The INQUIRER awards for 2003

HERE, AS PROMISED, is the second part of our awards for 2003, as the old year is ready to slip away. We've also included some other more unusual categories which merit awards of some kind, or other...

Part One is here. µ

Mainboards
Winner. Socket 940 for AMD Athlon 64 FX
Gigabyte GA-K8NNXP-940 - Big hitting Tweak Central for the awesome AMD Athlon 64 FX and one of the first boards to market with FireWire 800 too.

Winner - Socket 754 for AMD Athlon 64
Albatron K8X800 Pro II - First board to market with the ability to fully manipulate the Athlon 64.

Winner - Socket A for AMD Athlon XP
AOpen AK79D-400 Max - Best nForce 2 400 Ultra implementation we saw - fast, stable and (with a Dual BIOS) a safe full featured overclocker.

Winner - Dual Socket 603 for Intel XEON
ASUSTeK PC-DL Deluxe - Canterwood for dual 3.06GHz XEONs!

Winner - Socket 478 for Intel Pentium 4
ABIT IC7 MAX3 - tune your 3.06GHz P4 to make a 3.2GHz P4 inExtreme Edition look even sillier

3D Graphics Accelerators
High End Desktop
Winner - ATi RADEON 9800XT (R360)
Upside: even prettier than Parhelia's 16x FSAA when firing up DX9 games - fast as hell and doesn't scream like a banshee
Downside: not much more than a pumped up R300

Runner Up - NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 Ultra (NV30)
OK, as noisy as it was fast but a technological step forward for sure - long live 3dfx?

Mid-Range Desktop
Winner - NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra (NV36)
Upside: Basically an NV30 with half the pipelines but still with DDR-2 and that's a lot of tech for money
Downside: don't buy on the basis of 3DMark scores alone…

Runner Up - ATi RADEON 9600 XT (RV360)
Upside: almost makes us forget the bargain that the RADEON 9500 PRO was…
Downside: but this RV360 is only a bargain if Half-Life 2 really ships in its lifecycle…

High End Workstation
Winner - NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000
Upside: Fast
Downside: Uncheap

Runner Up - Matrox Parhelia
Upside: Still an interesting proposition, especially for desktop video editors
Downside: Its PR just sucks…

Core Logic
Winner - VIA K8T800 - Really brings VIA back into the game…
Runner Up - VIA KT600 - can embarrass dual channel memory solutions for a lot less money

Mass Storage
Hard Drives
Winner - Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10,000RPM S-ATA - Blisteringly fast and finally with enough capacity to be useful in a single drive system
Runner Up - Seagate Cheetah X15 36LP 15,000RPM Ultra320 SCSI

Optical Drive
Winner - LG Electronics GSA-4040 - Every DVD ± RW/CD-RW standard plus DVD-RAM
Runner Up - Plextor Premium PlexWriter 52/24/52A

Desktop Video Editing
Winner - Matrox RTX100 Extreme Pro
Upside - An investment for those who need it - and investments in IT hardware are rare (this year's Matrox Video Tools even bring enhancements to legacy products they launched several years ago!…)
Downside - Adobe Premier Pro (bundled) seems to need a powerhouse of a PC to get the best out of it

Runner Up - Pinnacle Liquid Edition Pro -
Innovatively innovative innovation - if you can use it…

Handsets of 2003
Trying to decide on the criterion which would give The INQ the year's Top Three handsets was far more difficult than eventually picking the winners. Should a gong be awarded to the handset which has survived throughout 2003 as the best workhorse handset? One that has served The INQ well on a daily basis? In which case the Nokia 7650 would win. Or perhaps go for a dinky little handset which handles voice calls admirably but has no useful data capabilities -like the Sendo M550? Or give an award to the best attempt at a smartphone to date - even though personally we don't get on well with it aka the Sony Ericsson P900?

Nope. The INQ has decided to pick the three handsets which it believes have most influenced the whole handset market in 2003. Ones which have shaped the direction the whole industry has started to take.

