Acme's The Best of Comdex '97
Comdex Photos	Pictures of Julie and Bill Gates! Gates Keynote and Press Conference The Monkee's / Harley Davidson Cafe Star Trek: The Experience (sneak peek)

November 20, 1997

Fall Comdex '97 Wrap up Acme spent five days at Comdex (and what seemed like six days in cab lines).  Here's our wrap-up of the year's biggest computer industry event. Best of Show FACE-IT PC We agree wholeheartedly with PC Week's "Best of Show" award given to FACE-IT PC, a new face recognition software with an attitude.  Face-It PC scans your facial features, and only allows access to your computer to faces that it recognizes. Best Booth / Exhibit Toshiba The Toshiba booth featured indoor self contained waterfalls, a 3-D laser light show, steaming dry ice clouds everywhere and stereo headphones for participants. "Like Wow, Man". Best creativity in an ad specialty Sony To demonstrate the capabilities of their new digital cameras, Sony reps snapped your picture with their latest digital camera that saves images in .jpg format right on a floppy disk inserted into the camera.  The file size of the resultant picture wasn't bad either - about 60K before cropping or resizing. See full sized digital photo Sony took Best Demo's Microsoft Microsoft Corporation didn't have a booth - it had a "wing" of the LVCC.  Featured products had their own theater-style demonstration areas with mini-classes running every 30 minutes.  You could learn a lot here. Best Party Claris presents the MONKEES Claris software's Comdex party at the Harley Davidson Cafe featuring the MONKEE'S - Micky, Davy & Peter - who played a full set. Peter still looks great, Davy wears a girdle and Micky is balding.  We've got proof. Check out the Pictures.... Claris produces Filemaker Pro and Claris Home Page among many other software titles. Best Casino Binion's Horseshoe, Downtown Las Vegas Where else can you play Craps at a $1 table while standing next to an old-timer who throws $3,000 cash out on the table and bets $600/roll??? Geez!  We could buy and new Server and Router with that kind of money!  We won a modest $20 bucks - enough to buy a new toner cartridge for our office printer.  <gratuitous link to Hewlettt Packard> Best T-Shirt Cisco Systems There were lots of computer T-shirts at Comdex, but a Cisco T-Shirt is a computer geek status symbol.  Cisco makes routers that connect networks to the Internet.

Best View / Scenic The Luxor and CyNet The Presidential Suite at the top of the Luxor Hotel and Casino sits at the top of their recognizable pyramid. CyNet, who offers Internet faxing solutions, rented the penthouse for an evening of schmoozing.  Getting to the top of the Luxor pyramid involved riding an "inclinator" vs. an elevator and making it past an armed guard.  Strict invite only. Nero Room at Caesar's Palace with Maxtor This opulent first floor ballroom was the location of Maxtor's big Comdex blowout.   This year's theme was MiB (The acronym stood for "Men In Black", the movie upon which the party was themed and "Maxtor Is Back" their new tagline).   This palace-like setting had huge glass walls that provided a condescending "We're better than you" view of the Flamingo Hilton. Maxtor touted their new 8.4 gigabyte Diamond Max EIDE Hard Drives.  Now that's storage! Best View / Technical New Flat Panel monitors At least of half dozen vendors including Panasonic and Sony who displayed the latest in flat-panel monitors.  We're going to be seeing a lot more of these in the coming months. Worst View The Stratosphere.  Can you say VERTIGO???  Too much of a good thing. Breathtaking views of Las Vegas - at eye level with passing Blimps. (No kidding!)  However, a couple of drinks and a harrowing view over 106 stories high - just don't mix. Taking pictures of Bill Gates We had no problem getting close enough for some great pictures.   Competing with the 50,000 watt flash bulbs was another story.  Check out our Bill Gates photo area. Bill Gates delivers the Keynote Address for Fall Comdex '97 Best Food and Internet Security Piero's Restaurant and Guard Dog Piero's is on Paradise Road across the street from the Las Vegas Convention Center.   Five Stars.  Pasta dishes prepared to order.  We stood in the buffet line with Robert Urich (TV's Spencer For Hire) who was there to promote a computer related venture in which he is involved. One of the sponsors was Cybermedia, who were promoting their new Guard Dog software.  To learn more about Guard Dog, sign up for Acme's "Internet Self Defense" classes, starting in January.  E-mail Julie for details. Best Dessert and Handheld Computing Chocolate Mousse Cake with Raspberry sauce Microsoft Windows CE Luncheon at the Mirage. This luncheon/press briefing featured an impressive demonstration of Windows CE 2.0 for palmtop computing.   Now you can compose and send E-mail and run Office applications such as Outlook and Word right from your handheld PC.  The new devices feature color, a much needed upgrade from previous versions. Honorable mention goes to: The buffet at the Rio Awesome Lemon meringue pie and an all you can eat dessert buffet.   Worth a visit when in Vegas. The Oz buffet at the MGM Grand Creme Brule to die for.

This year's buzz words / products to watch:

Web Lifestyle - Bill Gates Digital Nervous System - Bill Gates Dynamic HTML - A 4.0 browser "thing" Visual InterDev -   A Microsoft Internet Development tool Channels - Not the Shirley MacLaine kind - the web kind. Streaming Audio and Video - Keep an eye on the "Emblaze Creator", and Microsoft's Netshow with Support for Real Audio/Video. Digital Imaging -   Comdex rumors say that 'film is dead".  Digital Imaging is hot-hot-hot.   Quality is getting better, but still not totally there.  Watch this area closely. DVD Drives - Get one, or be square. Handheld/Palmtop Computing - Check out the Windows CE 2.0 handheld computers and US Robotics Palmtops.  They're not just a toy anymore.

View our Comdex Week Message Board

Photos and content ©1997 Acme Information Services