May didn’t really have much to offer in terms of new products, Nvidia announced the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, which was little more than a revamped 5800 with the kinks ironed out. Although the 5900 performed better than the 5800, Nvidia’s reputation was dented due to the lacking performance of the FX series. Nvidia’s marketing and PR for the new videocards had painted a picture on which the actual product was unable to deliver. For now Ati was king of the hill and the former champion with its impressive six month product cycles was forced to take place in the backseat, where they would remain the rest of the year.



Fig 8. A closer look at the memory chips and power connector of the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra.
Despite the advances made in optical and magnetic storage with ever increasing data densities, Imation announced the shipment of its five billionth 3.5” diskette in May with a forecasted total of 1.5 billion diskettes being sold by all manufacturers in 2003. Despite the increasing sales of CD-R media the diskette sales continue to be strong, as for decades they have proven to be highly reliable as well as being economical. Or as Imation phrased it, small files transfer is the most common usage for diskettes today, because the floppy disk has proven itself to be exceedingly reliable, inexpensive and easy to use.