In our first batch of pre-Computex Taipei 2010 coverage this week, we visited ASRock who had some pretty cool new stuff on display that it will show at the big Asian IT show next week. The second thing we were shown was ASRock AIWI.

AIWI is an Apple app for devices with a motion sensor such as the iPhone that gives your ASRock powered system the ability to play games through your iPhone or iPod touch over wireless or Bluetooth. After you've installed the app on your phone and the ASRock software on your system (and it has detected which games you have that are supported - not all games are supported but there is a pretty good list so far), you simply connect your phone to your PC and then you are in business.

Not only can you play games using your phone as the controller with motion control like a Nintendo Wii controller, but you can also use it to control your system as it has mouse and keyboard functions too. Check out the video above as we went hands-on trying it out with Virtua Tennis 2009.

As many of you know, Seagate launched their first hybrid HDD/SSD-type storage solution for consumers yesterday under its Momentus XT series. These new drives are based on traditional high-performance (7200rpm) 2.5-inch mechanical hard drives, but include a technology Seagate calls Adaptive memory which will move the most accessed files into a much faster solid state flash area for optimal performance that improves over time. The end result is significantly improved performance + large drive capacities, whereas a 256GB+ SSD will still cost a small fortune and is out of reach for most consumers budgets.

ASUS loves the Momentus XT enough to partner up with Seagate and include Momentus XT series drives in their Republic of Gamers G73Jh-A3 notebooks. This means much better storage sub-system performance without increasing the cost of their laptops a great deal.

ASUS says that when testing the G73Jh-A3 with a Momentus XT drive it noted a 29% performance improvement in the PCMark Vantage HDD gaming test suite and 33% in the productivity test suite when compared to a traditional 7200rpm mechanical drive. When running Microsoft's Velocity benchmark ASUS also saw a 44% decrease in system boot to desktop time and Call of Duty: Modern Warefare 2 loaded 43% quicker.

Pandigital, a company mostly currently known for their photo frames, is teaming up with Barnes and Noble to release a full color e-book reader in June. With a 7 inch touchscreen, WiFi connectivity, and multimedia capabilies, this e-book reader called the "Novel" is powered by an Arm 11 processor, 1GB of onboard memory and a slot for SD/MMC memory cards supporting up to 32GB capacity.

At 7.5 inches by 5.5 inches, the Novel is being dubbed the "mini iPad" by some although with an 800x600 resolution the screen is not as sharp or as responsive as the iPad. The Novel will run an Android OS and retail for $199.99 though, so with all of the onboard connectivity functions this will be an interesting alternative for those who do not have the cash to invest in the iPad. Battery life for the Novel is rated at around six hours, which is not as efficient as the iPad or other dedicated e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle.

Pandigital is marketing the Novel firstly as an e-book reader. With access to Barnes and Noble's e-book store with many free and paid titles and the LendMe feature that allows a friend to "borrow" a book for 14 days, the Novel could be the go-to e-book reader when it releases. Then again, an item with a built in web browser, e-mail client, alarm, and calendar has the potential for a whole lot more.

Last week the folks at the Microsoft Innovation Centre got their hands on a prototype of LG's latest and great smartphone codenamed Panther.

This Windows 7 based smartphone has been rumored to be around for a bit now and the MIC guys were allowed to test it to test Windows 7 applications in Singapore on an actual device as opposed to an emulator.

Some early observations from their test run from the source link:

The SSD world is more competitive than ever, especially since SandForce readied up their SF-1200 mainstream controllers for manufacturers which kept pricing down whilst pushing performance to new heights; a combination that has everyone jumping on the bandwagon.

However, big gun mechanical storage maker Seagate is focusing on bringing something much different to stand out from the crowd and has been developing some SSD-threatening 'hybrid' drives for mass market.

