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2025-05-18T23:59:29.261Z
I both love and hate Taipei’s PC and component ads
I’ve been on the ground (and sweating) in Taipei for a few days now, and one of the first things that always strikes me here is the plethora of billboards and signs for various laptops and PC components.
Sure, a lot of this gets ramped up ahead of Computex, and many are in and around the Guang Hua Digital Plaza area, where there are dozens (perhaps hundreds) of shops and storefronts that sell pretty much everything PC related, from high-end gaming laptops to obscure PC cases, and entire stores dedicated to MSI, Asus, Aorus – there’s even a store that pretty much only sells Transcend storage devices and media.
But the ads exist away from the main tech district as well. Today I was walking to a record shop in an arts district, looked up and saw, of all things, a slim vertical billboard for power supply maker, Seasonic.
And later, as I was headed into an MRT (subway) station, making my way back to my hotel, there was a big banner for AMD’s Ryzen 9000 CPUs above the train platform.
The only other place I’ve seen ads like this for PC components and the latest laptops is in Tokyo’s famous Akihabara neighborhood during a visit in 2015 – where I bought a random wafer of chips at the back junk tech store that, sadly, was far too fragile to survive the trip home.
On the one hand, it’s cool to see the PC hardware we obsess over getting the kind of treatment and attention that is more typically afforded to the latest attempt at a blockbuster movie or a tech startup flush with cash and looking to build brand recognition. And I certainly find ads for components more interesting and less annoying than most ads I see walking around our office neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan.
But considering how much I already spend on PC hardware and related tech, I am not sure I’d want to be regularly be surrounded by ads reminding me that the Ryzen 9 9950X3D exists, making my perfectly capable 7950X feel outdated and inadequate, or that my RAM or storage isn’t as fast as it could be.
Sure, signs and billboards that are more targeted to my PC interests are cool to see here in Taipei, but I really don’t need any more “help” deciding when it’s time to upgrade. After all, if I spend all my money on new tech, I won’t have any left over to buy old records.
-Matt Safford
2025-05-18T23:53:45.132Z
Picked up some spicy Guai Guai at 7-11, no Lisa Su or TSMC flavors to be found
There are plenty of tasty and interesting snacks to be had at Taipei’s night markets or the many (many) convenience stores. But I could help but pick up a couple of bags of spicy Guai Guai when I saw them today.
For those not in the know, this brand of Cheetos-like (but usually sweet) snack is part of a tradition or superstition (take your pick) where engineers and tech workers place the snacks in and around important machines to help assure they function without problems. The phenomenon is so widespread that we’ve seen both
TSMC- and
AMD / Lisa Su-brandedversions of the snacks debut (and reportedly quickly get bought up) in the last couple of years. And of course, both companies have seen new levels of success in the past several years. Maybe someone should tell Intel’s new CEO to
investin some blue Guai Guai.
Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t find any of the TSMC or Ryzen varieties of the snacks, so these spicy ones will have to do. I’m going to leave them sitting on my laptop overnight, because it has a bad habit of blue-screening every week or so. Maybe the snacks will keep that from happening until I get home (or at least until I’m done reporting from Computex). If it doesn’t work, I may have to
ask AI for some help with my crash dumps.
-Matt Safford
2025-05-18T23:11:27.083Z
I come to Taiwan for the tech, but the affordable, high-quality coffee is what keeps me going
Taipei is great for a lot of reasons. But as a bit of a coffee addict and snob, I really appreciate the abundance of coffee shops and roasters here. And the coffee (like most food here) is pleasantly affordable.
This iced Americano (unfortunately, the cold brew was sold out) from one of my favorite spots, Coffee Moon, was the equivalent of about $3. And that’s on the expensive end. Major chains, like Louisa Coffee (I recommend the egg and peanut butter breakfast sandwich), tend to be cheaper. There are a lot of Starbucks here as well, but I’m not a fan – especially when there are so many other options.
I picked up some fresh-ground coffee for my travel-friendly Aeropress at Ikari Coffee (I like to think this chain is the Ikari Warriors retirement plan) for about $6 – enough for a week’s worth of early mornings and late nights, and then some. It’s going to be hard to go back to the $5 Dunkin’ cold brew when I get back home, even if the sizes are much bigger.
-Matt Safford
English (US) ·