES booth tour
AMD may not have had a massive booth with giant gaming rigs and colored tentacles hanging from the ceiling like Intel, but the company did still manage to highlight some of its partners, many of which are smaller PC makers that put out specialty products (along with bigger names like VoodooPC and Alienware, wich also had a presence at AMD's booth).
One box that caught our eye was this Orion, from Japan's Pinon Sizka, a small form-factor, fanless PC running on an AMG Geode LX800. It's a nice little box that will set you back about $600 in a barebones configuration (if you're in Japan, that is).
Another interesting product was this DT Research WebPad, which has been around for a while, but still strikes us as a potentially handy alternative to a PDA or tablet PC. If, that is, anyone ever brings it to market at an affordable price (remember the Honeywell version of this that went for about $1,000 and suffered a well-deserved death in the marketplace?).
We liked the look of Sony's NAS-M7HD Net Juke, though we'd probably never buy one, since we don't exactly have a lot of music saved in Atrac3 format (though the player does also support MP3 files).
AMD also showcased the diamond-encrusted Tulip ego, which was displayed under glass, sells for about $300,000, and looks even more like a first-gen Apple iBook up close.
A less blingified Tulip, with snap-on lid for personalization. We're still not buying it.
Finally, we caught a look at the Vassili 2 PMP reference design. from Taiwan's FIC. It's a Linux-powered PMP with a 400 MHz AMD processor, SD slot, 20GB drive and DivX support.
