Being the last major IT event of this millennium, Comdex Fall 1999 is a important showcase for the products of the 21st century. This 20th Comdex event shows how much the IT industry has grown since that first Comdex in Las Vegas, held back in 1979 -- before there were PCs.
Front of the Las Vegas Convention Center
Most floor exhibits at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) and the Sands Convention Center (Sands) are in their final stages of completion. The streets of the surrounding area were filled with large trucks carrying exhibits to be assembled by platoons of Comdex workers. Seeing some of the signs around the convention center, Sun appears to be aggressively "punching away" at Microsoft, in a battle as heated as the Hollyfield-Lewis fight also being held in Las Vegas on Saturday night. It will be interesting to hear how Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, reacts to the Sunday night Bill Gates keynote address, in his Wednesday morning keynote address.
In our first look at this year's show floor, we found that Moore's Law is alive and well in Tyan's new motherboards which feature support for single or dual Pentium III slot I processors, including the recently announced 733 MHz Coppermine CPU. Wow!
Wireless connectivity was displayed at the Bluetooth showcase and elsewhere. Biometrics were given a heightened emphasis at their own, dedicated, Biometrics "pavilion". Other featured technologies are voice recognition, e-commerce software and entertainment products.
At the Philips press conference held at the Treasure Island hotel and casino, Philips representatives demonstrated some of their new products. Here are two of them:
Philips Rush!
This state compact digital portable audio player can play MP3 files obtained from virtually any source. It is completely solid state so there are NO moving parts or lasers and features include multiple bookmark functions, parallel port PC connectivity and pop/rock sound equalization. Rush!.can be inserted and removed from the docking station, used to download MP3 files.
Philips new 10X CD-RW recorder
Copyright
© 1999 Rick Smith and Jim Bennett All rights reserved.
