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PC Expo = Windows Heaven
This is not the biggest show out there (Comdex owns that title!) but it's an influential one where hordes of ordinary computers users come to get an idea of what's new and hot. And what's hot here is Windows, Windows, Windows, and Palm. If there's a single overused buzzword here, it's "wireless." I think I've spotted that word, along with the phrase, "mobile Internet," at least a thousand times.
To give you an example of this show's scale just in case, like me, you mostly stick to Linux and Open Source expos, the Windows "partners" pavilion here is bigger than the entire Linux World Expo that was held here last February. It is a humbling experience to be a Linux user here, somewhat like the feeling FreeBSD advocates must have at Linux shows.
Even the two (prototype) Crusoe-powered IBM laptops on display are running Windows. In the display next to the two-story tropical-themed Crusoe extravaganza, Intel had screen after screen of Windows, despite all their recent make-nice moves toward Linux.
IBM has more Linux showing than most. A sign says, "You talk, Linux types" above the display for their new ViaVoice for Linux. And if you look closely at some of the "start" buttons in the lower left screen corners on some of IBM's thin-client products, you see Penguins instead of flying flags. Yes, that is Linux, quietly there, unadvertised, doing its job without any fanfare.
But forget Linux for a moment. Palm is the only presence here that even touches that of Windows. While the Palm "partners" pavilion is less than half the size of Microsoft's equivalent, the Palm one is constantly packed, so crowded that you have to edge sideways to get into it. Microsoft's display for Pocket PC, their renamed and updated WinCE, is deserted by comparison. Palms and Visors seem to be the wireless favorites, and they are almost everywhere here that Windows isn't.
There is a Linux pavilion, but it is sadly tucked into a lower-right corner of the less-than-main exhibit hall, and not as big, all told, as Dell Computer's single display. It is not uninhabited; LinuxMall, the pavilion sponsor, is doing steady business in assorted Linux goodies, and Isaiah, a Red Hat tech rep, said they gave out 400 Red Hat 6.2 CDs yesterday "in a couple of minutes, all to CEOs who said they have IT managers working for them." That was a wowser to Isiaiah, who was amazed "...that the people asking about Linux here are suits, not techies."
But there are a few signs of non-Windows life here, tucked away in corners, not always easily identifiable. For instance, I spotted a nice little "network appliance" gadget called a FoxBox made by NetWolves Corporation. I asked what OS it ran, and the booth person said, "FreeBSD."
I said, "It doesn't say that anywhere on the literature I see here."
He said, "Really? I suppose we ought to change that. Not many people have asked what operating system we run, and most of the ones who asked were relieved to find out it wasn't NT."
More on PC Expo, including John "maddog" Hall's keynote speech, tomorrow afternoon.
Let me make this as clear as possible:
We (as in Slashdot, not you and I) have a regular troll (as in moderatly funny offtopic poster, not the mythical bridge-loving hairy kind) who seems to have made a running joke (as in from the Laugh-it-was funny-the-first-five-times-but-not-now Dept.) out of the act of pouring grits (as in a hot breakfast food enjoyed by ninja and those south of the Mason-Dixon Line, not what you find on sandpaper) down his or her pants. (as in the cloth covering you are hopefully wearing over your legs, not what a dog does in summer.)
He (the troll) is affectionatly known as "The Hot Grits Guy" (for obvious reasons, the most notable is that we don't rightly know his name). If you would like, you can scroll (use that bar on the right border of your browser) down to the end of the page (as in this article) and see some of his (as in, The Hot Grits Guy) work. (as in, his posts.) While you're down there, look for "The Saga of the Troll War", "Star (as in hot young actress) Wars, as well as Mr. Patrick Bateman's soulful "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!".
.sig: Now legally binding!
Slashdot headlines for next week...
Signal 11 makes worthless comment in worthless article, receives another +5 funny by worthless moderation.
NightHawk
Tyranny =Gov. choosing how much power to give the People.
For the last year the linux-centric media (here included) have been blaring that linux is "ready for the desktop", "set for primetime" and "friendly enough for my dad". If you get most of yer daily quotient of geek news from said media, you might actually get into a head space where you believe that linux's domination of Joe Q. Enduser's desktop is imminent. If anything, this article is a much-needed reminder that this is notthe case.
