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Comdex 2001 Coverage With a Handheld Twist
Phillip M. Torrone writes: "Gosh folks, a thousand words couldn't describe how great Comdex 2001 was this year for me. But, about 300 pictures may help. Your pal pt from flashenabled.com/mobile has it all. Memory stick and SD GPS units, Cameras, Microwaves and Bluetooth; The new Sharp Linux PDA with keyboard; Bluetooth everything, Pocket PCs, Sony robot dogs, Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones, Windows XP, Xbox, Merecedes Benz test drives, Klingons, the Strip, virtual keyboards, DoCoMo, Harry Potter and more. The coverage is almost as good as being there."
The Comdex page is here. The URL in the article points to a mobile Flash-worshipping site (which does indeed link to the Comdex bit (but is covered in images as well)).
My first real break into the dot com wave was because of comdex.
There was a small taiwanese motherboard wholesaler, this was when P133's were like 600 bucks. Just a small 2 man outfit of two guys that hardly spoke a word of english. Their investors had gotten them a spot at comdex and they needed a token white boy to be their headman at the show.
I think I was only about 21 then and had never worked an office job. The thought of a company paying for me to fly to Las Vegas and put me up in a hotel was exciting to me.
16 hours without break later...
These guys would not let me take a break, a lunch, nothing. They worked me like a slave from day start to days end for 16 hours a day, 3 days in a row. My ankles were so swollen even though there was tons of people ahead of me on the plane, one show of those abnormally swollen ankles to the stewardess not only got me on first, but I got to sit in a section with a seat facing me so I could put my feet up. I could not walk for a day afterwards.
When I think of comdex, I think of painful, swollen ankles and sore feet.
From the 2 booths at the "Linux Hatchery" (take a left at the shiatzu chairs and continue to the end of nowhere) to the lack of big names (IBM, Oracle, Sun, Sharp) to the ham-handed "security" policies (they kept kicking people out of the Hilton area and making them stand outside for 30 minutes to hear keynotes) to the lack of attendees (just walk right onto a shuttle bus at 4:15pm on opening day), this Comdex sucked. When the biggest "new thing" was the Handspring Treo and the number of companies offering massage chairs and pain therapy outnumber Linux/Unix booths 10 to 1, it's time to give up on Comdex. Apparently all the *nix people already did.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!