Day three has been interesting in the fact that we have started to see vendors heading home. We had several visits with vendors in hotel suites; some were waiting for us to arrive and complete our visit, so that they could head home. Attendance is down, and they have already started reducing the amount of cabs on the street, so getting from meeting to meeting is starting to take additional time. We didn’t have as many special meetings with vendors today, so we had additional time to scout the floor for other new things. So, here it is… a look at Comdex, Day 3.
3Com – Where Was 3Com?
When we looked at your email responding to our earlier Comdex reports, we saw that one question kept coming up: where was 3Com?. Well, 3Com is, in fact, at Comdex this year, and the company has a small display in the Microsoft Partner Pavilion. As you can see, they don’t have a large presence at Comdex this year, which in many regards was unusual when compared to Comdex shows in the past. As far as we know, they didn’t have a display at any of the hotels, either. We had trouble getting close enough to see what was going on because the booth was so small, but we do know that they announced the NJ100 series of new integrated network jacks/ switches. What the network jack/ switch allows you to do is cut your cabling cost by only running one cable into the jack, and then just running patch cables out of the NJ100, into the cubes. The NJ100 can support phone jacks as well and has some other additional bells and whistles that we are going to save for the review. 3Com has shipped the NJ100 to our labs for testing and we will be looking at it soon. We don’t have a picture of the NJ100, because, in all of our attempts, we were not able to get close enough to the booth to get you one.
Vivastar – Is Affordable DVD-R Finally Right Around The Corner?
Our next stop was a visit with the folks from Vivastar. If you live inside the U.S., chances are you have never heard of Vivastar, but you will start hearing more about them soon. Vivastar is the maker of a new DVD-R drive that is going to start shipping in the US shortly.
Vivastar had one of the best booth designs we saw at Comdex. It attracted a lot of attention and we were able to snap this picture by using sophisticated crowd control tactics to move folks out of the way so as not to spoil the THG reader view.
Vivastar is a Swiss firm that has designed and will manfacture a new DVD-R product. The most important news about this product is this might be the first DVD-R product that gets pricing for both the drives and the media heading in the correct direction, which is down of course. According to Vivastar, they have not yet set final pricing for the internal and external versions of the product, but they say that, when compared to the popular DVD-R drives, the cost should come in between $100 to $200 less than the drives that are shipping now. The other news of note is that the Vivastar media will be the first to really shatter the $10 price barrier. We convinced Vivastar’s CEO to pose for a picture with the new drive, he was kind enough to let us snap a picture with the external version of the DVD-R drive.
Vivastar’s proud CEO poses for a picture with the RS-121 to tantatlize THG readers. When they deliver this drive it will be at a very affordable price point.
When their drive ships, Vivastar will also begin shipping their internally developed DVD-R software. They are also in the process of working with other DVD-R software manufacturers to get their software updated for the Vivstar drives. One very important feature of note is that the Vivastar software is the first software that we have seen that supports multisession writing on DVD-R media.
The Vivastar developed burning software looked very good. Easy to use interface and loads of featrures. The new DVD-R multisession support was also a very nice feature.
We thought that Vivastar’s DVD-R drive looked very impressive. If they can get their marketing ramped up, they look to be able to break into the U.S. market. Vivastar is excited to have us test the new drive and have promised to get one out right away to Partick, our optical storage editor, for review. We can’t wait to see the review.
3D Power – The Poseidon Is Coming Soon!
We stopped by 3D Power for a new look at the Poseidon water cooler upgrade kit. We asked them when we could expect the Poseidon in our labs for testing, and they told us it would be very soon. So, within the next couple of weeks, you can expect to see a review of the Poseidon. We thought the new updated version looked pretty impressive. We agree that expanding the cooling to the RAM should help extend the over-clocking range of the Geforce 3 500ti. It’s looking good, and we can’t wait to test it.
The Poseidon is coming! 3D Power is going to ship it soon and of course we can’t wait to test it.
Sentry – Commandable Web Based Power Management
Here is something that many folks might have overlooked. Sentry was showing a new IP-based remote power management solution. The Sentry Power Tower will allow you to remotely control power for up to 16 devices. With the Power Tower’s slick web-based interface, it was one product that some folks might have missed, but it sure did look good to us. We asked Sentry to submit a unit to us for evaultion. No word yet on whether they will accept our invitation to test it, but if not, you might want to look this company up as it was a solution worth looking at, if you have a need for it.
US Robotics – “We ARE back!”
We were very lucky to get a meeting with the US Robotics folks. Based on our discussion, one thing we can say for sure is that the drive to win is definitely back at USR. Our impression is that USR finally has some direction. We think that they were lacking a lot of this direction since being spun off from 3Com. USR had a variety of new products in several product catergories. USR made the point that it is important to know that they are no longer just an analog modem company, they are a communications company with a variety of communications solutions to fit your every need.
