I've been a busy little CT-resident these days, as I'm sure you've seen on the site. Unfortunately, the side effect is that I haven't had any time to post to the blog, which is something I deeply regret. With hopes of igniting the spark of consistent blogging, I give you an update of recent history:
Derek got pretty sick a little while ago, so I had to step in and handle the CPU and GPU reviews, my old stomping grounds, for a while. I remember how much I missed doing those reviews, but I also quickly remembered how hectic things can get when everyone seems to want to launch a new product. Today marks the start of what I think is going to be an incredibly hellish month in terms of product launches. ATI just launched their new Athlon 64 chipset and in about 2 hours ATI and NVIDIA will go head to head with their latest high-end mobile GPUs. We've got at least one more GPU launch later this month, and a bunch of other stuff I can't talk about but I'm definitely working on for this month. Derek is doing much better and you'll see his comeback this month as well.
Vinney and I went to Taiwan for about three days, marking the very first business trip Vinney's accompanied me on. She completely changed the dynamic of the usual business trip for me, she made it much more enjoyable to say the least. Normally the highlights of my trips happen when I come across some interesting hardware or manage to get some quality benchmarking time with unreleased technology but then the rush dies down and I'm just tired. With Vinney there, there was no lull, it was just like being at home - except surrounded by tons of people who spoke a very different language.
Taiwan was fun, it always is, but extremely tiring. I tend to keep a very grueling schedule during my trips, simply because I don't fly half way around the world to goof off. Just about every day in Taiwan was 8AM - 11PM, with back to back meetings. Unlike a tradeshow however, I actually was able to eat lunch, dinner and sometimes even breakfast, but by the end of the week I was wiped. I'm still recovering from the jetlag, it usually takes me two weeks to get back on a normal schedule, regardless of what methods I try.
The meetings in Taiwan went very well, there seems to be a largely positive outlook on the market for 2005 from the companies I talked to, but at the same time there is quite a bit of caution curbing some of the optimism. Worries about a slow down in the CPU market, concerns over a lack luster reception of dual core, things like that. Not to mention that very few of the motherboard makers (other than ASUS and MSI) were happy with NVIDIA leaving them out of the pool of nForce4 SLI launch partners. It seems like quite a few of them are waiting for a chipset alternative to offer them some more leverage in the market, we'll have to see if ATI can do for chipsets what they did for GPUs.
I promised an update on NVIDIA's Video Processor situation, so here it is: right now, on the surface, nothing has changed. There's still no solid release date for the drivers and codec that will enable the video processor, but thanks to all of the negative press lately the folks at NVIDIA are scrambling to enable its support. There's the power of the internet for you :)
I'm well into my work on a follow-on Mac article, I'm not going to say what yet but I'm hoping to be done with the piece by the end of this month. Right now the article is scheduled to go up the last Monday in November that date is very much depending on how many of these product launches and interesting review opportunities actually end up happening this month.
A bit more on the personal side of things, married life is wonderful. So much in my life has changed in just three months and I can't even begin to remember what things used to be like, it's so very wonderful.
Many of you have asked for a blog on Connecticut, so I'll make that the topic of my next one - for now I'm off to make breakfast. Mom and Dad came up this weekend for a little family gathering at our place; Dad taught us how to make some extremely delicious Indian eggs so I'm going to give my newly learned abilities a try :)
Take care.
Derek got pretty sick a little while ago, so I had to step in and handle the CPU and GPU reviews, my old stomping grounds, for a while. I remember how much I missed doing those reviews, but I also quickly remembered how hectic things can get when everyone seems to want to launch a new product. Today marks the start of what I think is going to be an incredibly hellish month in terms of product launches. ATI just launched their new Athlon 64 chipset and in about 2 hours ATI and NVIDIA will go head to head with their latest high-end mobile GPUs. We've got at least one more GPU launch later this month, and a bunch of other stuff I can't talk about but I'm definitely working on for this month. Derek is doing much better and you'll see his comeback this month as well.
Vinney and I went to Taiwan for about three days, marking the very first business trip Vinney's accompanied me on. She completely changed the dynamic of the usual business trip for me, she made it much more enjoyable to say the least. Normally the highlights of my trips happen when I come across some interesting hardware or manage to get some quality benchmarking time with unreleased technology but then the rush dies down and I'm just tired. With Vinney there, there was no lull, it was just like being at home - except surrounded by tons of people who spoke a very different language.
Taiwan was fun, it always is, but extremely tiring. I tend to keep a very grueling schedule during my trips, simply because I don't fly half way around the world to goof off. Just about every day in Taiwan was 8AM - 11PM, with back to back meetings. Unlike a tradeshow however, I actually was able to eat lunch, dinner and sometimes even breakfast, but by the end of the week I was wiped. I'm still recovering from the jetlag, it usually takes me two weeks to get back on a normal schedule, regardless of what methods I try.
The meetings in Taiwan went very well, there seems to be a largely positive outlook on the market for 2005 from the companies I talked to, but at the same time there is quite a bit of caution curbing some of the optimism. Worries about a slow down in the CPU market, concerns over a lack luster reception of dual core, things like that. Not to mention that very few of the motherboard makers (other than ASUS and MSI) were happy with NVIDIA leaving them out of the pool of nForce4 SLI launch partners. It seems like quite a few of them are waiting for a chipset alternative to offer them some more leverage in the market, we'll have to see if ATI can do for chipsets what they did for GPUs.
I promised an update on NVIDIA's Video Processor situation, so here it is: right now, on the surface, nothing has changed. There's still no solid release date for the drivers and codec that will enable the video processor, but thanks to all of the negative press lately the folks at NVIDIA are scrambling to enable its support. There's the power of the internet for you :)
I'm well into my work on a follow-on Mac article, I'm not going to say what yet but I'm hoping to be done with the piece by the end of this month. Right now the article is scheduled to go up the last Monday in November that date is very much depending on how many of these product launches and interesting review opportunities actually end up happening this month.
A bit more on the personal side of things, married life is wonderful. So much in my life has changed in just three months and I can't even begin to remember what things used to be like, it's so very wonderful.
Many of you have asked for a blog on Connecticut, so I'll make that the topic of my next one - for now I'm off to make breakfast. Mom and Dad came up this weekend for a little family gathering at our place; Dad taught us how to make some extremely delicious Indian eggs so I'm going to give my newly learned abilities a try :)
Take care.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
12 Comments
View All Comments
Bart - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
[Quote] I'm still recovering from the jetlag, it usually takes me two weeks to get back on a normal schedule, regardless of what methods I try [/quote]In my experience (2 trips to The Netherlands from New Zealand), the jetlag was worse when flying from West to East i.e NZ to The Netherlands via L.A. It lasted at least a week or more! Coming back The Netherlands to NZ via Hawaii and the jetlag was gone in 2 days!
Maybe next time fly USA -> Asia then Come home via Europe?
Just my $0.02 worth.
Bart
Cliff - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link
Congrats again on the wonderful marriage. Many of my friends say the first year is great and the second is better. I'm counting down (<40 days) to my big day. Good to hear from you again...keep up the good work.