Well it’s been a month since I last posted anything. Did anyone one of the five people who read this blog miss me? Well the wait may be well worth it, if just for this one post. I just received what is one of the more hotly anticipated cases to come out in a while. Futurelooks.com originally previewed this case this past summer at Computex 2008, and now it’s finally made it into our hands. That’s right, I have in my possession an Antec Skeleton, and I’m going to show you the unboxing right here.

I literally just received the case today, so I haven’t had a chance to set it up where I normally take my review photos. That means that for now everything is going to be spread out on my living floor, and some pictures will use the flash. Anyhow, due to the shape of the Antec Skeleton, the box is much more cubic then the average computer case box. It’s also fairly boring to look at, compared to what is inside.

Upon opening the box, I got my first look at the 250mm fan that adorns the top of the Antec Skeleton above the motherboard area. Now I’ve seen some big fans in my day. I have a couple of pictures in my archive of John Chow holding up a 170mm case fan, with that evil glint in his eye. But that is nothing compared to the size of this fan. Hopefully it should do what I would expect such a fan to do, and that is remain quiet while moving a great deal of air.

And here it is, the Antec Skelton, finally and completely freed from it’s packaging. Some have expressed certain concerns over the construction of this case, and rightly so. Many of the "open air" cases I’ve seen have been made mostly of plastic, and as a result may not be able to stand up to the punishment such a case would take. The Antec Skeleton, on the other hand, is mostly steel. It’s really easy to see what parts are made of what material. The black components pictured here are steel, and the gunmetal grey parts are plastic. Overall, this looks to be a very sturdy case that will feature prominently on many a hardware monkey’s bench.

There’s one more concern that people have expressed in the Futurelooks Forums about the Antec Skeleton, and that’s if it’ll accommodate a large CPU heatsink. There’s a gallery of pictures below, with a few more close-ups of the area in question. I have my doubts as to whether a cooler like the Cooler Master Hyper 212 will fit under the little lip around the fan. Unfortunately we’ll have to wait until next week, when the full review is posted, to see what kind of heatsink you’ll need to use with this case. Until then, enjoy the pictures below.

This past Saturday, I headed out to the well known West Edmonton Mall to check out one of the latest stores to open. For those that don’t know, West Edmonton Mall was for the longest time the biggest shopping mall in the world. Thanks to the construction boom in China it’s now relegated to the largest mall in North America, and the fourth largest in the world. That still doesn’t stop it from attracting a large number of tourists every year, as well as a number of unique retailers not seen anywhere else in Edmonton. My destination today is just a retailer.

That’s right, the biggest mall in North America now has an outlet for one of the most hyped brands online. Joining the ranks of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, we now have our own Apple Store. Apple’s products are decent, but thanks to the barbarian hordes know as the Apple fanboy you’d think Apple was the second coming of Jesus. Yes they are surprisingly absent from the above pic. That’s because I went to weekend after opening weekend. I don’t dig mass hysteria over a single company, don’t like getting up before 10:00 AM on a Saturday unless there’s a damn good reason, and I had another miracle to witness that morning. Even with all that, I was still drawn to the place. I had to check out the gadgets within, which I’ll further showcase after the jump.

Inevitably I gravitated over the new iPhone 3G. This is the iPhone’s legitimate debut in Canada, and it’s been a fairly rocky start. There was of course the epic failure of Rogers to provide plans suitable (and affordable) enough to take full advantage of the iPhone. They have since righted those wrongs somewhat, or done what Canadian corporations do best and place a band-aide solution over top of the problem in the hopes that people would forget. Unfortunately they then managed to team with Apple in a tag team of failure that resulted first in Apple’s iTunes servers going down temporarilty, and then Rogers going down permanently for the day.

So is the device worth all the hype? Well as much as enjoy poking fun at the Apple-crazed, I have to say that the device is at least decent. The interface is intuitive, and the multitouch is a joy to use. Is it worth the money paid? No, but for the simple fact that Rogers hasn’t really address the plan pricing outside of the initial three month deal they’ve offered (aka the honeymoon phase). And that’s half the joke, because in what amounts to one big cock tease you have to go to Rogers to buy an iPhone. They have them on display at the Apple Store, but you have to go elsewhere to buy them.

The next product I had to check out was the MacBook Air. I’m a fan of the smaller form-factor laptops, as my continued use of a Dell Inspiron 700m will attest to. When the MacBook Air was first released, I was cautious. After all it doesn’t have an optical drive, NIC, or removable battery. I always held up the Lenovo Thinkpad X300 as the small form factor to aspire to. That was all based on paper specs. Now that I’ve seen, touched, and played with the Air, I have to say my curiousity has been piqued.

