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: ECS

A stand of EliteGroup (ECS) at this expo was similar to those of ASUS and Foxconn in size, but it was situated in totally unexpected place: in New York New York pavilion that was actually associated with restaurants, cafes, and snack-bars, as well as with some offices. It somehow did not seem fit for an exhibition. Nevertheless, ECS's stand was on the seventh floor in this pavilion (the copy of Statue of Liberty stands near this place).

The head of the representative office in Russia, Boyce Lin was already waiting for us, as we had arranged a meeting beforehand. So he was our guide.

Let's start with a surprise this time: video cards. Yep, after a long period of reluctance on the market of video cards with its unpopular Low-End solutions, the company finally ventured on a full-scale offensive.

The company chose American NVIDIA for a partner. ECS's stand demonstrated a huge range of products.

Of course, all Hi-End cards (as I have already mentioned) are manufactured by NVIDIA's orders and all partners, including ECS, just buy ready cards from the chip maker. But Middle- and Low-End cards are manufactured by Elitegroup. You can see on the labels that the range of products is very large.

ECS traditionally offers the same wide choice of motherboard. It seems to me that no other manufacturer produces such a wide range of motherboards! Moreover, the company does not forget about the old popular models.

Of course, elite products are in the foreground (no pun intended :) - new products from the most expensive sector. The latest solutions based on Intel 900 chipsets in the first place.

With all due respect for NVIDIA, ECS engineers actively cooperate with ATI as a chipmaker of the Xpress core logic.

That's why we can see a decent range of motherboards based on ATI chipsets, including the most modern ones.

Of course, the recent series of nForce 5xx core logic from NVIDIA have been implemented in a line of motherboards.

There are also older products, based on nForce 4.

Amazing, but true! While ATI hushes up its future RS600 chipset, the stand demonstrates a ready motherboard based on this chipset :)

Besides, we saw a testbed based on ATI RD600 with CrossFire.

Such chipmakers as VIA and SIS were not forgotten either. ESC also demonstrated motherboards on their chipsets. Of course, they were cheaper Low-End products.

The company pays much attention to the corporate sector, to servers in particular. Various rack-mounted servers come from ECS's production lines: from single to five-unit ones.

Of course, the company manufactures server motherboards as well. ECS produces them for its servers, but it can also ship them separately.

And now we proceed from the big guns, favored so much by system administrators-linuxoids, to a lighter products (even in weight terms): small system units, that is barebone-kits. ECS manufactures lots of them. Part of them are already in BTX form factor.

But that's not enough. The company offers PC cases as well!

But the most favorite trend in system-unit-building (if we can say so) has recently become multimedia centers.

Even here the company launched mobile solutions: various players.

Our excursion ended at the stand with notebooks. ECS possesses great experience in this field. The company currently manufactures a wide range of notebooks under its brand as well as actively works on the OEM market, shipping notebook bases to other manufacturers.

In the previous part I narrated about the 20th anniversary of Chaintech and our visit to Taipei 101 at 500 meters. This time will be different.

Boyce Lin kindly agreed to take us for a ride in his car and to show us Taiwan, the Northern coast and mountains. (I'll publish a detailed photo coverage about this trip for our friends, but I'd like to express my admiration here as well).

It's Pacific Ocean coast, to the North of the town Danshui. It was the low tide, so the ocean retreated and bared lots of stones. By the way, Taiwan is of volcanic origins so it's very difficult to find really good beaches (the coast is mostly rocky). The most popular beaches are artificial.

Then we headed into the mountains, into the national park Yangmingshan. That's where we got into a fairy tale. Lush greenery, mountain silence, crystal clear air, sounds of waterfalls and mountain rivers... (photos on collages in the beginning of the articles were taken there).

One of the photos shows an old road. It's over one hundred years old. It used to be a trade route from the ocean, where China traders came from, to the trading grounds. The latter was high in the mountains, so the work of porters was very hard.

Philosophical mood and tender feelings aroused by contemplating these parts made me feel poetix But when I pathetically exclaimed: "I'd like to stay here and become..." Boyce interrupted me and put me to the ground: "Earthquakes are most frequent here and it's sometimes dangerous to be here because of earth falls"... That was how the fairy tale ended.

Next time we are going to review ATI's offers at Computex'2006.

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