COMDEX Las Vegas cancelled....

[Dr Mordrid]

for lack of interest;

http://www.itworld.com/Man/3828/040623comdex/

My, how the mighty have fallen.

Dr. Mordrid

[DGhost]

yeah, for the last few years it has been pretty deserted.

[schmosef]

I visited Comdex Toronto in like '96 or '97 (maybe it was '98?). I still get junk snail mail from it. I know because of the title I used to fill out my info card.

I haven't been to Comdex since then. I thought the show was very non-techie. I was visiting the show with the CFO of a large customer and I was struck by how the booths seemed really geared to the public sector and not to Enterprise administrators.

Some memories:

-Samsung had this weird fashion show where the scantily clad models were walking around with monitors on their heads. I tried to strike up a conversation with a regional rep from Samsung asking about why 10 of the 25 Samsung monitors I bought in the last year had serious quality problems; at least 5 were DOA and the rest had dead pixels or alignment/convergence issues. He just kept pointing at the models and said, "isn't that something?" I asked him what it had to do with their products. He didn't understand my question.

-One booth babe that I can remember. She was there for this company that made switches or routers or something. She was wearing this full length evening dress that had a very long slit up the side. Every 20 minutes or so, they'd do a seminar, and have her sing an introduction in a sort of deep, throaty jazzy style. It was so surreal. I felt really embarrassed for her.

-The Matrox booth. I think the mystic was on display. The matrox reps were talking up the performance of their card. I don't recall if they had a live demo, I think they had a VHS video. I do remember asking a rep about bilinear filtering. I agreed with him that it wasn't super important but that matrox had to stay on top of industry trends, if just for appearances. I told him I felt bad for them being bashed in the press and that I found it hard to recommend their cards because of it. He told me that they had a prototype card that did true bilinear filtering, but that it ran really slow, and they wouldn't introduce the tech until they could improve the speed.

-Creative labs had a really cool theatre setup for demoing their DVD kits. I remember seeing a Wing Commander III demo on DVD. I thought it was awesome.

-Microsoft had a really large area. They had an area for gaming and I remember playing with a force feedback joystick. I also remember that they promised to have IE3 or maybe it was IE4 available as a cd give away; one of the reasons I attended. It wasn’t available; the release date was pushed back.

I don't think I'll ever go to Comdex again. I'd rather go to E3 or CES, or Burning Man for that matter.

[Dr Mordrid]

At least at Burning Man you get to see some women in various states of undress

Dr. Mordrid

[schmosef]