Personal Dork Assistant

Computex Notes

Wanted to check out Computex, since it featured all those computer and electronics companies that buy our blinkenlights. Unfortunately, the show was going on during working hours, plus the first four days of the show were for industry only. The show opened to the public on Saturday, though, for a 200 NTD ticket. Didn't want to go initially, as I was expecting the entirety of the Taiwanese geekdom to descend upon the Taipei World Trade Center. But the show was literally down the street, and it wasn't as if I had anything better to do in the afternoon. So I walked over after lunch hoping that the worst of the crowds have dissipated. The show filled up all three halls of the TWTC, plus there was an overflow hall elsewhere. Took me a while to find the ticket window at the main hall. I couldn't follow the crowd in because the crowd was everywhere moving in all directions between the halls. Yeah, it was crowded, but not any more so than your usual weekend crowd at the nearby Mitsukoshi department stores or the Warner Village theater/mall complex next door. Circled the aisles of the main hall, which was filled with peripheral and component makers. Does the world really need 53,276 brands of wireless modems. I guess so, in order for there to be one named Assmann. Not to mention there were at least twice as many brands of flash MP3 players and USB thumb drives. Hard-disk-based portable video players were starting to show, too, although all of them were hideously clunky compared to the iPod. I'm glad I got the bluetooth option for my computer and cell phone, as BT peripherals are starting to plunge into the pricing pit of Chinese commoditization. The chipsets are out there, and everyone is slapping them into headsets or mice or whatever. Screw the Logitech MX-900. Really wanted a Bluetooth mouse, but not for a hundred friggin' bucks.

BenQ had a big booth featuring everything but the kitchen sink. That'll be next year, once they wirelessly Net-enable it or something. Lots of flat panel displays, notebook computers, and people crowded around the digital cameras and cell phones. That whole area was extra-crowded, as BenQ had lots of consumer-friendly stuff on display, while nearby booths were doing give-aways, which is guaranteed to draw a crowd that's not afraid to get down and dirty for that free t-shirt. Decided that I was too damn soft to fight with the natives, and went over to Hall 3 instead after picking up some measly pens and a magnet. That hall had themed pavilions like Security, IP Telephony, Networking, and Microsoft. The Japanese pavilion featured a heat-pipe heatsink company that showed off totally fanless Athlon 64 and Intel Prescott systems, which was pretty damn impressive, although the CPU heat sink was almost as tall as the Taipei 101. Also found a little booth on the side selling random USB-powered gadgets. Bought a retractable cord to recharge my new cell phone off the computer's USB port, which means one less brick I need to bring with me. Oh yeah, that made my day, even more so than the chicks in vinyl.

Finally made my way over to Hall 2, which was where the motherboard manufacturers were showing off. They are the heart of Taiwan's computer industry, and they brought the bling-bling to the big show. Unfortunately the show was down to its last hour, and I couldn't get around to all the booths to check out the booth babes. I also didn't quite have the chutzpah to just go up to the girls and snap away with my little Elph, unlike the leering dudes with their bulging camera bags and full-size Nikon SLRs. Although I did my share of leering at the Asus girl dressed up as Ruby, the (computer-generated) model in the ads for the ATI X800 graphics card. Velour is way nicer than vinyl, and she was the only booth girl that wasn't thin as a stick. Oh well, it's stupid to try to compared tech specs at a noisy show, when it's so much easier to just check them out online. And if those girls weren't pimping computer hardware, they'd probably be on a roadside shack selling betel nuts anyway. Talk about a hostile work environment for the normal female booth staff, though.