Computex 2008 - Day 1

You really have to come to one of these conferences to realize the enormity of it all. While I’ve been to plenty of these before, none of them have been this huge. E3, I remember, only took up the Los Angeles Convention Center and maybe a nearby hotel. The last COMDEX I attended was actually rather small and boring since by the early part of the decade, COMDEX was a shell of its former self. However, on the other hand, COMPUTEX is massive, taking up several buildings and hotels. Each hall is massive, some with several floors full of exhibitors.

Since we’re in Asia, that basically means there are billions of manufacturers we’ve never, ever heard of. There is an especially large population of OEM manufacturers since almost everything in terms of technology is made here in Taiwan. For example, nearly ever major computer motherboard company, including Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte, is based in Taiwan. It’s very easy to get disorientated and find yourself in the midst of a sea of wacky products with equally incomprehensible descriptions.

After wandering around the show floor for awhile, I came across the first actual company I recognized: Cooler Master. For those of you who don’t know, Cooler Master makes some of the best computer cases available in terms of aesthetics and cooling. However, their booth at COMPUTEX featured laptop sleeves and cases. I happen to find Michael Kwan here at the same time.

The PR rep for Cooler Master insisted that Michael and I take a picture with their booth babe holding some of their products. Despite our protests of “But why male models?”, we gave up and did our best “MAGNUM!” for the camera. And no, there’s no way in hell I’m posting that picture.

One thing about COMPUTEX is that there isn’t any food anywhere in the convention center. Sure, there are overpriced and stale sandwiches sold in small booths here and there between exhibition halls and I did see what appeared to be delicious cake in the press room, after a tough day walking around getting booth babes to pose for me, I needed some real food. Fortunately, we’re in the middle of several large department and in Asia, pretty much every department store has a large supermarket and food court in the basement. Since Michael and I are barely literate when it comes to Mandarin, we basically looked for the busiest place and went there.

I’m not sure what Michael was eating but it was swimming in hot sauce and he looked like he was about to explode. I, on the other hand, went with the safe route and pointed at whatever the special was, which ended up being fried chicken, some tofu blocks and a bowl of noodles. Price? 130 TWD, which is around four Canadian dollars.

One of the big stories of COMPUTEX this year is the launch of new additions to Asus’ Eee PC line. The current Eee PC is a tiny 7″ micro-notebook with a very small hard drive, a very small screen and a very small price. It is hugely popular with folks who want a tiny, incredibly portable and very cheap laptop and aren’t concerned about speed or storage space. The new Eee’s now feature either a 8.9″ or 10″ screen, which still puts them in the ultra-ultraportable range but with more storage space, screen real-estate and a keyboard that fits adult hands.

Afterwards, we met up with Stephen, who was off doing his own thing, for meetings with OCZ and Gigabyte. When the video is up, you can see me playing Unreal Tournament with my freakin’ mind using a new contraption OCZ is developing. There’s a lot of strange science involving facial movements and stress levels but since I don’t understand any of that, it’s best if I just post the video when it’s up and post a link to the science-schmience.

It wouldn’t be a tech conference without plenty of parties for media types like us. Tonight was the Shuttle party, which was a bit of a disappointment, really. The live entertainment was a bad karaoke band and there was barely any food left by the time we arrived fashionably late. The good news was that there was plenty of beer left. The bad news is that there was plenty of beer left because it wasn’t a particularly good beer. It was fun to mess around with their closed circuit security feed, though.

Let’s hope Thermaltake puts on a better swinging shin-dig tonight.

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