 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Comdex/Fall '90 Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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The world's largest computer show is Comdex/Fall, held in the northern autumn in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. This annual event attracted over 125,000 people over five days last November. Most of the city's taxi drivers were on strike, so rental cars and parking spaces were in short supply. I spent almost eight days there, attending the many meetings organised by the Association of PC User Groups, the obligatory evening parties, and somewhere in between I managed to sample Comdex.
Format
Comdex is spread across seven separate venues in Las Vegas, not all being within walking distance of each other. They total some 30 km of aisles and while one can walk down every aisle, one cannot claim to have seen "everything" within five days. Hence the keen visitor is advised to decide beforehand which exhibits have to be seen before all others.
Entry cost US$75 to those who couldn't find a free ticket from an exhibitor. It pays to register by mail, as they have your badge waiting for you and you don't queue for an hour to get your entry badge. I was fortunate enough to get a Press badge, as were other APCUG editors. Some seasoned visitors also obtained "ordinary" badges under their business names, as the Press badge is known to scare off some exhibitors. You don't have to be an editor to get a Press badge - if you are a regular writer for a magazine or paper you will qualify for a lower grade Press badge. I must stress that many "ordinary" UG members also went to see Comdex, including some from Melb PC.
In addition to the exhibits, some vendors demonstrate their products in hotel suites to selected people, or conduct product launches at reception lounges. Many vendors throw "parties" at night, where (it would seem) you need not have an invitation to get in. Many APCUG people complained about the fact that they had RSVP'd over the telephone at long-distance rates only to find that people could gatecrash with impunity. I was fortunate to get a coveted invitation to the Spencer F. Katt (US version of PC Week's Walter Wombat here) pyjama party but I was too tired to attend that 10 pm - 1 am event. The US Robotics party featured a televised football match, lots of beer, and plenty of noisy people. It cured me of parties, although a friend went to one where everyone was given a microcassette recorder to take away.
Exhibits
The exhibits are perhaps an improvement over the Melbourne PC shows, but the main difference is that you are very likely to go home with several hundred dollars worth of freebies, albeit stuff you don't need. I don't think I got anything I really needed. To get the good stuff you are obliged to queue up and sit down to participate in a sales presentation. You have to cheer and make a fool of yourself at the appropriate cue, and you are rewarded with a piece of software, hardware, accessory, or a useless trinket. Some booths have the business-card-in-the-bowl lucky dip technique and some give away nothing. The trick is knowing where the goodies are.
Many people wear comfortable shoes ranging from Rockport (only shoe recommended by the US Podiatrists Assn, and which I second), to runners. Many business-suited men and women wore runners with total disregard for style. Capacious carry bags that didn't chafe one's fingers were also in evidence, and many pushed collapsible luggage trollies.
Your entry ticket is an embossed plastic card with your name and address. It is also used by exhibitors to get your details just as though they would "swipe" your credit card. You could easily collect several boxes worth of literature each day, so Federal Express has on-site facilities to courier your stuff anywhere at a (hefty) price. I asked most vendors to mail me their valuable literature - I will live to regret it! I am getting press kits galore, and will undoubtedly end up on innumerable mailing lists.
You cannot buy anything off the floor for delivery before 3 pm on Friday. I didn't risk US$135 on a 66 MB Microscience 3675 drive for that reason, although I am told that the company is there every year. I bought some cheap subscriptions to Unix World and Byte. I also missed out on a US$18 mouse because I was unlikely to return to the particular venue on Friday. Ah well.
Highlights?
I have refrained from mentioning too many specific products that were launched at Comdex because they will be old news by the time you read this in February. In general terms, laptops were to be found everywhere, and the colour VGA liquid crystal displays looked good. Storage devices were packing more into a smaller space, such as a 500 MB WORM drive in a 3.5 inch form factor. A single product that could help VGA graphics is the Edsun chip, which I hope to describe elsewhere in detail but which simply replaces a chip in many VGA cards and gives you images without the "stepping" effect seen in curves and diagonal lines. The Edsun chip won a PC Magazine award at Comdex.
