Linksys QOS boxes, while Viewsonic monitors

TWO COMPANIES USED E3 to launch new stuff, Linksys and Viewsonic. The connection between the two is obvious - nothing, so they make a good single roundup. One has a monitor, the other has networking gear, but I won't tell you which is which now, read on for more.

Viewsonic had a new style of monitors on display, widescreen gaming panels. The first one is the VX2025wm, a 20.1 inch 16:9 monitor, 19 and 22 inch variants will follow in a few months. All have a rez of 1680*1050, not huge, but not bad. You will have to wait for the promised greater than 22 inch models for more dots. The 19 inch panel is rated at 5ms, the 20 and 22 are set at 8ms.

Linksys had one of the more interesting things shown off so far, the network optimizer. What this little box does is provide quality of service (QOS) services to any network. You plug it in between your network and your router, and it will prioritize gaming and VOIP traffic for you. There was not a live demo, but presumably you can set other things to take precedence if you so choose.

The other neat thing it showed off was an ExpressCard GigE NIC. GigE cards are old news, but this is the first ExpressCard card I have seen in the wild. PCIe based notebook owners, look up, hope and toys are on the way.

All in all, three products from two companies with nothing at all in common. They all do completely different things for completely different markets. To my mind, that warrants their inclusion in the same article. µ