Asus hops between mobos and mobiles

ASUS NOT ONLY had PCs, but they also were showing off toys aplenty at the show. They ranged from the expected mobos to the quite odd bits.

The oddest of the lot was the HD1 HDMI upgrade card. It takes non-DRM infected video and audio and infects it for you.

Asus HD1 HDMI card

If you get screwed by DRM, you only have to spend a little money to 'upgrade' your handcuffs so you can watch your existing legal files. This isn't the fault of Asus, but it makes your head hurt thinking about the hoops you need to jump through to view your own media.

Asus ROG concept motherboard

The most interesting mobo Asus had here at Cebit was the ROG water cooled concept motherboard. It is an X48 part with waterblocks over the northbridge, southbridge and VRMs. The couplings poke out of the back panel for easy access. The only thing we are curious about is whey they didn't include a CPU block while they were at it. In any case, it is a good idea.

Asus Lamborghini ZX1 phone

That brings us to phones and at the same time, the newest member of the Asus Lamborghini family, the ZX1. It is a slim and angular Wince based phone that packs most GSM frequencies and a GPS. It also has a 3MP camera, 256M of flash, 128M ram and a micro SD card slot. I commend whoever was brave enough to to put Wince on a car based phone, the crash jokes are going to be unending with this one.

The other phone of note at Asus is the P320, claimed to be the smallest GPS packing Wince device out there. It is quite small, barely bigger than a business card, so if you make it any smaller, you will probably compromise usability.

Asus R70 MID

Last up, we have the Asus R70 MID, Intel's new term, Mobile Internet Device. This one packs a Silverthorne CPU, 3.5G and WiMax. In the high humor category, it also runs Vista, so it will be Genuinely (R)(TM)(C) Unusable. No, really, a slow CPU with up to 1G of ram and a 1.8-inch HD, and they expect it to run full Vista? Wake me when they put out a Linux version, or better yet, buy an Eee. µ