As far as analog modems go, there were a couple of important points from our meeting with USR. USR indicated to us that they see no hard data that convinces them that people are moving away from broadband and back to analog modems. Several sources have reported that broadband is on the decline and folks are moving back to analog modems. USR’s analog modem business is still growing, and they believe that, at least for the time being, analog is still king. They do believe that this rumor got started due to some fallout among the third party DSL providers, but they do think that, at least for right now, the broadband and analog modem markets will both continue to grow as more people get online. In other analog modem news, we asked some hard questions of USR concerning the V.92 upgrades for the older series of USR Courier products. USR says that they have been hearing what you, the consumers, have been saying, and they provided us with the following exclusive statement concerning the subject: “A V.92 Firmware Upgrade is in the works for the older series V.Everything modems that we expect to be availiable sometime during the first half of 2002.” Also, to kill another vicious rumor that has been circulating, they also said the following: “At this time the Courier modem product is on auto pilot and we have no plans at this time to stop offering this important product to users who continue to demand the best modem that money can buy!” This was welcomed news from USR and just goes to prove our point that change is afoot at USR. This time, it appears to be a change for the better.
Here is a look at the USR modem product family. Although, some of them might have new product numbers, for the most part the designs are the same and the quality is still there.
Another area USR is devoting a lot of time and product development resources to is the Cable Modem and DSL Modem markets. The new USR-8550 is a new ADSL modem with integrated firewall technology as a full suite of web-based remote management tools. They expect to see expanded growth in both products and features in the ADSL/DSL product space. To address this growth, they have started a move to bulk up on development staff. The USR-6000 is the first new cable modem that is based on the new Broadcom 3350 chipset family. With the USR-6000 cable modem, USR says that you can expect performance that is between 5% and 15% faster than the Toshiba and Motorola cable modems that are currently on the market. Of course, these speed gains are dependent on your cable provider’s configuration. USR plans to offer the USR-6000 in both MSO or retail deployment, so, this increases the chances that you’ll be able to either purchase one to use with your current cable provider, or that your cable provider will choose the USR-6000 as the modem of choice for deployment.
Here is the current complete line of USR products in the networking product space. Notice that they have pretty much everything that you need for an affordable networking solution. We didn’t have time to talk about USR’s 802.11b wireless, but rest assured that we will review it in our 802.11b wireless roundup.
Enlight – Cases Galore
Enlight was showing a lot of new products. So many, in fact, that we are just barely able to fit all the pictures here, so we are going to have to hit just the highlights.
First off, they have a new version of the EN-7237, which has pretty much been the bread and butter for Enlight. Enlight managed to make changes without messing with a good thing. They enhanced the EN-7237 by adding two front USB ports.
You can see the new EN-7237 on the far left with the addition of two front USB ports they finally have the one thing that this case was missing. Also in this picture you can see the EN-7520 and the EN-7522
Next on our list is the new EN-7247. The EN-7247 takes a lot of what was popular with the EN-7237 and updates it by adding a lot of new features, including the silver front, an innovative screwless drive rail system and, of course, front-mount USB support.
Here is the hot new EN-7247. Innovative features and a progressive update from the EN-7237.
Perhaps Enlight’s biggest news was that they are entering the cooling market with a bunch of new heat sinks and fans. From what we could tell by looking, they seem pretty good, but as you know, with cooling, the jury will remain out until they are tested in our lab. Enlight will send in all of their new coolers for testing in our lab very soon.
Enlight is going to enter the cooling business. It looks like they have some good product here, so we are looking forward to testing it in our labs soon.
Atech Flash Technology
We have to say that we really enjoyed our visit with Atech Flash Technology. They showed us their new U Drive technology, which is a new, solid-state storage technology that can reach about 256MB at the moment. Right now they are selling the USB adapter and the U Drive 32MB. They also have a variety of USB adapters to handle just about any media format that you have, and they have also developed a new 3 1/2 multi-format bay that will handle just about any flash technology that you can throw at it. If you are like us and forever dealing with multiple flash formats, this device will find a good home in your PC. Atech appears to have good, cutting-edge technology, and we look forward to seeing more of it once it arrives at our labs for review.
Here is a look at some of the products from Atech Flash Technology. Keep your eyes on these guys they have some pretty good designers working on some really innovative ideas.
