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.

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 2006 Awards

Galaxy GeForce 7300 GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI-E

HIS IceQ III RADEON X1300 Turbo 256MB PCI-E

HIS IceQ III RADEON X1300 Turbo 256MB AGP

HIS IceQ III RADEON X1800 GTO Turbo 256MB PCI-E

HIS IceQ III RADEON X1900 XTX Turbo 512MB PCI-E

ATI RADEON X1950 XTX — for the excellent design, especially the cooling system

TV Tuner and Multimedia Video Card Awards

TV tuner or a multimedia video card can be honored with the Original Design award, if it demonstrates the following distinctive features:

• Original hardware solutions aimed to improve the sound and image quality
• Hardware implementation of extra unique features, which are not directly connected with audio and video
• Original design
• Other things that are not listed here

August 2006 Awards

Leadtek WinFast TV Pro II Stand-Alone TV Tuner

External Storage Devices Awards

A flash drive, an external hard disk, or any other similar device can be honored with the Original Design award, if it features:

• High extra functionality not to the damage of the main characteristics
• Essentially new data storage technologies or the ones noticeably different from the popular options used in standard storage devices
• Record speed characteristics, noticeably faster than those in competitors, or the capacity considerably exceeding the average values
• New promising interfaces to connect to computers
• Being a model of design (appearance, compact size, or ergonomics) not to the damage of its speed and capacity characteristics
• Other things that are not listed here

August 2006 Awards

SanDisk SD Plus — SD Card with the Built-in USB Interface

Cooling Systems Awards

A cooling system (cooler) - air, water, based on heat pipes, or any other similar device or a set of devices can be awarded with Original Design in case it...

• Efficiently copes with its main task — cooling
• Has an original design
• Possesses unique functionality for these days
• Possesses outstanding ergonomic characteristics (including a noise level), which do not damage its functionality
• Other things that are not listed here

August 2006 Awards

Arctic Cooling Accelero X2

Zalman VF900-Cu LED

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 2006 Awards

Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 — the First Mobile Hard Drive to Conquer 50 MB/s

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.

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

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