Editorials

17 November 2006 - iSuppli Corp.’s dissection reveals the PlayStation 3 is an engineering masterpiece that sets a new high mark for computing price/performance—even when considering it is more expensive than its nearest rival, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft Corp. The combined materials and manufacturing cost of the PlayStation 3 is $805.85 for the model equipped with a 20Gbyte HDD, and $840.35 for the 60Gbyte HDD version. This total doesn’t include additional costs for elements including the controller, cables and packaging. At these costs, Sony is taking a considerable loss on each PlayStation 3 sold. Materials and manufacturing costs for the 20Gbyte model exceed the suggested retail price of $499 by a total of $306.85. For the 60Gbyte version, costs exceed the $599 price by $241.35. PlayStation 3’s inclusion of a power supply that packs a whopping 400-watts—yet uses a very compact, low-profile design. At $37.50, this power supply costs about twice as much as an average unit found in a PC.

8 November 2006 - Microsoft plans to open a laboratory in Taiwan to certify hardware compatible with its Vista, considering that Taiwan is pivotal to the manufacturing of personal computers and peripherals. So far, the Taiwanese manufacturers who have been certified include ASUS., ASRock, Gigabyte, Realtek, A-Data, and VIA. Industry watchers pointed out that once the laboratory is set up, Vista-compatible peripherals will be immediately available to individual consumers and enterprises as soon as the OS hits the stores, a better scenario than before when users could only buy peripherals of any debuted OS some time after such compatible OSs were introduced.

4 November 2006 - Intel plans to jettison approximately 6,900 employees over the next six months as part of a broad restructuring unveiled earlier this year. Layoffs would result in charges totaling $255 million over the next two quarters. The chip giant intends to take a charge of $125 million in the fourth quarter and a charge of $130 million in the first quarter of 2007. Intel planned to cut 10,500 jobs by mid-2007 as part of an operational overhaul that also has included the sales of underperforming business units selling chips for cell phones and networking gear. The job cuts are expected to reduce Intel's global workforce to 92,000; its payroll had swelled by 30% since 2004. During the three-month period ended Sept. 30, Intel fired 1,600 employees, a majority of whom worked at factories.

24 October 2006 - IBM hit Amazon.com with two lawsuits that seek unspecified damages. For four years, IBM attempted to clear up the matter before it decided to sue. IBM alleges that Amazon.com knowingly exploits its intellectual property by infringing on several patents that cover, among other things: the presentation of applications in an interactive service; the storage of data in an interactive network; the presentation of advertising in an interactive service; and the ordering of items from an electronic catalog.

21 September 2006 - For the first time in several years, AMD will not be luring journalists away from IDF next year - and it will not preview or announce its Core 2 Quadro competitor "4x4". AMD will not have a presence at Fall IDF as they are happy with how communications are going with customers and the media at this time. Web-based communication is becoming more important with AMD's Virtual IT Experience which is currently available online. AMD announced earlier this year that 4X4, a solution that will enable enthusiast users to use two dual-core processors on one motherboard, will be available in Q4 of this year.

12 September 2006 - After successful rounds of preliminaries at SMU and Ngee Ann Poly which took place last month, the gamers who qualify from the universities, polytechnics, junior colleges and secondary schools are set to meet in the WGT National Finals taking place current at Funan DigitaLife Mall from 4th to 10th September 2006. Certainly the first 5 days at Funan DigitaLife Mall are open preliminaries and has attracted top gamers in Singapore to participate.

23 August 2006 - ASUS WGT preliminaries is now taking place at Singapore Management University (SMU) Business Faculty from August 22nd to 24th 2006. VR-Zone check out the gaming scene there and of course the Tech Babes of SMU.

10 June 2006 - We've captured a nice clip of HOT ATI Girls dancing to a tune by the Pussy Cat Dolls during Computex.... You can download the clip right here!!!

10 November 2006 - Despite the fact that AMD bought graphics chip maker ATI Technologies—Nvidia's chief competitor—earlier this year, AMD sales chief, Henri Richard, also made an appearance at the event saying that the companies would remain good partners. "In many ways, AMD is where it is today, it is because of you," Richard told Nvidia's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang. Richard took the opportunity to introduce AMD's new QuadFather platform—also know as the 4x4—a dual die quad core chip that uses the Opteron processor socket with two PCIe x16 slots for graphics cards and retail packaged CPUs. "We felt that this marketplace needed something better," Richard said, alluding to AMD's partnership with Nvidia. "We wanted to redefine the platform so Nvidia and AMD joined forces to bring you four CPUs and four GPUs. "That's the power of this new architecture."

6 November 2006 - Intel and Micron intend to form a joint venture in Singapore to build and manage a NAND flash wafer fab that will come online in the second half of 2008. The fab would initially use a 50-nm process technology on 300-mm wafers. The Singapore JV s facility is expected to break ground in the first half of 2007. Micron already has a joint venture in Singapore — with Hewlett Packard, Canon and the Singapore Economic Development Board — for the production of DRAMs.

26 October 2006 - Supply shortage of PC components has seriously hit PC makers since mid-October, and they are scrambling for crucial components including microprocessors, DRAM chips, chipsets, and lithium batteries. Industry watchers blame Vista, Microsoft`s next-generation operating system (OS), for the supply shortage. Taiwan`s top five notebook-computer suppliers-Quanta, Compal, Wistron, Inventec and ASUS are competing to grab DRAM chips to fill their needs as Vista requires minimum memory capacity of 915MB, compared to the standard 512 Mb for current Windows XP OS. Intel executives said they have felt supply shortage of the company`s chipsets and microprocessors and expected the problem to be eased sometime this quarter.

23 October 2006 - ASUS will be the major supplier for Sony PS3 for the fourth quarter of 2006, with Foxconn to ship PS3s to Sony starting from February and March 2007. According to Strategy Informer, Sony might not be able to meet the initial shipment figures of 2M units to retail stores in the USA and Japan at the end of 2006. They hinted of some production issues.

20 September 2006 - The Asustek-Gigabyte joint venture, which was announced on August 8, will be named "Gigabyte Union. Gigabyte chairman Dandy Yeh will be appointed as the chairman of Gigabyte Union. The new company's organization, which will have more than 300 employees, will be announced in October.

7 September 2006 - KODE5 South East Asia Regional Qualifier has finally kicked off last month at Singapore leading IT center, Funan DigitaLife Mall where the top placing team of Counter-Strike 1.6 and top player of Warcraft III: Frozen Throne will represent South East Asia to compete against the best from other regions around the world.

14 June 2006 - VR-Zone brings you a round up of the girls we've spotted at Computex 06.

8 June 2006 - Up and coming products from Abit, Asus, DFI, GIgabyte and more!!