Suntek
Our final stop of the day was a meeting with Martin Lin, the GM of Suntek. We had a very in-depth discussion about our Rant-O-Matic article on power supplies. He agreeded with us that something needs to be done to inform the consumer about power suppplies and power supply quality. Martin said that in his industry there are companies that ship cheap power supplies, get the customer’s money, and when the failure rates hit a certain point, shut down and open up under a new brand. In this way, they can avoid returns and customer dissatisfaction and merely sell on price. After all, when you buy a power supply, it is all cash upfront. Scary thought.
We looked at the new case products and power supply that they had to offer, and, as far as cases go, they had some very interesting design innovations that we found to be very good.
Here is just a fraction of the cases that Suntek has to offer. They offer some very innovative design and even has the Atech Flash Technology Flash Media Reader installed in the unit on the far right hand side of the photo.
Transmeta
Maybe Transmeta has gotten a raw deal. We took some time to talk to company reps at the Transmeta suite in the Venetian, to try and make sense of the Transmeta value proposition.
Interestingly enough, Transmeta stands in a kind of limbo when it comes to positioning because it is not directly impacted by Intel and AMD, or, for that matter, any other CPU vendor. Transmeta’s buzz word is efficiency, quantified as performance per Watt. With Transmeta products, OEMs are producing products that don’t typically occupy easy to digest segments of the mobile market – a sort of no man’s land between laptops and PDAs.
But, they sure have some cool must-have products.
This is the Fujitsu Lifebook P series with a TM5800 chip running at 800MHz. Weighs in at 3.4 lbs. (1.54 kg) and has a 1280×1024, 10.6 inch SXGA TFT display.
The Lifebook should retail around $1,400, Transmeta told us, and can probably work playing a DVD movie for about 7 hours on one battery charge. So, even if you only use it as a portable DVD player on the road, you’re getting bang for your buck. It’s a portable DVD player with a computer attached, or is it the other way around?
And we used it. You’re not going to want to type out anything on it for long periods of time, but it’s a heck of a companion to have on the road. Very cool.
Then there is this product, from Sony.
Sony GT1 using a TM5600 running at 600 MHz. Comes with a 20 GB hard drive, 128MB of RAM, and weighs in at 2.41 lbs (1.1 kg). Has a 6.4 inch SVGA TFT that tilts and swivels in any number of directions and even folds back onto the keyboard.
This is digital camcorder which doubles up as a computer, or is it the other way around? Very cool. The screen and camera head swivel and twist in any number of directions to give you a Masters in Origami.
These are very cool products. Transmeta is probably right in asserting that its chips are the only chips that are really suitable for this category of mobile computing. It seems strange that Transmeta hasn’t enjoyed a better time in the press, or seen greater success in the market.
Something is wrong with this picture, and we are not sure what.
In addition, Transmeta was showing 1U rack-mounted boards that use its chips, in combination with RAM and a 30GB hard disk. They had them in a demonstration server, and Transmeta made the point that low power consumption ideally suits them in this market because, users can pretty much stack together a box that acts as a Linux cluster and stick it on the desktop. They should present none of the same heat and power consumption issues that typically plague clusters, making them a possible desktop product for people needing raw supercomputing power for their applications.
Summary – From a Dealer’s Perspective
We thought it would be good to get a fresh perspective on Comdex from someone who should have the same level of access as we do, but might not be subject to the usual marketing pitches that we get. So, we asked a dealer friend of ours to write down his thoughts about Comdex because he knows what his customers are buying, and he is the guy that, ultimately, companies at Comdex should be courting. The results are very surprising, and show that modern trade show etiquette is, well, pretty much crap.
The way most companies run a booth at Comdex can be boiled down into two categories – the ones that just like to get your name and number to generate as many “leads” as possible, and the ones that would much rather put you through the ringer so that they don’t have to deal with too many people on the selling side.
Very few companies seem to have trained their staff in how to behave in a trade show booth. Simple things, like don’t stand at the edge of the booth with your arms crossed as if you are trying to guard the damn thing. Then, there’s the no brainer, when a press guy asks about your product, try and show some enthusiasm because, it’s called publicity. Microsoft has as much of a problem in this regard as do some smaller companies. One vendor we talked to actually refused to give us a brochure because he said he didn’t want his competition to get a hold of it. You figure that one out yourselves.
Learn to do business, guys. Get some older guys in the company who have experience and professionalism. Anyhow, we feel just as frustrated as our dealer friend, who has is own story.
We are a reseller and distributor of hardware and professional services out of Columbus, Ohio and had never been to Comdex before. We are not the biggest dealer around, but we do a fair amount of business supplying thousands of systems a month, so we have a fairly large customer base, and are therefore a dealer that a company would probably like to have selling its products.
