Introduction

With the arrival of November comes the annual Comdex convention -- 2003 in particular marks the fourth year we've attended this event. Comdex, for the uninitiated, is a technology conference held in Las Vegas. Think E3 but for the IT sector and hardware enthusiasts. In previous years, the exhibitors in attendance consisted of a who's who list in the PC computing world. Comdex was at one time the largest convention in North America.

Things changed after September 11th, 2001 however. The economy was in recession and people were still edgy about traveling. As a result, Comdex 2001 was slow as molasses. Comdex 2002 wasn't any better.

But as slow as Comdex 2001 and Comdex 2002 were, Comdex 2003 was even slower -- at least in 2001 we had Microsoft's Windows XP launch, while in 2002 we had the Tablet PC and NVIDIA's NV30 to talk about. Comdex 2003's biggest announcement (from my perspective) was GeForce FX Go5700, which is an entirely new product, but trails the 5650's stealth arrival by less than three months and won't be available until 2004. Sure, it's news, but its launch was considerably understated in comparison to previous products.

Don't believe me? How about some anecdotal evidence. On Monday, the opening day of the convention, there were a grand total of seven people on my shuttle bus, including the bus driver. Granted, this was around 11AM, but still not a good opening sign. The opening day of Comdex is always the busiest, with the crowd trailing off at an increased amount as the week continues.

On the ride from the airport that morning, the taxicab driver had mentioned that thousands of extra drivers had been added to the rotation for Comdex, expecting a huge crowd. Instead, they found no fares! The typical Vegas taxi line at the airport was nonexistent. The same applied at all the local hotels.

And if you still don't believe, my shuttle ride on Tuesday consisted of 3 people (at 9:30AM) going to the convention center, including the driver (Wednesday’s meetings were at The Venetian so I didn’t take the shuttle that day). In addition, Comdex 2003 was one day shorter than previous conventions and consumed less floor space. As a result, I’m pretty certain Comdex 2003 will go down as one of the lowest attended events in the conference’s history.

On the upside, the freebies were very good this year, although not quite as plentiful. Whereas I actually had to leave my mini wall-mounted basketball and hoop from Gigabyte (and several backpacks) in Vegas last year (I didn’t want to check in all the extra bags at the airport) this year I only had to check in two bags. Perhaps it was because I was the only person from FS to attend this year? If that’s the case, I need to go solo more often!

Therefore, rather than our usual coverage, I figured it would be best if I posted a pictorial retrospective on what I saw and heard. Well, I can’t tell you everything I heard, but that’s another story.