Stories about: AOpen

Computers come in many different guises; some barely resemble a PC at all. We've had it with plain-vanilla and boring black machines, and we've gone designer. Here's how to get a PC that looks good, both inside and out.

Taiwanese vendors have embraced the IEEE 1394a high-speed networking standard at Computex Taipei 2001 while the core elements of an even faster technology -- and a competitor -- wait in the wings.

A fire that started early Saturday morning and burned for 37 hours outside Taiwan's capital, Taipei, has caused extensive damage in three of four buildings in an office complex packed with high-technology companies, including the island nation's largest brand-name PC manufacturer, Acer Inc. More than 200 local high-tech companies were reported affected by the blaze.

Queensland distributor Intermedia has convinced retail giant Retravision to continue to market white box PCs.

Rated on specs alone, ATI's latest board--the much-anticipated Radeon--would be a top contender. It packs an impressive technological résumé, with fill-rate specifications of over 1 gigatexel per second, a sophisticated new hardware transform-and-lighting engine, ATI's innovative Hyper-Z compression for faster frame rates at the highest resolutions, and the ability to process three texture units per pass (more than any other board). The version we tested comes with 64MB of fast Double Data Rate memory (the 32MB version uses a slightly slower version of DDR and has a slightly slower clock speed).

ExecTech is a regular feature covering the best buys from PC World's test lab. In this issue, Elias Plastiras looks at business PCs

That old CD-ROM drive in your computer may soon look as antiquated as a 5.25-inch floppy drive: Just as the old flexy floppy disappeared when faster, higher-capacity 3.5-inch disks caught on, a potential CD-ROM replacement has already spun into view. DVD-ROM drives have fallen in price and soared in performance over the past year. But they may offer more speed than you'll ever need.