去る6月5日、6月6日、台湾の台北で開催されたCOMPUTEX2009に行ってきました。
COMPUTEX行くのは2年振りだったのですが、去年から新しい会場が増えて
一段と規模が大きくなっていました。

ストレージ関連のブースが集まっている南港ホールの1階を中心に見て廻りました
が、
気になるデュプリケータ関連の展示は2年前より確実に増えていました。
今年はCD/DVD等の光学ディスクデュプリケータに留まらず、SDカード、USBメモリ
等の
フラッシュメモリーデュプリケータの展示も各所で見られ、新しい市場を予感しま
した。
また会場が広くなったことで、各ブースの大きさも2年前より大きくなっており
この分野の成長を感じました。

VinpowerDigitalのブースでは、従来からある、CD/DVDデュプリケータ、オート
ローダ、
盤面プリンタ製品に加えて、今年は新たにBDデュプリケータ、USBメモリデュプリ
ケータ、
HDDデュプリケータ、そしてコピープロテクトデュプリケータの展示デモが行われ
ていました。
コピープロテクトデュプリケータに関しては、従来のデュプリケータでコピープロ
テクト
が出来ることと、互換性が高いとのことで、まだ詳細は明かされていませんでした
が、
製品化されれば非常に魅力のある製品になるでしょう。

ところで、一般客に無料解放される最終日といえば、ショータイムに
コンパニオンが舞台の上からノベルティグッズを投げまくる
「ばらまき（と呼ぶのかどうか分からない…）」が名物となっています。
今年もあちらこちらのブースでばら撒き目当てに黒山の人だかりが出来ていまし
た。
例えば、Microsoftのブースではこんな感じです。

1. ショー開始、コンパニオンのダンス
2. 製品説明（中国語、ハイテンションで）
3. グッズばら撒き開始
コンパニオンの「Windows?」の問いかけに、聴衆、「S E R V E R !!!!!」と拳
ã‚’
振り上げ叫ぶ。（音楽ライブのような感じで）

どうやら、声のデカイ人にノベルティグッズ（ボールペン、LEDライト）
が配られたり、投げられたりするようで、一段とデカイ声を出した人には
USBメモリが手渡されました。

「これは手ぶらでは帰れない！」
2列目に陣取っていた私も意を決して、「S E R V E R !!!!!」
叫びまくり……

結局、何もゲットできませんでした。

ほかのブースでも
「Nvidia?」という問いに「No.1!!!!」と叫んだり（もちろん拳も振り上げ）
しましたが、やっぱりダメでした。

全体的に、会場が広がったせいか、来場者の少なさが少し気になったものの、
ゆったり見学できたので良かったです。

I went to the 2009 COMPUTEX TAIPEI in June to look around and see the new products. This year’s COMPUTEX TAIPEI was different from the last time I attended, 2 years ago. With the completed new hall that has been incorporated since last year made the overall exhibition hall feel as though it was built on an enormous scale.

The majority of my time there was spent walking around booths related to Data Storage located on the first floor of the Nangang exhibition hall. I was quite impressed by how many more duplicators were shown this year compared to more than 2 years ago on my last visit. Besides optical disc duplicators, I also saw many flash memory (SD card and USB memory) duplicators within the hall. With new products constantly coming out and many booths increasing, I felt this field’s growing.

Vinpower Digital Inc’s booth has especially grown in comparison to the last time I attended. Besides the CD/DVD duplicators and Autoloaders as usual, Vinpower had a lot of new exhibits, such as BD duplicators, USB memory duplicators, Disc printers, HDD duplicators and copy protect duplicator for the ultimate security.

The Copy protect duplicators prevent unauthorized copying of protected discs, yet retains the recorded discs strong compatibility. If you ask me about the units detailed operation principles, I still have no idea. But I believe it must be very attractive to many people.

On another note, visitors could get free gifts within the exhibition. Guiding girls threw free gifts from stage to the visitors. It was very interesting.
For example, many people gathered in front of Microsoft’s booth.
1. Show began with dancing from the guiding girls.
2. Product explanation by Chinese.
3. Began distributing the free gifts. (Atmosphere looked liked a Rock concert.)
When the guiding girls asked “Windows?” the visitors raise their fists and answered “S E R V E R !!!!!” together. When the audience would respond, the loudest voice could get a special ballpoint pen and LED light. Then the loudest voice could get a USB memory device.
All right, I said to myself. Plus, I made up my mind do not return empty-handed. So I joined the crowd and stood in the second row.
「S E R V E R !!!!!」
I used my loudest voice and tried my best ……

Finally, I got nothing.
Then I tried another booth. Similar to the Microsoft booth
「Nvidia?」
「No.1!!!!」
I failed again.

On the whole, the increased size of the exhibition hall made me feel as thought there were visitors less than before even though I knew that to not be true. It’s good for me to see around at a leisurely pace. Hopefully I can attend again and see how the trade shows evolves.

You know the saying, “stop to smell the roses”? Well at Vinpower, we encourage our employees, friends and family to take some time to experience and enjoy the world around you. As an environmentally friendly company where we focus on recycling and reducing waste, the Earth and the sky above is extremely important to us. So it pleases me to showcase some of our employees and their hobbies that branch out and enlighten us as to how vast the world and universe is beyond our homes and work place. Enjoy the professionally taken photos from one of our valued Vinpower Digital employees:

Vinpower gazes at the Milky Way from Hehuanshan, Joy Mountain (11,207 ft), located in Central Taiwan. Hehuanshan is located within the Taroko Gorge National Park, one of the seven nationals park in Taiwan.

Day view

Night view

The constellations of stars make up the two zodiac sign noticeable in this captured shot: Scorpio and Sagittarius. Across Sagittarius, you will notice the nebulae around the stars.

Below are images of the production of our duplication controller boards.

As I mentioned in the previous blog, we design and program our own controller boards. Every circuit, ic chip, solenoid, connection, etc plays an important role in the proper operation for our controllers and gives them the edge over the competition.

When most customers purchase a duplicator, they probably assume they’re all the same and that the operating system behind the standalone duplicator is generally the same as well. That’s where I want to correct this misconception. The standalone duplicator is unique in that it requires a special dedicated controller device that is small enough to fit within the confines of a duplicator casing, yet is inexpensive enough to allow the duplicator to be priced affordably for the general public. With these limitations, one cannot take a standard computer motherboard and just adapt it to the duplicators needs. Firstly it’s not a dedicated device, secondly it’s too large for most of the medium to smaller systems and lastly the cost of the components and software is prohibitive given the pricing constraints.

So every controller on the market has to be specially programmed by engineers to achieve perfect burning capabilities without errors. In itself this is not difficult if you’re a skilled computer programmer, but the difficult part lies in programming these many functions and applications within a very limited capacity. I won’t get into the specifics, but just know that our programmers are constantly working to squeeze the maximum capabilities within the confines of their space limitations.

Programming is only one part of the controller development. The second major development hurdle is the board layout design and component configurations. You can have the best programmers in the world, but if the board layout and circuit components are not designed and utilized correctly, the controller will not be worth the code written on it. Being the only controller manufacturer that is also a system builder and designer, we have unique insight that helps us produce a stronger and more reliable controller both in software and hardware.