Destined to Reign

What's that, Acer? Your vicious Predator not feel so dominant now? ASUS just dropped a bombshell with the official release of the ARES CG6150 that first surfaced at CeBIT, and for gamers who accept nothing less than cutting edge, this is your rig. From the top, we've got an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (overclockable to 4.0GHz) processor, NVIDIA's nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset, up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, a 3-way SLI setup with GeForce GTX280s, up to 4TB of HDD space, a Blu-ray optical drive, twin gigabit Ethernet jacks, two power supplies and a custom liquid cooling arrangement. ASUS is being tight-lipped (as usual) with pricing / release information, but let's just assume you'll need a serious stack of Benjamins to even sniff this beast.

Heads-up, we've got another world's first coming from the labs at BenQ. The E2200HDA claims to be this planet's very first 21.5-inch 1080p Full HD LCD monitor, and given that odd panel size, we don't doubt it one bit. Just to reiterate, this one boasts a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution along with a 10,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 300 cd/m2 brightness, 5-millisecond response time, HDMI / DVI / VGA inputs, integrated speakers and a headphone jack. BenQ's keeping quiet on pricing, but we are told to expect two additional E Series displays (including a 24-incher) later this year. As for this one, look for it to land in China and "select countries in Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America" in Q3. Yes, North America just got snubbed -- intensely.

This is either the best or worst idea ever -- we're still not sure. The Intempo Rebel (aptly named) records songs from FM radio stations, strips out DJ chatter and ads, and saves them to an SD or MMC card as MP3 files. What's more, it even goes after the most-played songs to make sure you're getting all the good (overplayed?) tracks right off the air. It also sports a USB port, line-in jack, and headphone plug. Intempo calls it a "music sampling system" that cuts out "hyperactive DJs" -- we call it a headache for the RIAA. It can be yours for £69.99 or $138 US.

iriver's Lplayer, which we just got done handling ourselves, made it over to the review crew at PC Magazine. As expected, both design and interface were smiled upon, and critics also felt the price was fair. Upon using the admittedly wee device, they seemed to have problems getting the click buttons to respond like they wanted, but aside from that, hardly anything negative was said. The broad codec support was praised, the built-in equalizer worked as advertised and the FM tuner / voice recorder were welcome extras. All in all, it was seen as a worthy rival to the iPod nano, and if you're the type that prefers something different in the pocket, this puppy just might be the ticket.

These days, it's pretty wild and crazy if a PMP manufacturer manages to do anything different than what's already out there, so we've got a soft spot for Shenzhen's EM-2811, being sold as the "Latte ICE." Sure, nothing spectacular, and the 1GB-4GB capacity is seriously amature hour, but we like the look of the device, and the interface is pretty strong for a no-name DAP. There's a miniSD slot to overcome that capacity handicap, a 2.8-inch QVGA screen, FM radio, voice support, AVI / MPEG video playback, and a built-in speaker. Tetris is included, but with the button layout we're hoping they can finagle a couple emulators on there. Battery life of 4 hours video and 8 hours audio is painful, but overall the Latte ICE isn't at all bad for a $70 starting price.

We knew driver-enabled PhysX support was due for NVIDIA's line some time soon, but HotHardware's reporting that GeForce 8 and 9-series owners will finally have it when ForceWare 177.39 ships alongside the GeForce 9800 GTX+ in July. The preliminary benchmarks seem to show some serious GPU performance gains for PhysX operations, so with any luck you'll soon be rendering Independence Day fireworks at greater framerates than ever previously imagined.

Apple hasn't sued Psystar yet, so it's no surprise the company is pushing the envelope as far as it can -- it's just introduced two rackmount servers that come with OS X Server pre-installed. The OpenServ 1100 and 2400 are both configurable with 2.5 GHz Xeon processors and up to 16GB of RAM, with the 1U 1100 sporting four drive bays and the 2U 2400 rocking six. Just like Psystar's other products, you're on your own (or at the mercy of Psystar) for service and support, since Apple won't help you -- and considering Psystar kept sending us support tickets for that DHCP issue but never actually called us to resolve it, that might make enterprise customers a bit wary. On the other hand, with prices starting at $1599, we're certain some desperate render shop will take the plunge.