We journeyed to a section of Taipei where every store sells computer parts, laptops, media, monitors, and/or other computer bytes. There were multiple alleys filled with tiny stores, many not much larger than a king sized bed and most of which had at least two customers within. At 8pm on a weekday, this place was hotter than Fry's during a clearance sale. Turn to your left and you saw a wall covered with laptops of all makes and sizes. Walk ten feet farther and you saw 100-pack CD-R media stacked chest high waiting to be sold. Walk across the street and down some stairs and you'd find a basement filled with more CPUs and monitors than you can imagine fitting into such a small place. Taiwanese makes were, of course, prevalent. Unlike in the US, GigaByte's video cards were easy to find. Most brands were familiar, but some were not, such as the laptop maker named Dual. Surprisingly, the prices were not particularly great. Some pieces were a bit less than in the US, some a bit more, but we didn't really see anything at a compelling price.

The thing we loved the most was the vast amount of choices available from each store. Few stores limited themselves to one brand or type of item. For example, several stores had over twenty different types of cases on display. We particularly liked the cute little penguins as well as the iMac knock off translucent blue case that had a label stating it was iMac like. Considering Apple is currently in litigation with several parties over iMac lookalikes, we appreciated this bit of truth in advertising.

And so ends our first special report from Taipei, on ABIT. If you'd like to discuss what you've just learned, please take it to our discussion boards right here.

Jon Simon
Assistant Editor