Inquirer wins beautiful, bold new award

WELCOME, one and all to 2007. It's time to shake off the lethargy and prepare yourselves for the latest gadgetry the new year has to offer. But before that it's time to wrap up the reviews of the electronic wizardry of 2006 so as best to prepare you for the January sales.

It seems only fitting to start with the customary annual review articles, of which there are several.

First up is the Elite Bastards of the Year Awards 2006 in which the INQ even gets a mention albeit under the award of 'Soap opera of the year'.

HardwareLogic has put up the HardwareLogic's Year in Review: Computer Technology of 2006 which gives a broad overview of the major technologies that saw their birth over the course of 2006.

Next up is the the 2006 bit-tech Awards as well as the more introspective Won't you be my neighbour? Social internet editorial.

After posting the ' Nvidia: A Year in Review' article in early December Phoronix has followed up with the ATI AYiR 2006 which covers the progression of ATI's drivers, both for Windows and Linux over the course of the preceding year.

Legion Hardware has offered us an overview of the brief history of The new Core 2 Duo's and something of a sneak preview as to what we can expect from Intel's processors in 2007.

Meanwhile Tweaktown has been delving into the complications of Setting up HDMI on your HDTV - nVidia vs. AMD. The short answer seems to be that although both drivers achieve the same result the ForceWare drivers are a lot simpler and more intuitive.

With CPU, memory and GPU data rates going through the ceiling hard drives are rapidly becoming a major bottleneck in applications that thrive on high speed data transfer. Tweaktown has tested the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB - Perpendicular recording at its best and it looks like Seagate has been working very hard at minimising the problem.

Tweaktown has also had a close look at the Mid-Range Graphics Card Warfare - AMD vs. nVidia (Q4 2006) to give those of you with a little cash left over from Christmas something to look for in the January sales.

Bjorn3d has reviewed the FOXCONN 7950GT and far from being just a rehash of an aging product this new 'overclocking version' with its increased 512MB of memory certainly shapes up to being a worthwhile consideration.

Monster-Hardware has reviewed the Acer AL1916 LCD and this 19" monitor looks to be a decent all round performer considering the price tag.

If you're looking to upgrade your graphics card to face the upcoming Vista and DirectX 10 gaming then your current choice has to be an Nvidia 8800 card. PC Perspective has had a look a the little brother of the series in the BFG Tech GeForce 8800 GTS and SLI Review.

For the audio fans amongst you, Chile Hardware has reviewed the Sondigo Inferno 7.1 sound card which performs remarkably well but comes with a relatively hefty price tag.

WCCFtech has put up the ASUS P5B Deluxe Motherboard Review which definitely excited the reviewer coming out with stimulating 9.1/10.

Asus motherboards seem to be a popular choice as IT-review has written up the ASUS Striker Extreme review and Virtual-Hideout has put up the ASUS Striker Extreme NVIDIA 680i SLI Motherboard Review. This board has more LED's and LCD's than an episode of 'Pimp my Ride' but this chipset is still plagued by BIOS issues.

Hardware.info has reviewed the tiny Transtec Senyo 600W which is essentially a desktop PC about the size of a notebook without a screen. It's not designed for power users of any ilk, but if your requirements are modest then this may well be just fine.

I'll wrap up with a rather intriguing device reviewed by Virtual-Hideout, the VIZO XENA w/One Touch Backup Notebook Cooler Review. Normally notebook coolers are precisely that and nothing else, but this one acts more like a docking station incorporating a three port USB hub and 2.5" S-ATA drive bay with one touch backup. µ

* SEND YOUR hardware news to Ian Williams.