Introduction

Yet Another Exciting IDF Story

Last fall Bob booked, packed, and boarded a Southwest flight for IDF in less than 40 minutes. Back then our office was in the middle of Berkeley so we were located about 8 miles closer to the Oakland airport.

With this in mind, and knowing that I didn't want to test Bob's record, I booked my tickets about 2 hours in advance of my flight. Unfortunately, finding an available, cost-effective (read: CHEAP) hotel room in Palm Springs wasn't so easy!

After an hour of calling hotels spotted on Travelocity I finally settled on Howard Johnson. When I booked the room over the phone the Howard Johnson agent informed me of the recent renovations they had "just completed." When I arrived however, it was quite obvious that they were still in the middle of them!

Getting to the airport

But back to the story, after packing and grabbing a bite to eat, I casually mentioned to Bob that my flight left in about an hour. You see, I've driven to the Oakland airport a few times in the roughly 5 months I've lived in the Bay Area and could have sworn it only took me 20 minutes one-way to make the trip. When I saw Bob's jaw drop to the floor however, it was pretty apparent it took longer than that!

Only due to a 15-minute flight delay was I able to make it in time for the flight to Ontario. From there I rented a car for the hour drive to Palm Springs. And what kind of car did I drive? The king of economy cars of course, a brand new Chevrolet Metro!

Last fall, the highlight of IDF for us was the introduction of the GeForce 256. This year, we were eager to hear more about Willamette, the codename for Intel's successor to the Pentium III processor. We were also curious to learn about any other recent developments on the processor and chipset front.