Pistons and MP3 players sync in emotion

FIC, THE MANUFACTURING GIANT had a bunch of cool designs at Computex, and you know most of them will be for sale in one way or another soon. The first one was the Spectra home theater PC, or at least a new variant of it. This one went from the old PC with some stereo features to looking like a real stereo component. You can work miracles with some updates.

On the flip side of that, there is the new Piston, one of the flat out coolest concepts from last year. This one looks like it did last year, but it has completely new guts. It is now a i945 based BTX chassis. In normal Inq fashion, we present a picture of the shiny red one that looks exactly the same as the shiny silver one from last year rather than the all new looking one. Enjoy.

They also had a concept PC called the Atlas, coined a 'lifestyle PC concept'. Imagine a red rectangle with the corners cut off to form an octagon-ish structure, and you are most of the way there. There was also a Condor K8, which means there is now a BTX K8, or at least a BTX like K8 .

Moving along, we get to the manufacturing side of FIC, 3CMS, and their toys. The most interesting was an MP3 player called Triple, not the smallest, not the highest capacity, but it sure was small and thin. They had it on a neck strap, and the design just worked for me, unlike the vast majority of the clones out there.

3CMS had a bunch of other goodies, a few MP4 video cameras, and more importantly projection TVs. This means the price of TVs is about to go through the floor, something that makes me very happy. The Inshon branded 53 inch one I looked at had a nice case, decent picture, OK viewing angle, and probably will undercut other DLP TVs by a lot. It will be interesting to see how much they sell for when they are on the market.µ