I went to the one in San Francsico yesterday. I was going to blow it off, but I decided to go at the last minute. It was nice. The food was much much much better than the WinXP one I went to in Santa Clara. They had breakfast, lunch, snacks at the end of each session and an endless supply of sodas and juices. Although the food was still convention food so it still was not the best.
Steve Baumer(?) came out and gave a good little overview and then it broke out to the numerous session tracks. I went to the bathroom and missed the raffle for the 3 flatscreens. That was the thing that pissed me off. When I dropped off my card, the girl said that there would be a drawing at the end of each session. Then the speaker says that the drawing will be at the end at 6 pm. At the end, he says that the drawing happenned earlier. Whatever.
I went to the party last night as well. I expected it to be lame, but it was actually OK. Where else can you see a bunch of people hundled around playing Xboxes and ignoring the bands? They gave away a couple of laptops and a trip to Hawaii, but I didn't win. HP also gave away a lot and I mean *A LOT*, of digital cameras. Everywhere I looked, people were carrying around boxes of new 720's. How do I get one? They were also trying to give away a Mini Cooper, but no one would come up and take them up on it. They called 10 names, 5 names at a time. The deal was that someone in that final group of 5 would get the car and everyone in the group would get a Tablet PC from HP. I would have gone up just to get the Tablet PC. After about an hour of them trying to give away the car without any takers, I got bored and left. Did anyone stay? Were they finally able to give it away?
Anyways, I came away with an OK laptop bag. I haven't even looked to see what is inside. I also got a couple of self retracting cell phone handsets and a USB cell phone charger from Intel. They were just sitting there in boxes so I asked if I could take one of each. At the end on my way out, an Intel guy handed me another. That was wierd, normally things like that go instantly, but yesterday no one took em. I played with one last night and it seems decent.
What has the world come to? No one takes freebies anymore and people can't be bothered to walk a few feet to get a brand new car.
David