Striving to bring recognition to manufacturers of high-technology equipment, the iXBT.com editorial team decided to institute three awards:

Reviewed by iXBT.com

The Reviewed by iXBT.com award recognizes the products, which have gone through the iXBT.com lab tests. This award is presented to a manufacturer, whose products were tested in our lab, got reviewed, and their reviews are published on the iXBT.com web site, in the iXBT.com magazine, or on the Digit-Life.com web site.

Original Design

Modern IT market is flooded with clones. Life-cycle of a product became shorter, so most manufacturers do not spend their time and resources on their own designs. Instead, they often follow the so called "reference design", changing only the name of the product and the package appearance. That's why in order to encourage efforts of the manufacturers who create innovative products different from reference designs, the editorial team of iXBT.com institutes the Original Design award.

This award can be honored to a product with an original design, which is essentially different from the reference design. The product must be tested in the iXBT.com lab and then have a review (concerning the test results) published on the iXBT.com web site, in the iXBT.com magazine, or on the Digit-Life.com web site.

The Original Design award can be selected only once a month and must provide links to the reviews of the awarded products.

Printer Awards

A printer may be awarded with Original Design, if this model...

• Possesses unique functionality for these days
• Comes shipped with an outstanding software package
• Offers something revolutionary new to the market
• A model of engineering art
• Other things that are not listed here

August 2005 Awards

Epson PictureMate500 (PM500)

Olympus Camedia P-10 sublimation printer

3D Video Cards Awards

A video card can be awarded with Original Design, if the tests revealed the following features distinguishing it from the reference design:

• Original cooling system, which is more effective at the least possible level of noise
• Support for extra features, such as Video-In (if it is not provided by the reference design)
• Other things that are not listed here

It goes without saying that, for example, a PCB color different from the reference design cannot be considered an innovation.

August 2005 Awards

NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT 256MB (award for NVIDIA)

ASUS Extreme N7800 GTX TOP 256MB

Albatron GeForce 6800 128MB PCI-E

Motherboards Awards

A motherboard gets the Original Design award for one or a combination of the following design features:

• Passive (or active, but only if necessary!) cooling system for overheated motherboard elements
• Indication system for computer failures at startup
• Good PCB layout, which does not hamper assemblage and upgrade
• on-board buttons to power on or restart a computer, to reset CMOS, etc. — any feature that facilitates express-tests or repairs
• Other things

We award only useful elements of design in our opinion: so, a stylish (or a monstrous) chipset cooler cannot be considered useful, if this chipset does not require mandatory active cooling. And the attractive design will not be awarded, if it offers no other advantages except for its good looks.

Of course, the above list does not contain all possible options (a lot of things cannot be foreseen at all) for a motherboard to get the award. Read the reviews of awarded models to find out the details and perhaps get acquainted with innovations on the market.

August 2005 Awards

ECS PF88 Extreme Hybrid motherboard

ECS A9S Card

Digital Audio Awards (Sound Cards)

A sound device (sound card, sound processor, codec) merits the Original Design award, if it possesses the following features:

• Advanced sound technologies are used in the product
• Unique product based on the existing technologies
• Other things

August 2005 Awards

Creative X-Fi Sound Processor

Hard Disks Awards

A hard disk can be awarded with Original Design, in case it:

• Possesses unique characteristics for these days (spindle rotational speed, data density, etc)
• Features original technical solutions, which cannot be found in other models
• Other things that are not listed here

August 2005 Awards

Maxtor Atlas 15K II — currently the best hard drive among high-performance professional data storage systems.

Peripheral Devices Awards (Pointing Devices)

A pointing device – keyboard, mouse, joystick, or any other similar device or a set of devices can be honored with the Original Design award, in case it:

• Possesses unique functionality for these days
• Comes shipped with an outstanding software package
• Either contributes something revolutionary new to the market, or is an absolutely new device on the market
• Possesses outstanding ergonomic characteristics, which do not damage its functionality
• Other things that are not listed here

August 2005 Awards

Pegasus PC Notes Taker

MP3 Players and Multimedia Centers Awards

A player or a center can be honored with the Original Design award, in case it:

• Possesses unique functionality for these days
• Either contributes something revolutionary new to the market, or is an absolutely new device on the market
• Provides the outstanding quality of multimedia content playback
• Demonstrates a model of design (by its appearance, compact size or ergonomics)
• Other things that are not listed here

August 2005 Awards

MP3/WMA player Transcend T.sonic 610

Excellent Package

It's always pleasant to buy a product and find out that the package includes additional equipment, software, games, souvenirs, etc. It's nice to think that the product you bought is well worth its price, and it's twice as nice to buy a well-bundled product at a moderate price. In practice, some manufacturers tend to save on every item, even if the inclusion of this item into the product package raises the price by less than 10%. Thus, the editorial team of iXBT.com institutes the Excellent Package award to bring recognition to those manufacturers, who offer nice boxes with excellent package content (the product plus useful accessories) instead of featureless boxes with minimal package content (CD with drivers).

This award can be presented to a product with an original box and unique package content. The product must be tested in the iXBT.com lab, and the results of these tests must be published in a review on the iXBT.com web site, the iXBT.com magazine, or the Digit-Life.com web site.

The Excellent Package award can be selected only once a month and must refer to the awarded product reviews.

Motherboards Awards

A motherboard merits the Excellent Package award, if it features some of the following bundle elements:

• Original attractive package
• Colorful and detailed User's Guides
• A full set of necessary cables, preferably gathered in a tight bunch (for multi-cored cables)
• Various brackets to expand functionality (for additional and/or missing FireWire/USB/COM/LPT ports; for audio features of the motherboard, including optical and coaxial digital inputs and outputs; etc)
• Additional original accessories (USB drives, wireless adapters, etc)
• A rich set of third-party software (free of charge), proprietary utilities for monitoring, BIOS management, etc
• Other things

August 2005 Awards

ASUS P5WD2 Premium WiFi-TV Edition

3D Video Cards Awards

A video card can be awarded with Excellent Package, if the tests demonstrated the following features distinguishing it from the other products on the market at that moment:

• Original package (retail)
• Rich software set, utilities and other homeware
• Various bonuses: souvenirs or useful/nice knick-knacks
• Other things that are not listed here

August 2005 Awards

Leadtek WinFast PX7800GTX TDH MyVIVO 256MB

Additional information

The same award cannot be given to a product more than once.

A product can get several different awards.

Printed award certificates can be provided by written request via e-mail: pr@ixbt.com

Write a comment below. No registration needed!