<way off topic, but cool) I folks, I attended the last day at the Comdex show on Friday. It is not open to the public but I was given a couple passes. For those who are not familiar, Comdex is the worlds largest computer and technology expo held annualy in Las Vegas where manufacturers, engineers, and designers show off their new products to wholesale buyers and industry. It is absolutely huge and filled every corner of three convention centers, (Las Vegas Convention Center, the convention facilities at the L.V. Hilton, and the Sands facility). Bill Gates of course was on hand to do his typical presentations. Seminars and private presentations were abound. It kind of makes the PTG convention seem like a group picnic and McDonalds. Anyway, thousands of manufactures had booths everywhere and I got to see some pretty cool stuff. Among some of the more interesting is a new type of computer monitor that allows you to see in 3-D without glasses. Pretty darn cool! There was also a new robotics simulator introduced by Philips that you could try out. It is designed for the home market. You sit in a seat and a large monitor is in front of you. the entire thing is supported by five pneumatic pistons. There are built in pedals and joystick controls. If you are into gaming this thing is seriously hard core! One new really practical thing is "electronic business cards". essentially these are "cards" with a hole in the middle that you pass out to people. They fit into any CD-ROM which can then give a short multimedia presentation about you. I got a sample which I took home and it really works. One of the most mind blowing things I saw were TV glasses. They look like a pair of strange sun glasses but when you put them on you have an instant crystal clear huge wide screen television. The glasses have built-in stereo headphones. With a portable DVD player you have your own personal and portable movie theater. Unbelievable! This was presented by Olympus, the camera folks. There were lots of MIDI and sound applications as well. Voyetra/Turtlebeach had a huge display of some great new hardware and likewise did Roland. Yamaha had a booth but I was very disappointed. They had absolutely no music products whatsoever. I inquired and I was amazed that the hosts didn't have a clue what I was talking about! (Come on guys, get with the program!!) My guess is that these people are hired outside demo people and have limited knowledge of the company. Well anyway I could go on but I'll just say that this was an eye opening view of what new technologies are waiting just around the corner. I also got tons of free stuff ranging from T-shirts to free software. I got for FREE a really neat program called "Go Back". I have loaded it on and it really works with no effort at all. Essentially it corrects your mistakes if you screw up files or system settings. It can restore files that you accidentally deleted, reset system changes that you didn't intend to, or even reset the hard drive to the exact way it was even days earlier. I also got a FREE full version of a professional office program called "Star Office". It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation program, drawing, and more. It is completely integratable with other programs such as word and excel. Darn nice for free I'd say. I even got a dorky looking hat in the shape of a software box. Now how could I be happier!! Anyway this was a really great thing to see and I wish I could have spent some more time there. After eight hours fast walking I say hundreds of venders and thousands of new products and still NEVER got to the main convention center!! It would take days to see all of this! (Oh... I didn't see Bill Gates either, but Microsoft was EVERYWHERE!) Rob Goodale, RPT Las Vegas, NV
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