CeBIT 2008: The Best of the Rest

MSI

The MSI stand was awash with innovative products – we've already covered MSI's ECOlution cooler, EFI and HydroGen products, but there was so much more that we just couldn't cover all in one news post.

Notebooks

MSI’s current notebook with the “Turbo” button will be expanded to not only include the current auto-overclocking when a unit is plugged in, but unplugged the same button will now clock down the CPU multiplier, front side bus and lowering its voltage. It will also turn off all unused ports and drop the display backlight down low.

All of this is meant to increase battery life by “a lot”, although as it was an engineering sample there was no current data to give it a value. And yes, MSI knows its gaming chassis looks like the backside of a bus—we were very clear about your disapproval—but there won’t be a change until the Centrino 2 (Montevina) refresh in Q2.


Next up, MSI's PR-620 comes to you with Anions – negatively charged particles that are ejected from the fan exhaust port on the notebook. They clean the air by attracting bits of dust to them then sticking to everything around you. It also removes allergens and smoke quicker too, so if you're particularly sensitive to these, asthmatics for example, it could actually be a feature worth looking into.

The anions are odourless, colourless and don't irritate even if you breathe them in, but generally they don't last very long either - they'll only fill the air around you. Since the anion production is proportional airflow, cranking up 3DMark or Prime95 sees the production level somewhere in the region of 3-3.5x the largest natural sources found at around 350,000 ions per cm³.

Home Theatre

The MSI DIVA is based on the new AMD 780G platform and includes a new case, as well as revamped audio from the specialists at D2Audio. The system provides some proper RCA connectivity for analogue sound output and will come with a Blu-ray option. The system should be very low power, and it should also be pretty good value – it all depends how this product reaches the market: OEM (usually UK) or from MSI directly (predominantly Asia markets).