Gigabyte scents blood in high pressure IT game

WE SIDLED UP to Leo Chu, Gigabyte's channel marketing specialist, to ask him what's afoot in the big IT game.

There are some nice products Gigabyte is readying for the future, including a $100 blood pressure monitor which every home should maybe have. This, in conjunction with PC software, lets you record individual's BP, and measures whether your kids or your granny are getting overexcited by playing scarey games or frustrated by the Microsoft family of operating systems.

Like many other makers here in Old Taipei, Gigabyte has two little home entertainment boxes, in its G-Max series, which don't use Medea Center from Microsoft because that bundle is a little too pricey. They sit winking in the corner of your living room, come November time, and organize your films, your videos, your DVDs and the like, courtesy of a natty little remote control.

Gigabyte is well known for its range of motherboards and had a heap of offerings for Intel and for AMD processors. The ones for the Pentium 4 are Prescott ready, Chu assured us, and came with retainers for the Intel chip, when it arrives. There are now, we are assured, no big problems with heat any more, and will give a clear nine months before the other Prescott, the 775 ‘socket' version, makes it into this world.

It's got a neat little PCS module which will regulate power supplies on motherboards and help everything to stay in phase.

Gigabyte also has a set of wireless LAN products in store, including routers, access points, and Cardbus products using Atheros chipsets and supporting 802.11g. These are attractive and unobtrusive if you're contemplating setting up a home or business wireless network, said Chu.