Comdex is the pilgrimage to Mecca for the computer industry. Held every year in Las Vegas, Comdex is the peek into the future of computing. It is a convention where every company pulls out their next killer apps and killer hardware to display a rough estimate of how well everyone will do next year.
The tickets are expensive. An all access pass costs roughly about $2,900 for the five day event. That doesn’t include a hotel room. That doesn’t include airline tickets. That doesn’t include food. That doesn’t include professional services from the women along the strip. That’s just to walk around, network with people in the industry and listen to speeches for five days.
Almost forgot … that also includes a free jacket. That’s good because if I actually spent $2,900 on Comdex, I’d be naked with a jacket. The business casual dress code would be broken instantly.
However, I’ve always wanted to go to Comdex and one day I will go. In the meantime, I can go only to Comdex VPE– virtual pajama edition. With Comdex VPE, I was able to watch all the keynote speakers of this year’s convention–Bill Gates of Microsoft, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Dick Brown of EDS, etc–and remain remarkably close to both the refrigerator and my bedroom. When attending the nation’s largest computer show through VPE, you don’t need to change your clothes in the morning and nobody needs to know about that bag of potato chips that you dumped on the floor by accident.
Using a high speed cable access line, I was able to comfortably watch dozens of videos from the convention through CNET. For the most part, the video was stable. When the video traffic became very high, frames would begin to skip but the audio remained constant.
Without a doubt, Bill Gates had the best convention speech. Whether you like him more not, the man has the vision of what’s best for the average user. Everyone else must follow. He might have seemed unusually upbeat at Comdex because he essentially beat the antitrust trial against Microsoft. He announced the arrival of tablet PCs and I, for one, am anxious to try them out and possibly buy one.
Prior to his 58 minute presentation, I was on the hunt for mobile voice dictation. Hand-held computers are too weak to process natural speech and barely strong enough to processed discrete speech. Nobody is interested–”nobody” been defined as 18 companies over four countries–in producing at least a discrete dictation system. Tablet PCs will fill the power gap needed for voice mobility. And for everyone else, these new computers will recognize your handwriting.
The Gates presentation was diametrically opposed to Jeff Hawkins of Handspring Corp. in his speech, he lamented that Microsoft was not trying to improve anything, they were trying to reinvent the hand-held PC and implied that hand-held is perfect and anything to improve it could not possibly be called an improvement. I understand his position but not everyone can use the stylus and there are a whole lot of people that want to create documents on the move without writing, typing or hassle. Nobody wants to carry around a 6 lb. laptop or write in hieroglyphics. The most natural application for a palm sized computer is speech to text dictation.
The crux of Hawkins ‘ speech was that speed wins it in the technology sector. To a large degree, this is true. The first one to capture a new segment of the technology sector is almost always the market leader. However, if you look at companies like Amazon, there is a law of diminishing returns on how long you can stay on top simply by having gotten there first. Hand-held PCs with the Palm operating system are essentially the exact same machines that they were in 1996. After awhile, speed will lose to innovation. While the Microsoft Pocket PC doesn’t have anywhere near the battery life of Palm PCs, they’re clearly being designed with a future of handling all desktop functions within the confines a hand-held frame.
Declaring perfection is to first step to corporate death.
Larry Ellison’s speech was interesting but not persuasive. As CEO of Oracle, he runs the largest database company in the world. Part of his speech was dedicated to convincing developers to abandon Microsoft data base products. This magazine was built by yours truly using Microsoft Access and Microsoft Visual Basic. There’s no secret as to why. Access comes in the Microsoft Office package and Visual Basic is a simple, no nonsense language. You’ll have to open up another antitrust suit to stop the convenience.
Dick Brown of EDS is central casting white guy. I believe this is the same company that was once owned by Ross Perot. I didn’t have any time to confirmed this so you will have to tell me if it’s that important. A central part of this speech was capturing the imagination. To build on this theme, he constantly referred to Arthur C. Clarke as the epitome of the imagination and visualizing the future. Brown spoke about how he had recently watch the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
First things first: Arthur C. Clarke is a cranky old bastard. 2001 is watchable only under the influence of heavy drugs like most Kubrick movies. If Howard Stern says that he watched 2001, I’ll believe him. When Dick Brown says it, the red flags go up.
EDS does have a very interesting system for airport security. If the biological signatures on EDS card match the scan of your palm, and you have no known criminal record or outstanding warrants, you are cleared to pass through any airport. Such a system will allow the return of the efficiency to markets and citizen surveillance as well as allowing widespread layoffs of non-essential airport personnel. Great idea.
I’m in favor of simply abolishing airplanes altogether. Call meet a transportation Luddite. I think that everyone should crawl to where they need to go.
There were lots of but the great speeches this week. I encourage you to find some time to sit down and watch a few of them. Keep in mind that each keynote speaker from this year’s Comdex talks for approximately an hour. Every single speech is informative and interesting if you happened to be a computer nerd or a computer nerd sympathizer.
When you are ready to tackle with Computer frontier of Comdex, Grant your mouse and get your dog, Ol’ Aibo, to do some wild west the exploring.
Comdex VPE…yippee-ky-yay