The toughest part of our business is catering to both the big corporate buyer and the individual enthusiast. We have to be good jugglers. As a result, we have to have a high-end line of product, a mainstream line, and a budget low-cost solution. So, for us, we’d supply our three customer levels with motherboards from ASUS, Gigabyte, and ECS respectively, and differentiate our products lines for each group that way. The frustrating thing about this year’s Comdex is that none of them were really on the show floor. Gigabyte had a blank white wall with a kiosk explaining that we would have to go to the Bellagio to see their product, ECS was at the Venetian, and I couldn’t even find ASUS.
So that was a bust. Then, I wanted to talk to Western Digital and IBM because those are our primary drive lines, but neither of them were available either. Even Creative Labs, 3Com, Antec and Altec Lansing were nowhere to be seen. I sell this stuff all day long and can’t find a point of contact to establish a relationship…? I was looking for AMD w/ DDR product at the show, but ended up with keyboards and power supplies. I thought that vendors would be eager to generate new leads and meet with prospective customers. It sure didn’t seem that easy to be a customer, to me.
But, I did find one very cool product. Mimio Technology was an eye-opener for us – enough so that we sat down for the presentation! Their development of a dry-erase board laptop transference device was incredibly easy to understand and use. In training seminars and educational environments this seems a must-have. With their custom marker-holders, you can actually turn your board into a touch-screen onto which your laptop is imaged. We later learned that Mimio has been around for a while, but we hadn’t had an introduction to the company, or even read about them. So, Comdex did its job here, for Mimio, and they were on the show floor. Right where we could easily come across them.
Summary, Continued
On the other hand, everything at the show seemed to revolve around USB and wireless. Linksys, Netgear and SMC were all showing new product that hasn’t hit the market yet – even more frustrating because this is mainstream product that I can’t get my hands on. USB 2.0 was being kicked around a bit, and IoGear was at the forefront with two major products – which I later found out were covered in the Day 2 THG coverage of Comdex. Their Ion is a USB 2.0 HD enclosure with up to 540Mbps data transfer capability, and the Impulse is IoGear’s new external CD-RW drive at 16x10x40, including the USB 2.0 adapter and burning software. Surprisingly, the price tag on it is going to be really competitive, making USB 2.0 burners much easier to consider for mainstream sales.
Cisco and SMC were both sporting the 802.11a (54 Mbit and 72Mbit turbo) wireless LAN cards and Access Points. Otherwise, Mitsumi had a very surprising product – inexpensive Wireless Access Points. Any computer with a network card or integrated NIC can hook up to this AP, which is the size of a pack of cigarettes, and connect at 11Mbit for quick transfer of files and/or Internet Connection Sharing.
One of the actual highlights of the event (aside from the amazing raspberry lemonade by the front entrance) was the chassis selection. We ventured over to Sky Hawk Technology, who’s been able to market an aluminum case with front USB, firewire and audio along with a 300W P4-approved PS for a very competitive price. Cooling isn’t a problem, either – the case comes with an 80mm intake fan, another 80mm that is seated laterally right on top of the CPU fan with an exhaust duct, and a rear chassis fan. The durability is impressive as well, because we set the case on the ground and stood on it for a few minutes with every intention of bending the metal, and it didn’t budge. On a very high-end scale, we walked over to Lian-Li’s booth and drooled over the PC-60 case that we’re all secretly in love with. I mean, the thing has three-speed variable control on the dual 80mm filtered ball-bearing intake fans. Other features include a removable motherboard panel that slides in and out with ease (it’s aluminum…), 4 front USB, screwless design for 5.25″ drives, a removable 3.5″ cage, and a total of 12 bays (5 internal). After a good discussion with one of the reps, I also found out that Lian-Li cases ship directly from the factory with Enermax 350W dual intake power supplies. I might have to set aside some extra money to stock these – they are hot!
Unfortunately, we found that we had to qualify ourselves immediately to vendors to even get the time of day. Generally when you’re a vendor, making sales, taking money and moving product are the important things at a show. The most frustrating aspect of Comdex was that no one really wanted to talk pricing! It felt like the final straw-you find product (or what you think you can introduce into the mainstream market) and then you have no idea how much you’d be paying for it in quantity. With so many companies that have no U.S. representation, how can you start promoting / selling your product when no one knows how much they’d be paying for it?
The entire event was still very impressive, and it didn’t hurt that we were in Vegas. We were amazed at the number of small companies displaying product and impressed by the enormity of the larger booths. On a side note, nobody was giving out much free stuff – you know, the T-shirts, custom mouse pads, mugs, hats, bouncy balls with blinking lights and every other random item that we all love to take home from occasions like this one. Maybe a sign of the budgetary times. At the end of it, we were just happy that we had an MSI stress ball to squeeze.
Please follow-up by reading THG At Comdex 2001 – Post Mortem.
