INQ hacks award their best, worse of 2006

AT THIS time of year stories are traditionally thin on the ground it's traditional for the INQ to give awards for the best and worst things they've seen or experienced in their travails travels.

Their best and their worst features are opinionated and should only be taken seriously if you want to take them seriously. µ

Charlie Demerjian
Story of the year: Dell batteries (much as I hate to say it, I think DAAMIT is a better long term one)
Ethical high point of the year: HP - Mark Hurd testifying before Re^h^hCongress
CPU of the year: Intel Core Number Foreign Number
Porn accessory of the year: Seagate hard drives
Game of the year: GTA San Andreas - Hot coffee edition
Corporate kindness award: Tie - Intel and HP layoffs
They did what? Award: Dell picks up AMD
Costume of the year: Bunny suit
Software of the year: Sony Rootkit
Customer care award: Sony Rootkit
Landing with a thud award: Tie - Blu-Ray and HD-DVD
Technology of the year: DRM
Community maturity award: Tie - Digg and Wikipedia
Most launches without a working product award: Quad SLI
Best PR moment: IDF - FB-DIMMs are not canceled
Take the world by storm award: VIIV
We told you so: DAAMIT
Knife in the back: MS for Zune/plays for sure
Building a relationship award: Nvidia for the G80 launch

Nick Farrell
The Jacques Hadamard award for worst product launch
Sony's PS3 launch. Not only was the product only released in the US and Japan, the outfit failed to make enough available to avoid riots among those queuing for the limited number of machines.

The Mountbatten Award for incompetent people who manage to achieve success
Expert on fake willies, Dionysus, who despite having no expertise, sense of humour and had a clear vendetta against the INQ managed to get the Everywhere Girl deleted from Wikipedia. His attempt to get Mike Mageek deleted on the basis that he was not a journalist was rebuffed when countless INQ readers confirmed that they had seen Mageek write a story or two.

The Neville Chamberlin award for ignoring problems
Apple. This year Apple has consistently ignored manufacturing problems with various products. These included over heating and noise on the Macbook Pro. It has only taken action by Mac fans to pressure the outfit on various websites before Apple would even admit there was a problem. It later claimed that only a 'small number' were affected. Most companies were able to handle the Sony exploding battery recall, however Apple showed it was unable to do so and did not return our calls when we asked about its methods.

The 'Made in Taiwan' award for shonky goods
Apple's iPod. Although being quite expensive, the iPod is designed to spontaneously combust after a year. Apple describes this as a design feature and refuses to allow a free warranty. This is in breach of European and Australian consumer protection laws. Apple however refused to change its warranty and is currently in hotwater with these various bodies.

The Worst Product Name
Nintendo Wii. A gift for INQ headline writers, the name of this Nintendo shines like a stream of gold amongst some stiff competition.

The BBC award for technology explanation
US Senator Ted Stevens for his "the Internet is a series of tubes" speech to the Senate Commerce Committee. The quote runs "Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? [...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."

Boston tea-party award for the worst overreaction
HP. A bit concerned that one of its board members were talking to the media, HP launched a serious of illegal investigations that involved spying on its own staff, reporters and anyone else it thought was suspect. The investigation involved going through hacks' rubbish and pretending that they were someone else in a bid to get hacks to spill the beans. It didn't work and may end up with some HP board member's in Jail.

The Princess Diana Award for Self Absorbed Destructive Behaviour
Microsoft. Its obsession with pirating has lead it to create Windows Genuine Advantage for Vista and Windows XP. This software had a nasty habit of telling people with legitimate software that they were running pirated versions and plague them with pop-ups. To make matters worse the pirates worked out ways to fool WGA that their products were real, meaning that the people who were injured were actually Vole's real customers. Then it was revealed that WGA was phoning home every day to test if the software was genuine. Punters hoping that life will get better for them under Windows Vista will be sadly mistaken as the WGA software will now be compulsory.

Most ignored technology of the year
Shared between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. It was expected to be the next best thing and the two technologies were supposed to slug it out for dominance of the video market. In fact neither made much headway. This was partly because it was too expensive, but mostly because no-one wanted a repeat of the Betamax fiasco and end up buying the wrong technology. Both sides should have buried the hatchet and worked on a joint standard, but instead thought they could win the coming battle.

Fuad Abazovic
Best high end product
G80 - Nvidia returns with all of its arrogance and glory and there is no better chip on the market if you have the money. Geforce 8800 GTX is the fastest DirectX 9 card around and we still don't know what to make for DirectX 10 as Nvidia still don't let the driver in the wild.

Super high end product of the year
Geforce 8800 GTX SLI if you have $/€ 1300 to spend on the two cards I advise you to go for it as it can not get faster then this.

Best buy card
Radeon X1950 PRO is definitely something that you should consider buying. It will cost just €/$199 and you will get some great performance for it. Even two of these cards make sense as it will beat most of the cards out of the market. RV570 is one of the first 80 nanometre chips around and it is the first ATI to offer cable less Crossfire and two SLI like connectors on the card.