Start rhetoric: We are fighting a war. A war against a very large, very well-funded enemy. This enemy owns most of the land and major resources. We are iquana-eating geurillas living in the hills, hiding under bushes every time a helicoper flies over. In any geurilla war, there comes a time when the geurillas have to make a decision to stop playing hit-and-run and move into the arena of positional warfare. The biggest threat to success is making that decision too soon. A few victories can swell heads fast and lead to brash maneouvers later on.End rhetoric.
Here's the facts: linux owns a tiny percentage of the boxes out there and then even then only in narrow markets. The Fatherland of the desktop is still far, far behind the lines. If we tout linux as desktop-ready before it can actually compete we run the risk of further entrenching the notion that our beloved OS is a toy for propellerheads and nothing more.
It's good to be reminded that the recipie-catalogers and porn-surfers of the world are winders zombies. It helps prevent hubris. We may celebrate the fact that the media has dropped "upstart" as a mandatory adjective when they talk about linux, but remember that Apple lost "beleaguered" two years ago and they still can't put a serious dent in redmond. We're still in the hills, Winders is still down on the convention floor... we need to remeber that if we are to have a hope of winning.
For the record, I think war is absolutely the stupidist thing humans have ever thought up. I chose the analogy only to cover up my complete lack of understanding about sports :)
2 1337 4 u!
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
I was there on Tuesday, from the moment they let corporate passes in, and I'll have to ask at least one important question:
/. has taught me), it still is the most recognizable series of images that you'll find on a CRT/LCD.
Did Roblimo just look at the entryway and go home?
Followed by:
What brand of crack was he smoking?
As I walked in, of course I saw more wireless tech. Last year, it was Microsoft, Compaq and Bell Atlantic Mobile close to the front. This year, it was Microsoft, Gateway, and GoAmerica (at Verizon's booth, according to the handouts)
Once you bothered to look around, though, there was the oft-proclaimed Transmeta booth, with Mobile Linux-powered WebPads everywhere, and Linus (yes, *that* Linus) was even around, if only for the one day.
Redhat had a small booth again, which leads me to believe that they just don't want to shell out the bucks for the extra space. But the Linux presence was at least double to triple its level from last year.
Of course, why would Windows have to much space? Hrm... maybe it's just a result of them having more money to throw at buying floor space. Remember, you can say all you want against Microsoft products, but you cannot deny their status as a marketing juggernaut. All you had to do to escape MicrosoftLand was walk about 50 to 100 feet out. ISPs were there in force, and yes, there were a lot of hardware demonstrations, totally isolated from Windows, PalmOS, or any UNIX variant.
Maybe to someone who seems to attend Open Source/Linux trade shows, it might seem that it's all Windows, but that just proves the narrowmindedness that has pervaded the minds of the Open Source Community. Sorry to tell you guys, but we're not there yet. Windows still sells, and while the Windows GUI might be unintuitive, and the OS might be unstable (or so
It all goes back to what one of the Toshiba droids said yesterday at the Expo:
"We're not going to support this 'Crusoe' chip you're asking about, because it's not Intel, and people buy the name."
I may have slightly misquoted that, mind you, but it's the same deal. If your product doesn't rely on an Intel chip and run a Microsoft OS, Marketing will lead you to believe that it won't sell. If that fails, then you're not going to represent the product, they'll just send marketing. Mind you, that one Toshiba man (and many IBM people) had no idea what Transmeta was!
As for the wireless, you can't be surprised by that. The recent release of Bluetooth, and the prevalence of 802.11 is fueling that, and can you honestly say that you don't like the idea that you can disconnect that one extra cable when you want to? Do you really want that laptop that you were assigned to need a dongle, another network cable, and so on, when you can just plug it in once the batteries are low, and that's it? The idea is that we're trying to make portable technology more convenient. That is the future of computing, just like shrinking computers, boosting throughput, and the internet were all the proposed future at some point. Now that those goals have been realized, of course the industry is going to change their (admittedly narrow) focus onto something else.
Raptor
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
1. Is it an enterprise-class solution?
2. Can I get it from an application service provider?
3. Is it web-enabled?
4. What sort of wireless messaging capabilities does it provide?
-cwk.
