Sometimes a computer at CES is interesting because it’s functional and intuitive. Sometimes a computer is interesting because it’s the size of an air conditioner, filled with heinously tacky neon lights and overclocked to hell. Guess which one this is!
I found Origin PC’s 5Ghz, liquid-cooled “Big O” sitting on a dusty stretch of carpet in Creative’s booth. Alone. Neglected. I asked a rep about it and he didn’t even know why it was there. Was he feeling insecure because the computer is so fast? Perhaps. It wasn’t even hooked up to anything. It was just humming along, its red tubes pulsing, green lights throbbing. Speed for its own sake. If it sounds like a sexual experience, that’s because it was. The enormo-box reminds me of a bygone era in computing, when clock speeds trumped all – and just reading “5Ghz i7” made my heart dance. CES is supposed to be about neat things we’ll be using effectively in the future, but sometimes I’m OK with REALLY FREAKING FAST NEON COMPUTER, WATCH OUT, too.