Best Of Computex

Katie Sung

TAIPEI: The fifteenth annual Computex Taipei show held in June featured a wealth of PC, notebook, peripheral, and component introductions, many of which will reach the world's retail shelves this fall. Editors at BYTE and 0&1 BYTE , which is the Chinese-language version of BYTE, surveyed the show to find the best hardware and software products. Here's what they found:

BEST SYSTEM (system motherboard or chip set):

Winner: The Flexus (+886 2 782 7292; fax +886 2 788 3862) 586F57, which is a high-speed Pentium motherboard that supports Pentiums running at up to 170 MHz internally.

Runners-up: Via Technology (+886 2 218 5452; fax +886 2 218 5453), for its green PC chip set, and AsusTek (+886 2 894 3447; fax +886 2 894 3449), for its P/I-P55TP4XE, whic h supports a variety of Pentium processors.

BEST PORTABLE:

Winner: Acer (+886 2 545 5288; fax +886 2 545 5308), for its AcerNote 950, which includes a 10.4-inch active-matrix screen, a built-in CD-ROM drive, a touchpad mouse, and an Intel Pentium chip.

Runners-up: Dual (+886 2 788 3919; fax +886 2 783 0023), for its 100-MHz Pentium-based PMD 5500 Pentimedia II with a built-in CD-ROM drive, and Kapok (+886 2 298 2651; fax +886 2 694 8787), for its notebook PC, which also has a CD-ROM drive.

BEST PERIPHERAL:

Winner: Up-Safe (+886 2 694 8181; fax +886 2 694 8787), for its DS-500 disk-size UPS (uninterruptible power supply), which fits inside a PC server's expansion slot.

Runners-up: ViewSonic ((909) 869-7976; fax (909) 869-7958), for its 15GA 15-inch multimedia monitor with built-in microphone and speakers, and MicroTek's (+886 35 772155; fax +886 35 772598) PageWiz 300-dot-pe r-inch scanner.

MULTIMEDIA HARDWARE:

Winner: Umax (+886 2 517 0055; fax +886 2 517 2017), for its 192-bit MaxMedia CD/Pro graphics accelerator card, which uses three 64-bit graphics chips.

Runners-up: Acer's Vuego six-speed CD-ROM drive; Aver (+886 2 226 3630; fax +886 2 221 4538), for its live-video frame-grabber board for PCs, and LeadTek (+886 2 248 4101; fax +886 2 248 4103), for its Proview GD 400 3D graphics card, which uses Nvidia's NV1 multimedia accelerator chip.

MULTIMEDIA SOFTWARE:

Winner: U-Lead (+886 2 764 8599; fax +886 2 764 9599), for Media Studio Pro 2 integrated multimedia editing software for Windows.

Runners-up: Prolab (+886 2 517 0750; fax +886 2 517 0760), for Media Folio, which is an image-processing, video-processing, and authoring tool you use with Windows; and Far Stone's (+886 2 777 2435; fax +886 2 777 1720) SmartCD Instant software, which is a plug-and-play CD player for all CD-ROM drives.

CONNECTIVITY:

Winner: D-Link (+886 2 916 1600; fax +886 2 914 6299), for its DFE-812TX100Base Hub and DFE 500TX 10/100-Mbps PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) Fast Ethernet Adapter.

Runners-up: CNet (+886 35 785158; fax +886 35 785159), for its CN9100 Ethernet-to-ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) switching hub, and Moxa (+886 2 910 1230; fax +886 2 910 1231), for its asynchronous terminal server.

INTERNATIONAL PRODUCT:

Winner: Logitech (+886 2 746 6601; fax +886 2 762 1943), for its Fotoman Pixtura digital camera.

Runner-up: Miro (+886 2 999 8116; fax +886 2 999 8140), for its miroVideo DCI TV multimedia special-effects system.