Lee said that he would show some of the things he received at the trade shows. Not many T-shirts were passed out this year. There were exhibits and technical sessions at both COMDEX and CES that are both mega trade shows. The exhibits were free but the technical sessions cost money. Lee and Paul got the exhibits-only passes. Lee said that not only were the sessions costly, but they took away time that could be more productively used observing the exhibits.

Both COMDEX and CES covered high tech electronics. COMDEX has reduced from 5 days to 4 days. CES has always been 4 days, but that seems to be getting to be too short. COMDEX moved toward an emphasis on Corporate I.T. needs. As for CES, note that the C stands for consumer. COMDEX is noted for its shrinkage and CES is growing. Speaking of growing, Las Vegas has grown to a population of over 1,000,000. The valley is getting full and the city is getting to be a big place. The COMDEX of November 13-17, 2000 had about 200,000 attendance and about 1,000,000 square feet of exhibits with over 2700 exhibitors. During the fall of 2003, attendance decreased to about 30,000 and there was about 100,000 sq. ft. of exhibits and 500 exhibitors. This is a lot of shrinkage and the effects of September 11, 2001 had a lot to do with it. Part of COMDEX is now foreign companies looking for ways to distribute their products.

For information on COMDEX 2003: www.comdex.com/lasvegas2003

Looking back on CES from 2001 to the present. January 6-9, 2001 had an attendance of more than 100,000 with over 1,000,000 sq. ft. of exhibits and over 1900 exhibitors. In 2004 the attendance was more than 129,000 with over 1,300,000 sq. ft. of exhibits and over 2,400 exhibitors, a notable increase and expansion. You could ride around Las Vegas easily during COMDEX, but the streets were crowded during CES.

COMDEX used to feature exhibits of components and boards but these were notable for their absence this year. Notable missing companies were Creative, ATI and most motherboard manufacturers. Fans, cases and servers were all that were shown in the component category. HP was missing at COMDEX but present at CES. IBM did not appear at either show. CES had many exhibitors that formerly showed up at COMDEX. Creative, ATI, nVidia, MSI and Shuttle all had exhibits. Standard hardware devices shown were DVD-R\RW, DVD+R\RW and DVD-RAM. Jupiter Events ran a show in competition with COMDEX at Mandalay Bay, but they were not too large. CES had new writable media and COMDEX didn't.

CES on the web is found at: www.cesweb.org

The Las Vegas Convention Center is very interesting and large in area. Desert Inn Road goes underneath the crossovers between the buildings. Some things that were emphasized at CES: Knowledge is power and Linux is now a consumer word but is not really in the consumer world. Manufacturers can use it in place of Windows CE for an embedded operating system for consumer products. A question from the audience was: "Is Bluetooth taking off?". Bluetooth is still there and is big in cell phones. There is a new problem called "Bluejacking" where teenagers notice you have a Bluetooth phone, look you up and call you just to annoy you. You can send your message to many people at the same time using Bluetooth and a Bluetooth wireless connection can be made through cell phones. WiFi is used for local area networking and is more powerful than using cell phones. Digital satellite radio is being pushed.

If you are going to Las Vegas, either use the Internet to compare and acquire the right lodging or have a relative in Las Vegas. If you carry a laptop, get a place that doesn't soak you for modem/LAN hookups. WiFi works at quite a few locations. Lee recommended the Artisan hotel which is a refurbished Travel Lodge, but not using their phone connections for computer access. It has a very good WiFi "Hot Spot" for no additional charge. Lee said you should not assume that the Artisan would necessarily continue to be modestly priced after they complete their renovations.

Lee showed a series of photo shots, including the Sony robot dog that costs $1,500.00. When its power runs down, the dog uses video recognition to look for its recharging station, and then mates with it and recharges its batteries. There were several shots of the exhibit hall and the data center that was a mish-mash of hardware and wiring. The evolution of the American home was shown with laptops and flat screen monitors hanging on walls, and various sensors. One picture showing a laptop in the kitchen for things like recipe data looked as if it took up quite a bit of counter space that someone really might like to use for food preparation, but there was no food in the picture. There were numerous pictures of various types of hardware. There was biofeedback hardware and software to monitor sleep, and a set of automated guitars that made up a "bluegrass band". The instruments ran on pneumatics with electronic controls. The sounds produced were very realistic. If you want to see a show CES is more interesting to visit than COMDEX.

Lee showed some pictures taken outside the Convention Center including a partially constructed mono-rail station. This year at CES the Las Vegas nights were cool and the days were near 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The weather was very good in both November at COMDEX and in January at CES as there was no rain this year.

Lee mentioned that LG Electronics, used to be Goldstar, had some kind of a mesh advertisement covering a hotel. You could see through it from the inside, but the ad appeared on the outside of the building. There were pictures of vibrating chairs, scalp scratchers and other items. Lee took part in a "Fastest Geek" contest to see who could build a computer the fastest from components using a philips screwdriver and screws. Lee didn't win. The fastest person took 7½ minutes and said he had assembled a thousand PCs. Lee showed a picture of another, smaller, robot costing $250.00 or $350.00. There was a side view of a very narrow flat TV. An exerciser with bio-feedback was shown. There was a computer braille bio-feedback device for blind people and numerous other devices were shown. There were translation devices and exercise monitors. There was a projected holographic projected keyboard that had zero tactile feedback and was difficult to use. Typing was very difficult and it was easier to hunt and peck rather than to touch type. Some older computer hardware was on display. Digital cameras and a keyboard mouse were shown. A fingerprint identification system was demonstrated with one use as a replacement for a door key. Pay phones were hard to find at the conferences because now everyone is using cell phones. This was a big difference from past conferences where there were long lines to get to a large number of pay phones. Also, conference manuals are very much decreased in size.

I have tried to give you a description of a very interesting presentation by the Schmidts that was highly visual in its content and there is no way that a large number of pictures are going to be provided in DATA-LINK. If you want more detailed information on COMDEX and CES go to the websites listed. However, to get the benefits of the insights from Lee and Paul Schmidt you had to be at the meeting.

This was the sixth meeting of the LA Chapter year and was attended by 15 persons.
Mike Walsh, LA ACM Secretary