I saw an MSNBC piece on PC Expo yesterday morning. Standard useless fluff, but as the voiceover talked about how handhelds and wireless were the craze, yadda yadda, they had video clips of the products. The main one was of a palmtop (didn't catch the brand) obviously running WinCE. Just a couple seconds into the shot, after a few stylus taps on the screen, a window titled "FATAL APPLICATION ERROR" filled the screen, and the user spent the last several seconds of the clip pressing various places on the screen in an evident and futile attempt to close the error window. Priceless.
I tried it, didn't find it terribly useful, although it was under Windows, and it made the text in the browser or other windows scroll either too slowly or with nauseating waves. In any case, I didn't like the fact that the wheel had a noisy and distinct clickiness in its action which made the scrolling jerky. Frankly, I think I would rather just use the 'Page up' and 'Page down' keys with my other hand.
Most of the scrolling gadgets in mice don't make any provision for scrolling sideways. I have seen one mouse that had a little Thinkpad-like 'Trackpoint' device on it for scrolling both up and down and left and right. That might be a little more useful than the wheel gadgets, especially since it would probably be smoother and quiet. I still want a real, reasonably sized middle button though.
Well I submitted a story to slashdot about a site with pics from the expo but I guess I was denied. If you want to take a look at the new Crusoe notebooks or the new web tablet zip on over to Tech Toys. http://www.icashex.com/techtoys/
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Is this the same PC Expo talked about in this article? Which one's true? In this article they claim "fealty to Microsoft is the exception" and that everyone was talking about Linux. Surely things can't be THAT polar!
If Microsoft suddenly showed up at an Open Source convention and said "Here's Office 2001 with source code for *NIX", yeah, then I would be surprised. But as it stands Microsoft has the same monopoly share at the expos as it does with OS's in general: all of it.
Besides, I'm not a big detractor of MS at shows anyway. They give some pretty awesome prizes for 15 minutes of their time. I watched from afar while Sun was doing their Java presentation at one show, and the Microsoft presenter asked "OK, here's a quiz, where should you go for up-to-date travel information?" "Expedia," I answered. Bam. Free Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer and Natural Keyboard Pro.
Not bad for pandering to a major corporation for 30 seconds (and I can go right back to Linux and FreeBSD).
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Facts:
;).)
1) E-commerce makes a lot of money. So does catalog sales (JCPenny, Sears, etc...). E-commerce is really just the simple progression of mail order sales onto digital media and communication channels.
2) Wireless data delivery, as in getting stocks and scores over you mobile phone, really isn't that big of a deal. Simple evolution of pager and mobile phone technologies, nothing more.
3) Handheld computing is just evoliving, nothing really amazing about it. Simple evolution of the calculator, in my opinion.
4) The marketing industry has simply blown it's top. Everything "E" is the current focus, and advertisers and media execs are singing all the way to the bank. They have taken simple product evolution in the consumer electronics industry, which can be related to the "revolution" of adding the freshness date to the bottom of beer cans, and made these "marvelous" to be much more larger than life than they really are.
Quite simply, the wizzards of oz are really putting on quite a show.
Maybe, one day, the media zombies of the world will start seeing through these inflated advances in technology and realize the actual, unrealized potential of technology and convince these buisnesses to bring _real_ revolution to the table. Or, at least bring the inflated costs of these products and services down.
(Note, this post was just an observation, no real point to it
In the 80's Digital Equipment had a small show called DECWorld. Held in Mass each year, and literally took up nearly every hotel for a hundred miles. Last one I remeber was at the World trade center and on the Queen Mary, to host all the exhibits and people. Needless to say, DECWorld is gone. I rmember lots of big shows who dominate and die, slowly. However the shows that grow seem to be equally focused on HW and applications, and have some level of appeal to the general perception, e.g. everyone knows what a PC is, and according to the appelate court, everyone recognizes that PC==Windows. The object lesson is still however about quality, not quantity, in symposiums. I'd love to have 20000 rabid buyers of linux products. I'd love 200,000 even more, but I'm willing to grow into them. I'm also willing to have 10 shows of 20,000 buyers, if the buyers are diferent in each venue. That appears to be a risk to Linux acceptance. How many shows do you go to that have the same faces, same speakers, same everything. In a former life managing Ada products, I could correctly pick over 50% of the attendees each time. I'm beginning to feel that way about Linux shows.
Open Source Ronin