I just got back from Comdex last night. I was sorely disappointed that many vendors of 2 or three years ago were no shows. Plus the quality of the show is much poorer than in years past. The only redeeming factor was less vendors meant less people attending. This was the first year that getting through the venues was no problem. In past years you had to fight a mob to get to a vendors booth and ask questions.
Novel was a no show, nvidea was in a different hotel, ATI was in an a private room and did not show on the floor at all. Intel had a small kiosk type presence in the Microsoft Partner pavillion. Xerox was downsized to nothing impressive or compelling and HP was much smaller. BenQ was a big booth ajacent Microsoft. Very glitzy and lots of product. But I have never heard of BenQ and probably willnever buy from them.
Zonelabs had a super nice bag giveaway and won Best of show for ther enterprize software. But they had a small booth too. I hear the floor price was $72/ft so it was plainly evident who had money and who didn't.
And once again Linux was a no show. That pisses me off. They had a great attendance and welcome form the industry in 2000 and now they are no where. I suppose they will be noehere in the future as well, but Microsoft sure was there and they have new apps and toys for the future. I predict that Microsoft will dominate the IT industry in the coming year and further out. They are more in more geting into hardware too. New cable and wireless hardware along with their partnering with Viewsonic and others for thesmart display. I really liked that product,but still a bit pricey. When prices come down to consumer level that will be a nice applience for the home.
I won a nice 128M usb pen type dodad to play with at microsoft for answering a question correctly. I faired well at the show and at the casinos I won enough to pay for my trip.
Not bad, but I hope IT can get going this next year and comdex improves for 2003. Otherwise comdex will become a relic of the past and we will all be enjoying the glitter and pomp of CES in January.
I can't wait!
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