Canon, Creative win most honours
I.T. Awards

By Andrew Chin

projecteyeball - March 19, 2001 - CALL them the Oscars of computer products.

Local IT portal Hardware Zone kicked off its first annual Hardware Zone Awards 2000 on Friday, picking IT and consumer electronic hardware winners from 127 products in 28 categories. The range included tiny components such as processors and graphics chips to larger peripherals like scanners and printers.

Canon dominated the scanner categories, in addition to winning a Best Digital Camera award for its PowerShot G1.

The Most Innovative Digital Audio Player category brought together some of the weirdest MP3 hybrids in the market, including FujiFilm's FinePix 40i digital camera, Philips Xpanium CD/MP3 player and Siemens SL45 mobile phone. The winner was Creative's Nomad JukeBox, which clinched the top prize for its uniqueness.

Said Terence Ang, editor of Hardware Zone: ''It's the clear winner because there's nothing like it in the market.''

Retailing at $899, the player was chosen for its form factor, room-filling Environmental Audio Extension (EAX), three-dimensional sound effects and huge 6 GB storage space, which can hold over 150 CDs of digital music, said Ang. Creative swept the awards for digital audio players, with its 64 MB Nomad II MG bagging the Best 64 MB Digital Audio Player award.

The top five in each category were nominated earlier this year and were tested by Hardware Zone staff for performance, features, price and reliability.

About 80 firms from the IT industry attended the ceremony, including representatives from Canon, Creative and Palm.

Chairman and CEO of Hardware Zone Jackie Lee said the awards aimed to recognise the best in computing hardware, and promote product and service excellence in the IT sector.

THE BEST OF THEM

Most innovative digital audio player: Creative Nomad Jukebox

Best Palm-OS based handheld: Palm VX

Best digital camera: Canon PowerShot GI

Best photo-realistic inkjet printer: HP PhotoSmart P1000

Best Sim Lim Square vendor: Marketplace (Richfield Innovations).

Go to www.hardwarezone.com for the full list of winners.