Bij CNET.com is te lezen dat Intel haar productassortiment weer eens gaat verbreden. De chipfabrikant zal namelijk volgende maand een draagbare 'digital-audio player' uitbrengen. Dit sluit volledig aan bij de recente trend van computerfabrikanten om verder dan de PC te kijken. Analisten denken dat Intel de digital audio player voor relatief weinig geld kan verkopen, aangezien zij zelf flashgeheugen en USB chips maken:
Just as important, Intel has an opportunity to undercut other makers of digital-audio players. The company is the world's largest manufacturer of flash memory, which stores data inside a digital-audio player. Intel also sells chips for establishing the universal serial bus (USB)--the port that allows consumers to plug a player into a PC with relative ease.
By effectively supplying these parts to itself or a chosen contract manufacturer, Intel could substantially reduce overhead.
"The bulk of the cost of manufacturing MP3 players is in flash and USB," said Richard Doherty, an analyst at the Seaford, N.Y.-based Envisioneering Group. "That's 95 percent of the cost right there."
Het valt nog te bezien of Intel ook op deze markt succes kan boeken.
With the Acoustic Edge's excellent 5.1 speaker management, it provides for effortless, high-quality DVD playback. Furthermore, the Acoustic Edge ships with the revered PowerDVD 3.0 decoding software. Not only is the Acoustic Edge one of the few sound cards to offer 3D gaming sound across 5.1 channels, but it also offers top-notch 3D sound while doing so.
Even though the Matrox cards are not able to compete with other chips in terms of pure 3D performance, they can still be recommended. The most important catchword is Dual Head, which means that you can attach either two monitors or one monitor and a TV. nVIDIA is now launching a similar concept, but the graphics card will require a second RAMDAC. In contrast, Matrox integrated the second RAMDAC directly into the graphics chip, which reduces the cost for the graphics card. In addition, Matrox is the only company, which integrated a TV encoder into the chip, making the G450 a decent basis for video and TV freaks.
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