The life of an Engineer, Sales Rep or Team Leader at an electronics company is a hard one, which requires meetings at every product design stage, and the company has to look after them to ensure a good product from content workers.  In terms of meeting rooms beyond small ones found on most floors, I was introduced to a large 200+ seat hall for presentations that used televisions to broadcast to the back of the room:

In order to feed the staff of the 20 floor building, the canteen on the second floor complimented two restaurants on the bottom floor:

On the 19th and 20th floor however are the company game and weights rooms, overlooking a terrace with views across Taipei.  It’s also fairly close to the local airport so aeroplanes fly quite near.  I was informed that internally they run table tennis/ping pong tournaments often.

There was also a little gem back in the engineers floor I went to – clearly fruit with faces will scare media away:

From a business perspective, having access to these types of facilities is without question.  However, as a long-time consumer and recently a reviewer, I have a new found insight into how complicated it is from the other end – in terms of getting the right people, having the right ideas and access to the right facilities.  This put me in a better position for a Question and Answer session headed by David Chien, Vice President of the ECS Channel Business Unit, for selected media at Computex.

ECS HQ – Design Rooms Question and Answer session with David Chien, VP
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  • wwswimming - Saturday, June 11, 2011 - link

    Right there in the picture - you can see what ECS can do to improve their process (trying to state this diplomatically).

    Do layout of a 15 to 20 layer board with multiple power & ground planes, about 6 mil traces & 6 mil spaces - ON A 17" or 15" monitor ?

    THAT'S NUTS.

    It's possible the photo is deceptive. Maybe that's a 24" Samsung, or equivalent.

    It don't matter. You need a big monitor to do that kind of layout.

    It's a testament to the work ethic of ECS engineering staff that they can crank out anything that works - under these conditions.

    Maybe Anandtech can take up a Bake Sale type drive to buy decent monitors for ECS staff. They deserve it !
  • FragKrag - Sunday, June 12, 2011 - link

    If you look closely you see a 13" MBP you can use for reference.

    Definitely not 15" or 17" panels.
  • LordanSS - Sunday, June 12, 2011 - link

    The guy with the 13" MBP is a sales/marketing person, as you can see he's tweaking a logo and specs page.

    The computer doing the power routing is an Acer-branded desktop, hooked up to a Phillips 5:4 display. I'd have to agree, that monitor looks like either a 17" or 19", probably topping at 1280x1024.
  • Einy0 - Saturday, June 11, 2011 - link

    My experience with ECS was been a mixed bag, but very limited. Some products where just fine nothing special but get the job done, others where complete failures. I've never dealt with their support or rma so I can't comment on that. The one thing I notice over and over is they love to stack their boards with legacy I/O. I haven't used a serial or parallel port in years and I don't plan on it either. I avoid any motherboard that has either port on it's rear panel. As a rule I want 6+ USB ports right on that I/O shield. Motherboard headers for another 4 to 6 are required too. The more USB ports the better. eSata is a nice addition too. While they are at it let's scrap the PCI connectors too. It's time to let PCI die. Firewire is neither a pro nor a con. Personally I want to see PS/2, parallel, serial, PATA, floppy and PCI all just go away for good. Time to move on.

    Oh and how about making sure every usb port has enough juice to supply the standard 500mA or more and while they are at it, notebooks need more usb ports, 4 should be the absolute minimum. 6 or more would be nice.

    Rant complete...
  • Chillin1248 - Saturday, June 11, 2011 - link

    For the near future at least, motherboards should retain at least one PCI slot. There are many perfectly good PCI audio and NIC cards that don't need replacement.
  • Etern205 - Saturday, June 11, 2011 - link

    ACER desktop?!
    Traitor! :P
  • mdloops - Saturday, June 11, 2011 - link

    To the writer of the article, you spelled realize incorrectly. Realise is not correct. I am tired of reading information from credible sites with misspellings that a high-school student should never even make. Could somebody please start writing professionally.
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, June 11, 2011 - link

    FYI, Ian lives in the UK, which should be pretty obvious by several other "misspellings".
  • chubbyfatazn - Sunday, June 12, 2011 - link

    How ignorant are you? Not everyone who reads this site lives, or was raised in, the US.
  • AssBall - Monday, June 13, 2011 - link

    Your tired of reading them but apparently not tired of complaining about them. Go away, kkthx.

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