Sharp GX-10
In at Numero Uno, therefore, is the GX-10 from Sharp. Even though Samsung created the base on which the whole popularity of a clamshell handset design in Europe has been built, it was the GX-10 which reaped the benefits. Nokia's decision to finally offer a ‘folding' phone (it can't bring itself to say clamshell) can almost certainly be blamed on the GX-10. It's also the handset which shows how operators are determined to stamp their own brand names on handsets and introduce their own GUIs. The GX-10 can be blamed for finally making the mobile Internet attractive by disguising the fact that when you use it to access Vodafone Live!, you are effectively surging a colour WAP site. Plus, of course, it can be used to play games too.

Sony Ericsson T610
This is the handset which finally proved that the joint venture between Sony and Ericsson can make an attractive product. It's the epitome of the cameraphone. It's a candy bar shape and lacks the enormous bulk of the Nokia 7650, for example. It uses a little joystick as the handset equivalent of a mouse which is far superior to any side mounted jog button or little wheel (a la Nokia 3650). The screen quality is good which makes it fine for surfing WAP sites and it's also got built in support for Bluetooth which is another must. And finally, of course, it has a built in camera which, alongside its "Quickshare" software facility, is the best attempt the industry has seen so far at actually encouraging people to use MMS (fototext).

Sagem MYX-6
The MyX-6 managed to sneak into third place because the INQ feels it shows how the handset market is still vulnerable to players outside of the Big Four (Nokia, Motorola, Siemens and Samsung). In 2004 it'll probably be LG which takes this slot but French manufacturer, Sagem, has shown that you can come from virtually nowhere and design a very acceptable cameraphone. What's its best feature? Bizarrely the answer is probably that it boasts a clever little cover to protect the camera's lens. That's a gimmick which The INQ feels the company's rivals should definitely steal. It's also light and offers a half decent colour screen too. While a great deal of effort has gone into making this an entry level handset (in terms of pricing), it's one of the few low end handsets which can also be used a cellular modem for all of us mobile hacks. For the young at heart, the My-X6 supports polyphonic ring tones too.

So there you have it. Not a single smartphone or wireless PDA in sight. Maybe next year there will be a model that truly manages to combine the familiar look and feel of a handset - so you can make phone calls easily - while simultaneously providing all the useful functions you'd want in a PDA. But meanwhile we're still waiting.

Other Unusual Categories

Guff of the Year
Winner - ATi Technologies' spinner for laying down ATi policy: "We (ATI Germany) don't comment on INQUIRER stories as they have no foundation in truth".
Runner Up - Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition

Gaff of the Year
Winner - Intel UK PR inviting a load of hacks to the Prescott NDA Press Briefing and then not telling them it was cancelled.
Runner Up - Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition

InnovationSnatch of the Year
Winner - Various (mostly) clueless manufacturers and vendors jumping on the hardware modding scene
Runner Up - AMD ripping both "FX" and "Cinematic Computing" from NVIDIA… 'cooperative' marketing? It's a SNAP

Product of the Year
Winner - AMD Athlon 64
Runner Up - USB Christmas Tree

Catchphrase of the Year
Winner - I'll file my copy tomorrow
Runner Up - I'll send my invoice tomorrow

RubberDick of the Year
Winner - Two unnamed INQ journalists who hijacked one of NVIDIA's chauffeur driven limousines to drive them and their pictures of a then unreleased NV36 with GDDR3 to a hotel to publish. Thanks Boyz! :p

Brainlessness of the Year
Winner - ATi Technologies PR holding a non-NDA Press Briefing in a pub in Harrow, Middlesex, UK (a very short distance from The INQ HQ!), but refusing to allow Mike Magee to attend, and suggesting that he should travel all the way to Heathrow the following afternoon for the exact same briefing!

Snub of the year
Winner - Intel PR ignoring collection of hacks from The INQ, BiT-Tech, Spodes Abode and Custom PC in a hotel in London preferring to have supper with a spikey haired young man…

Drinking Hole of the Year
Winner - There are just so many…

Leak of the Year
Winner - Pentium V will launch with 64-bit Windows Elements

Geek of the Year
Winner - AMD's Rabah Ichadadene for plotting to put "Aquarium Sidepanels" on AMD exhibition systems
Runner Up - Codemafia's ruddy Richard Huddy

INQ Story of the Year
Winner - Charlie Demerjian discovers Carly Fiorina needs two new Gulfstream jets because the ashtrays are full on the old one.

Prima Donna of the Year
Winner - David Ross
Runner Up - David Ross