Comdex Fall 2003 in Las
Vegas runs from November 17th through November
20th.....stay tuned for this years coverage!
Daily Highlights
Comdex was advertised as small but more
focused this year -- the 1st New Comdex they said. Exhibitors
were down to 500 and attendance about 50,000 -- about 1/4th its size of
years past. It was very hard to get enthusiastic about covering the
show this year -- I was doing this show alone due to the size and really
found it unexciting and downright pathetic. If the organizers don't
get more of the major vendors back to this show, this show will be dead in
another year or two. I'm going to start spending more time at CES in
January as some of the computer vendors have moved to that show.
Of course, there were some new things on display by those that were
there.
Microsoft was
of course a major presence, showing their new Microsoft Office 2003 suite
and announcing the next generation of XP Tablet 2004 due out in early
2004. Plus Bill Gates announced new SPAM tools and a focus on
security and patch management. We'll see what the SPAM tools
materialize into -- of course, for Outlook users only!
Several vendors had on display their updated tablets. Acer's new
C300 ups the ante with a new Centrino processor and 14" screen.
This was the only product Acer had on display.
One of the more interesting new products were E-Disks from Bit Micro --
I hadn't seen these before and with various interfaces (USB, 1394, SATA,
EIDE) and capacities up to 150+ gb could it be that mechanical disk drives
will soon be a thing of the past?
One of the few printer vendors showing their products was Xerox with
their lineup of color printers. Very impressive indeed with models
putting out up to 30ppm of one-pass color output. HP had a
small kiosk in the Microsoft Pavilion and only showed a couple of inkjet
models -- very disappointing.
A very nice software package called ProShow by Photodex showed some
promise for making fast and easy slide shows from your photographs.
When you want to make something quick and professional without taking out
the video editing tools this might fill the need nicely. Version 2.0
(on display at the show due out shortly) adds pan/crop tools for movement
in your slides -- a nice feature. Free upgrades are available to all
current purchasers.
Executive Summary
If I had to predict the future of the computer industry by this show, I
would say it looked pretty lackluster. The industry has matured and
the fast pace of change has slowed with economic conditions certainly
taking their toll. Technology marches on though with incremental
improvements in everything we use today but there was nothing that stood
out as the next big thing to me.
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