Surprise of the year
ATI made Crossfire works, even cable less and stable. We knew that 2006 is the year to get the Crossfire in shape. RD580 chipset is one of the finest on the market and ATI really did a good job on both chipset and driver side.

Driver of the year
Catalyst control panel. It still takes a while to load but it is much easier to use than Nvidia's attempt to make its control panel. It looks the same under Vista and XP and it shows you what you are doing. [Can we hire it as the editor? Ed.]

Driver Feature of the year
The AVIVO video converter is one of the best things we have came across in a while. It is probably the easiest way to convert the video to a desired format and it works really fast. It is really usefull and works great.

Shocker of the year
AMD acquires ATI and managed to integrated the sales and marketing in 2006. We predicted this before it happened and we can see that this move is a good thing. ATI will be stronger than ever before and AMD will get the chipset graphics and memory it wants.

Come back of the year
Intel managed to capture the hearts of the high end market with its Core 2 Duo CPUs. They just run faster than AMD in most games. Core 2 Quad didn't had that much impact as it's just too expensive but some high end chaps went for it.

Thing of the year
AMD Quad FX, 4x4. We believe that this is the most interesting thing on the market. We know that AMD just took two CPUs and made them work together but this is the best high end market opportunity as well. AMD used Nvidia's very successful SLI strategy simply because people want more. That's what Quad FX and megatasking is one of the most interesting things I've seen for a while.

Chipset of the year
Nforce 590 SLI can share this prise with RD580 chipset. Both ones will run great and will even overclock great. Nforce 590 was more popular and widely accepted but RD580 had its moments especially in DFI motherboard. We decided not to give the Nforce 680i a prize as it turned to still be buggy but it's a great overclocker and RD600 still hasn't impacted the market. The best Intel chipset remains the P965 as it will let you run the memory higher than 1066 MHz and it will let you overclock.

Power Supply Unit of the year
The OCZ 700W GameXstream power supply can run Crossfire, two Geforce 8800 GTX in SLI and all the peripherals and it even beats some of the 850W that we had in our hands. This is the best buy high end PSU at the same time as in Germany it costs just around €125. We love it as we know that it won't crash in the middle of 3Dmark05 with Crossfire or SLI. It can run FX62 setup just as well as Core 2 Extreme 2.93 setup as it has the power.

Memory of the year
OCZ Flexx 2x1024MB goes to 1280MHz. We didn't believe that this is possible but we managed to run 1280 MHz and after testing reached even 1300 MHz on a EVGA 680i motherboard. It is the SLI of memory and beats its only competitor Dominator as it simply runs faster.

Performance memory of the year
Corsair XMS2 Dominator Series DIMM Kit 2048MB PC2-8500U CL5-5-5-15 (DDR2-1066). Despite its windy name, it will run 1066 without any problems and it runs under Vista just fine. At below €350 for 2GB it makes a good buy for all the high end enthusiasts that don't want to buy €500 worth of memory.

Graphic person of the year
Rich Heye is the graphic man of 2006. The chap who used to run the desktop group could turn things around. This former VP of AMD had a great vision for ATI's future but he didn't want to stick around after the merger. He left AMD because he had the opposite opinion to many people there.

It was a pleasure to work with him and to feel his energy [Steady on Fudo, Ed.]. If I was Nvidia I would not save money - I would run and get this chap in the team as he knows what he is doing. He was exactly what ATI needed. Last we heard about him is that he launched a start-up and we wish him all the best.

Andrew "Alphonse Spinola" Thomas
Consumer Audio Gadget Manufacturer That Kids Itself It's Still A Computer Maker: Apple.
Crap Technology Reporting (Lifetime Achievement): BBC.
Gross Technical Incompetence (Lifetime Achievement): EDS.
Good Grief, I Thought They'd Given Up Years Ago: Transmeta.
Best Technology PR: Doctor Alphonso Spinola.
Technology Publication of the Year: The Inquirer.
Best Awards Judge Bribery: Doctor Alphonso Spinola.
Most Exciting Graphics Card: Not awarded.
Most Gratuitous Waste of Gallium Nitride: Blue LEDs.
Car of the Year: Jaguar XKR. (please ship to Spinola Towers, Much-Blagging-in-the-Marsh, Gloucestershire)

Paul Hales
Most shafted: Sony
Most useless: AMD
Most unoriginal: Intel
Most boring: Microsoft
Most hopeful: North Korea
Most dishonest: HP
Most miffed: Dell
Most overrated: Apple
Most fun: Nintendo
Most bought and sold: The INQUIRER

The Editor (age 5½)
Best food of the year: Jam
Worst food of the year: Brussels Sprouts, followed by cauliflower and cabbage
Best racing driver of the year: Mike Hawthorn
Best platter of the year: See you later Alligator
Second best platter of the year: Pie and chips with gravy and peas
Worst experience of the year: Losing all my toys after I threw them out my pram