Comdex 2001
Las Vegas
November 13, 2001

During my half day stint, the incredible collapsing COMDEX was about 65% evacuated. Visitors walk up to the Las Vegas Convention Center, hearing the screech of tires and the roar of engines. COMDEX still has the "test drive a Mercedes Benz"  sports rally filling a sorely needed parking lot.  Bored middle level managers and programmers wheel and dive. Overhead, the Windows XP shroud covered the entire Marriott hotel. As you walk in Microsoft has the lead booth all crammed and busy with the buzz of XP.

The show filled most of the convention center, but the telltale sign of death, the empty black drapes moving back walls forward to appear full. The crowds had thinned drastically from COMDEXs of prior years. At least 1/3rd of the show is now non-US - Egypt, France, Germany, Dabai, and ironically, the Pakistani Software company on a wall all alone.

The DoCoMo booth was a sight to behold. I only wished I had brought my camera to show their brilliant positive outlook. The future as seen through  i-mode and FOMA technology. Yellow and white i-mode girls so politely show you the phone features. Never have American teenagers seemed so polite. Asked about the phones, one girl responded in a very official diction, "We just want to see if you like the idea." There was no one to talk to about technology or business unless you were able to speak Japanese. I talked in broken English with a Japanese PR lady from DoCoMo. She explained her shock at the downsizing of COMDEX. I told her this is not a good year for the U.S. She said, "America has to keep going forward", making the motions of a locomotive. All I could do was shrug and say "You have such a beautiful booth."

The neighboring Palm booth was large and busy with "test drives" of Palms. After talking about five Cisco people and the companies they bought, I found I was not going to get the answers to my technical questions about their VoIP cellular phones that they had shown last time and were now nowhere to be seen.

Short Notes:

Atheros 54 Mpbs 802.11a was streaming full screen video at the Wi-Fi booth. Awesome. Three 5GHz bands and the top end can transmit 2 watts. Sieman's biometric mouse.

End of notes.

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