TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Flight to Taipei, Computex'2006: Foxconn (A.Vorobiev)
2. Computex'2006: ASUSTeK (A.Vorobiev)
3. Computex'2006: Chaintech (A.Vorobiev)
4. Computex'2006: ECS (A.Vorobiev)
5. Computex'2006: ATI (A.Vorobiev)
6. Computex'2006: NVIDIA, Leadtek (A.Vorobiev)

June 6-10, 2006: Computex'2006: Chaintech

I have already mentioned Hall 2, which houses the grands of IT industry. Chaintech's stand is also housed there. To be more exact, the company is now called Walton Chaintech Corporation.

Walton is a company that has been working on the memory market for many years. But it worked only on the OEM segment, so it's practically unknown. But I'll tell you what, even the leading brands order memory from Walton. The company is a part of huge PSA (Passive System Alliance), so Chaintech also entered it after the merger with Walton.

Yep, it was a mutually beneficial merger: Walton got the famous Chaintech/Apogee/Zenith brand to promote its memory modules, and Chaintech got a second breath, new business after all. Of course, the epoch of Chaintech motherboards comes to an end, the last reserves are being sold. The company won't manufacture them anymore. Instead, it will develop video card manufacturing.

So, let's proceed to the stand. We met the Russian representatives of this company there - Vladimir Biryukov and Alexander Petrushin. Unfortunately, we met the head of the Russian office Alex Kung only in the evening, we'll describe the meeting a tad later. Vladimir and Alexander told us in great detail about the recent events in the company (merger) and plans for the future.

The exposition of motherboards looked like a memorial - the company is going to stop manufacturing them. And we still remember the famous 6BTM model, which made Chaintech famous in Russia! It's a pity this epoch ends. That's not for the first time that everything changes in IT.

In fact, the company demonstrated so-called SetTopBox boards, IPTV solutions, the new Chaintech trend.

And of course, new products from Chaintech - various memory modules and chips. These products come under the APOGEE trademark.

I repeat that the range of memory types is very wide. From memory modules for system units (DIMM) to flash memory and various CMOS chips.

As I have already mentioned, the new company will also focus on manufacturing video cards. The stand contained quite a lot of new products in this segment. It should be noted that Chaintech still supports only one GPU manufacturer - NVIDIA.

Of course, all representatives of Hi-End accelerators are manufactured by NVIDIA itself (it has become a tradition). Partners just use their labels or apply their stickers.

That's actually all about the stand with its frequent lotteries and contests.

BUT! Here comes the main thing! What does the emblem of Chaintech (the infinity sign) mean? It's just two rotated digits - 8 and 6. The company was named after this logo, which resembles a chain link. 8 and 6 mean Year 1986, when the company was founded. So this company celebrates the 20th birthday this year!

We witnessed a pleasant evening in Living Mall (a building of an unusual form), devoted to this anniversary.

Guests were actively taking photos and the head of the Russian office Alex Kung turned out to be a professional musician! What a marvelous performance on a fiddle! Believe me, a rare graduate of a conservatoire can repeat this masterful performance. It's a pity that a piano phonogram was a bit too loud and drowned the live sounds of the fiddle.

As a culmination of the celebration, the president Simon Ho cut the festive cake. Then top managers of the company... danced for us! They are not professional dancers, of course, but the show looked great.

I'd like to thank the company on the whole and the Moscow team in particular for the wonderful evening!

In conclusion of this part, I'd like to make a digression. I wrote much about Taipei 101 in the first part. When we visited Chaintech's stand, we also happened along the observation platform (twice actually, as we also climbed there before Chaintech's anniversary). Here are the sights of the city.

The first photo is taken inside the lift that goes 500 meters up for nearly thirty seconds. A special design of the cabin controls the pressure inside to minimize your discomfort, though your ears are still stuffed a little. But it goes up real fast!

The second row of photographs shows a view to the East. You can see the Mitsukoshi tower in the distance, it used to be the tallest building in Taipei before the 101 was built. Unfortunately, the observation platform there was closed.

And here are views of the North, you can see the Kilung river that flows to the North-East of the island. On the photo below you can see the observatory on Taipei 101. It's built on Floor 89, there are no walls there, only cafes, shops, kiosks, and telescopes at windows. There is also an open observation platform, but I'll describe it later.

But our series of articles is not over yet. The next part of this review will deal with ECS/EliteGroup!

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