All of the APCUG visitors were offered a free 30-day trial of the Poqet PC, which fits inside one's coat pocket, and the option to buy it for a 40 per cent discount (US$1450 with a few options). Some tried it, but most had returned it before the show finished. They did not like it for two reasons: its non-standard RAM cards (floppy drives are optional extras); and its LCD screen, which proved hard to read.
I was introduced to many PC celebrities, including Bill Gates, John Warnock, Gordon Neubanks, and a few others. Bill Gates will be visiting Melbourne in 1991 and will be speaking to Melb PC members.
Las Vegas
Las Vegas is primarily a city for those who like evening entertainment and gambling. You will need regular comfort breaks in between venues, and as many venues happen to be hotel/casinos, you don't have far to go. I wasted about $9 on the pokies (the slot machines), but the blackjack players among the APCUG crowd were reeling in four-figure sums. I only play the NSW pokies about once a year, and found them more "interesting" and more rewarding. Meals are very cheap - as low as 99 cents for breakfast, although we lashed out for a few $3.99 endless breakfasts. All the APCUG events were based on mealtimes, so we did not have to spend much on food. The main venue exhibits close at 5 pm daily, so one has plenty of time to catch a night show later. Comdex attendees are very unpopular among some locals, because we computer-types are not gambling-types. Although the big hotels are "full" if you try to make a late booking for Comdex, if you said you are a gambler, you would have little trouble finding a room.
Comdex in 1991
The next Comdex will be the Spring event in Atlanta, Georgia during May 20-23. It will be held concurrently with Windows World Conference and Exposition, and Interface/91, a telecommunications expo. Comdex/Spring is the second largest computer event in the US.
If you are thinking of going to the next "big one", Comdex/Fall '91 will be held during October 21-25. Hotel reservations need to be made months in advance, certainly no later than August unless you like to gamble (so suitable for Las Vegas!). The Interface Group would be happy to arrange accommodation, conference bookings etc for you. It would be difficult for your travel agent to book a room for you during that period unless you feigned ignorance of Comdex (there are always rooms for gamblers). Interface takes over large chunks of popular (and conveniently located) hotels, so you wouldn't save much, if any, money trying to do it yourself.
Getting There
I took Qantas flights both ways on their MEL-AKL-LAX route. This cost about $50 more than the "rock bottom" price seen in the local papers, but the nonstop 16-hour Auckland-Los Angeles sector during the night is far better than the alternative of stopping in Hawaii in mid-slumber. One other airline would have you take a third stop in Sydney, so it definitely pays to find a good travel agent.
The Qantas in-flight service was excellent and the cabin crew's smiles were genuine. It was a pleasure to hear Australian voices after two weeks in North America. I hadn't flown overseas for two years, so I was pleasantly surprised to receive (in Economy class) a choice of meals, eye mask, socks, electronic headphones etc - items previously reserved for the "better" classes. I was lucky to be "bumped up" to First Class during a Las Vegas-Toronto flight but I cannot find any praise for the US airline concerned - the service was just by the book and I had to change two sets of well-worn acoustic headphones as their tubes were cracked.
Customs/Tax
I brought back a scanner, floppy disk drive, a tape drive, and half a suitcase full of software or other "declarable" items. The customs officer told me that he wasn't interested in the software, which is tax-free now, and as I had declared everything he did not ask me to open my suitcases. I had to pay 24% sales tax on the amount exceeding the exemption limit of $400. The amount can only be paid in Australian currency, Australian travellers cheques, American Express, or Diners Club. Note well that Bankcard, Visa and MasterCard are not accepted.
Conclusion
My trip was entirely self-financed, and therefore all recommendations are free of commercial bias. If you work with computers you may manage to claim such a future trip on your tax return. It is certainly worth going at least once, perhaps to cap off a longer pre-Christmas-shopping tour. I found many non-computing bargains, such as US$12 Weeboks that cost $150 here, a US$80 Samsonite suitcase (bought during a 40% off sale and already marked down - $400 here), and other domestic goodies to satisfy the Home Minister. You might need such impressive figures to con(vince) your better half for a future trip!
Reprinted from the Jan/Feb 1991 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