Thinking about how I use my laptop, I’m forced to consider whether or not I can live without the missing accoutrements. Does the MacBook Air spin straw into gold as the fanboys would have you believe? Dear god no, it’s just a laptop. Still it’s a very nice laptop.

Overall I’m not completely filled with vitriol, ready to spit it out over the whole experience. This new Apple Store is a neat place to go and check out some nifty looking computers and gadgets. If you are a Mac fanatic living in the capital region, this is essentially your mecca. If you are just a gadget head, this adds another nifty layer to the high tech parfait that is Edmonton. I’ve included all the pictures I took in a gallery below.

As Stephen was wandering about the Computex floor, he noticed a Futurelooks.com logo on the display for one of the many products we’ve reviewed. This is always a great achievement for a site, but there’s a reason it’s also a feather in my cap.

The logo was the Editor’s Choice award rewarded to Foxconn for their 9800GTX-512N video card in the review I wrote for Futurelooks more than a month ago. The card was a solid performer, and the review was well received. Even with that in mind, it’s still nice to see the hard work put into the review recognized in such a way.

Computex is the second largest computer trade show in the world, and a great venue for our site to show it’s stuff. I have had my writing featured before, but mostly on company websites buried a few pages deep on the reviews section. Though a useful promotion tool, it usually requires that the visitor to that site be looking in that particular area. Sometimes you luck out, and those links will show up in a Google search. However branding that is front and centre on a banner for one of the largest OEM component manufacturers in the world catches a few more eyes, and is definitely a great boost for both the site and myself.

Anyhow enough of the ego boost. Thanks to Foxconn for the recognition, and thanks to Stephen for making sure this review hit the internet running. I’m quite looking forward to going to Computex in 2009, as I’d like to check out some of these companies in person. It’s also a great opportunity to essentially usurp the North American market entirely and see products before they event have a hint of hitting our shores. In addition to all that, apparently I’m being drafted to find Ed Lau some hot Asian girls.

Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) today has announced that they are closing their Edmonton call centre, effectively putting 1,200 Edmontonians out of a job. This was further confirmed today by the Edmonton Economic Development Corp, which stated that it had been told the call centre located in the Edmonton Research Park will be closing permanently sometime between May and the end of July.

This is the second closure announcement in a week for the 2nd largest PC builder. It was only Tuesday that Dell announced that they were cancelling a 1,200 employee expansion to their Ottawa location and reducing the current workforce of 1,500 by an unspecified number.

The two Canadian call centres were originally opened in an effort to curtail problems with overseas customer service, product issues, and declining profit margins due to intense competition. During a tour of the Edmonton location in late 2006, Michael Dell was even asked by The Edmonton Journal if Canadian labour could compete against overseas workers.

“The reason we are here in Edmonton and in Ottawa is because we need skills…What’s important to us is that our customers get the best experience from anywhere in the world. We found that support teams here have a better track record of helping the customer,” Dell said. This is in contrast to the statement released today with the closure announcement.

“Differentiating Dell through superior service and support remains one of the company’s primary strategic priorities and we appreciate the role our talented Edmonton team has played in this effort,” said Dave Vanden Bosch, Dell’s Edmonton site leader.

Employees affected by the closure are being offered other jobs at the company, or severance packages and career placement services. The jobs being lost in the closure will be moved to other locations.

For more information, check out the Edmonton Sun article.

Now the year prior, the winner was declared within 7 minutes. This year took far longer than that, and far longer than any build off in the history of the event. After 10 minutes and 10 seconds a winner emerged. Stephen Fung from FutureLooks.com was victorious, and beat out the other contestants. This includes Will Smith from Maximum PC, three time winner Charlie Demerjian from The Inquirer, and the infamous root of all evil John Chow. Here’s the final scoreboard.

Unfortunately Stephen’s victory was short lived, as the judges had to look over his PC to verify it was assembled correctly. Apparently the pressure of the clock got to him, and he forgot to connect the power on his optical drive. That’s not quite as bad as Charlie, who forgot to connect power to his floppy drive. Seriously, that is a kick in the bits. Why was a floppy even included in the build? They are so very rarely used these days. John Chow also forgot something is his assembly. All three contestants were assessed a 60 second penalty, and after the dust settled it was actually Will Smith who emerged victorious. The final scoreboard looked something like this.

1. Will Smith (00:10:31)
2. Stephen Fung (00:11:10)
3. Charlie Demerjian (00:11:46)
4. John Chow (00:12:32)

Stephen was still happy as he won $2,500 and the PC he built to be donated to his charity of his choice, which in his case was the B.C. Children’s Hospital. He also received a nifty looking glass trophy.

Next year all these guys better watch out, because I intend on participating in the build off.