Wacom, CoolerMaster, People, Conclusion
This little Wacom tablet caught my eye, but I don't seem to have noted who's stand it was on. They've certainly come a long way from how I last remember them, as a thick plastic mousepad-like thing next to your keyboard, that you draw on with a magnetic pen. You draw directly on the screen with this one, and you don't even have to touch it. Click the pen into eraser mode and you can rub away your work. It's definitely an intuitive way to use the PC - you can access menus and do normal mouse things with the pen as well as drawing or, in my case, writing "Hello".
Finally we have the CoolerMaster stand, where I spent the most time on the day. They were keen to show off their new Stacker case. They had one at the front of the stand, full of their Musketeer 2 (3 activity gauges) products all flashing various colours and attracting a lot of attention. They also had a fully decked-out one with the side off to show the unusual layout:
 
Note how the front is entirely devoted to 5.25" bays - 12 in total. They offer various modular bits to put in the front, such as drive bays, 120mm fan mounts etc, and of course you can fit their AquaGate watercooling system or various other in-bay products. The case has space for two PSUs - that bottom plate with 2x 80mm fans in it can be replaced with a PSU mount - and hidden from view in that photo is the vertically-mounted radial intake blower just behind the drive bays on the right side of the case.
They had a few other cases, including their Centurion and some HTPC cases - one with an analog-style HDD activity gauge on the front:
 
CoolerMaster also showed me their Hyper 6 CPU cooler. This uses 6 heat-pipes, hence the name, and can be used on P4 or A64 CPUs. There have been some reviews of this product, but it was interesting to see it in the flesh.
They explained a couple of interesting points about its design. Firstly, instead of using U-shaped heatpipes with the heat source at the bottom of the U, like many manufacturers, they have the end of the heatpipe against the heat source - this is apparently more efficient. Also, given that heatpipes take a little while to get up to speed, with the internal fluid boiling and condensing etc, the Hyper 6 has a decent-sized heatsink at the bottom which radiates heat from the CPU like a conventional cooler.
 
You can mount 80mm fans on either side of the tower, or for maximum cooling, one on each side, oriented together to draw air rapidly past the special jagged-edged or "teeth" fins. If you're thinking this all adds up to a hefty cooler - it does, but it's provided with a motherboard backing plate for additional support. It's not recommended to go driving to a LAN party with this unit attached to your motherboard, however!
So, all in all there was a bit to see at CeBIT Sydney 2004, but not a huge amount for the PC enthusiast. Again the focus is mostly on business-to-business services etc, rather than interesting PC bits. As with last year there were a few regions from around the world trying to draw business - and I have to say, what was the story with the zillions of recycled inkjet and laser cartridge companies? Anyway, some decent freebies were had and there were even a few booth babes - the best being the Altech Computers girls. No photos because I feel like a freakin' pervert taking pics of the girlies at a tech show. :) You'll have to come along and see them for yourself next year.
Speaking of which, I met up with quite a few people along the way. Manaz, Soc, DDsD, Rod M from LowNoisePC, Kyocera, Rolf from Fanner/Spire, Darwin and Joan from CoolerMaster, Raaj and Cameron from PCRange and probably others I've forgotten. It was great to see a few international manufacturers making the effort to put in an appearance, but disappointing that the big names like Intel and AMD didn't show. Then again, Intel were there last year and I missed them entirely. Given that ATI and NVIDIA both had big product launches so close to the show dates (ATI during the show!) I was surprised we didn't see any kind of direct appearance from either of them. Maybe next year...
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