Seagate calls it the Momentus XT which marries a traditional mechanical 2.5-inch, 7200rpm, 250, 320 or 500GB (750GB rumoured to be in the works, too) 3Gbps SATA HDD with a 4GB solid state drive (likely from Seagate's Pulsar series) which has data cached into it that uses something Seagate calls 'Adaptive Memory algorithm'. This algorithm is in place to monitor data transfers to and from the drive right from power-up and will index and copy the most commonly accessed files into the SSD on the fly for faster overall performance.

With ATI's mighty HD 5970 still standing up proudly on the graphics card performance podium after more than six months, it's been a long time coming for NVIDIA to answer and while many were hoping the top dog single GPU GTX 480 would bring the goods, it falls short in many cases which isn't surprising given it's only a single GPU card.

Up until just very recently there wasn't even any real indication of NVIDIA working on a dual-GPU based GTX 400 series card, but this is obviously the most logical path to go down for NVIDIA to attempt a firm hold of the crown once again.

With Computex just around the corner, Lifting up a rock in Taiwan has shed a dim light on such a card being in the works; the GTX 490. Details are blurred but the document that's been seen was indicative of :-

The folks over at bit-tech have been digging hard to find out what sort of things we can expect to see at this year's Computex from the big names in the biz and has got hold of some exclusive details and pics on what MSI has planned for the event.

Most interestingly, they spotted a mysterious black plastic box with silver mesh that is clearly designed aesthetically to attract ethusiasts/gamers. From the above picture alone you might have struggling to work out what exactly this is.

This should give you a pretty good idea :-

Turn by turn navigation is going to get a lot more fun If Mobilizy has its way. The brains behind the Wikitude augmented reality apps for Android, Nokia, and iPhone have announced Wikitude Drive for Android phones with Android 1.6 or later installed. This is the first augmented reality turn by turn navigation app that uses the phone's GPS and camera together to layer the selected route over a live view of what is in front of the car.

2,000 lucky beta testers were allowed to begin test driving (sic) the app on Thursday after downloading the app from the Android Market. After download number 2,000 the app will disappear from Android Market until either the beta expands or is ended.

Checking out the video below, the app seems pretty interesting although I could imagine that the app would be a pain to use in high traffic areas and other places with a ton of things going on. The view can be changed to a regular 3D GPS by a tap of the screen so changing back and forth would be fairly easy. I see this as more of a fun diversion than a major change to how we view our GPS but hey, anything to make that 10 hour drive to Grandma's house more interesting, right?

While many may believe that multifunction devices like the iPad will spell doom for the dedicated e-reader market, LG Display has a different outlook on things. The South Korean company, which is the second largest producer of electronic paper behind Taiwan's Prime View International, is forecasting 76-78% growth by the end of the year.

Shipments of electronic paper displays jumped to 5 million units because of the strong growth of e-readers like Amazon's Kindle, but the emergence of tablets like the iPad with their color displays, multifunctional abilities and touch functions have led many to believe the e-reader will be short lived and pushed to the side. MB Choi, Vice President of LG Display's electronic paper division, disagrees. "iPad is a multimedia gadget that also has digital reading. Pure e-readers, however, have their own advantages. They consume much less power, weigh less and are easy to read, among other things. They simply target a different customer segment, like those seeking a serious reading experience," said Choi.

While it's easy to believe that multifunctional devices like the iPad will cut into e-reader sales, competitive pricing could be something that keeps ereaders in the market. Not everyone has the 600 dollars to shell out for an iPad, especially if they have no use for all of the functions it offers. "With improved but limited multimedia functions, I think e-readers will find a segment and compete against the iPad," Choi said, adding LG Display would introduce a colour e-reader in the fourth quarter.

Prolimatech has proven itself to be capable of designing top performing CPU coolers in the past that get recognized with ease amongst all the top-end performers on the market.

The company has just unveiled a new model which is designed with space constraints in mind (ie. in mATX and mITX systems). It's a down draft style cooler which despite being quite compact in size (just 45mm tall and 92mm wide), can still have a 120mm fan mounted to it which will further assist in cooling components surrounding the CPU socket area.

The cooler also sports six nickel plated copper heat-pipes to better assist in heat transfer. All current as well as some older AMD and Intel sockets are supported.