An overview of Comdex Canada

[Jason Dunn]

Thoughts reader James Bodiam went to Comdex Canada and came back with a great report - I have yet to attend a Comdex Canada, and even though the Pocket PC presence in Canada is sadly lacking (we're a "Palm country" if there ever was one), James found some things to get excited about.<br /><br /><i>"Hi Jason, [I] just wanted to drop you a quick note about this year's Comdex Canada. Although a great deal smaller than previous year's shows there were a few highlights for myself and a former co-worker who took today off to tour the show with me.</i>&lt;!>"<br /> <br />"[I] Had a chance to compare my Jornada 568 to the new ipaq 3970. With my Jornada set at full brightness, I compared it to the 3970 which was set at half brightness... the difference was mind-blowing! The screen was a great deal sharper and a picture beamed over looked amazing for colours and sharpness. I asked about a number of reported issues with Xscale processors that I have seen mentioned on Pocket PC sites... couldn't duplicate any of the issues with button presses, etc. and the Windows Media played a 100 Mb movie file without any difficulties from a compact flash card. At another booth, a 3970 connected to a cellphone with GPRS via Bluetooth without issue and a great deal faster than my GPRS PCMCIA card.<br /> <br />[I] Did manage to meet up with a representative from Novatel Wireless and mentioned some issues I was having with my card - he tried it with his ipaq and it connected in seconds... we compared settings, and one minor change and performance is greatly improved! (note: don't always follow the manual that the signal provider includes with their card.)<br /> <br />We had a chance to watch a presentation on Tablet PC being launched on November 7, 2002. The demo was using a prototype Acer notebook/tablet PC, and it took a minute to scrape our jaws off the floor! Considering this was running on a Pentium III 750MHz processor we were truly impressed with what we saw. [I] Had a chance to play with a couple of demonstration units, and walked away wiping up drool and saying to each other, gotta getta tablet!<br /> <br />When I think back, as we were discussing over lunch later in the afternoon, looking at "science fiction" shows like the original Star Trek, and thinking, that's a dream world regarding the "technology" used on the show, and then look where we are now, seems that Gene Roddenberry wasn't that far off. Talking about applications for tablet PCs, we could come up with numerous scenarios besides usage in the workplace.<br /> <br />[There] Wasn't much else of mention there, we passed by the Palm pavilion seeing as we have both switched to Pocket PCs this year and find them a great deal more useful in our daily work and personal lives, and wonder how we managed with so much paper and a Palm, compared to all the uses we have for our Pocket PCs now. <br /><br />And as for the 3970 ipaq units...I'm saving my pennies, not only am I buying myself one, but all the family are going to get one for Christmas this year! No more buying planners and refills and calendars, we're going Pocket PC all the way! I even sent a note to my favourite folks at Time/Design suggesting that they port their desktop PC application which duplicates the paper planning system I have used for 13 years with a portable technology solution.<br /> <br />I had tried the Avaya IP softphone software on my Jornada and was impressed to see what could be done with it... considering where I have seen telecom grow to since I first started programming and managing PBX systems over the past 10 years...all I can say is WOW! Avaya and one of their channel partners had a display with their IP telephony solution up and running...we tried one of the 4620 touch screen IP phone sets (very impressive technology...like a really big Pocket PC), and they demonstrated the softphone running on a Compaq ipaq 3870, along with an 802.11b PC card in an expansion sleeve, and the rep was able to walk away from the booth, call one of the phones there and we were able to carry on a conversation with very clear sound, not the scratchy, static laden signals that wireless phones used to have. I can now finally see my way clear to recommend IP telephony for business use.<br /><br />I was talking to Jay at lunch today about how to use Pocket PC in the IT world...imagine your technicians being out on a service call, and checking their open tickets from their Pocket PC to see if any other work was needed in the area they were working in...being able to have a voice conversation with a technician, or doing other dispatch work, or checking e-mails while working away from your workstation. Being able to reference technical documents on a server, using something like Adobe Acrobat Reader instead of lugging manuals around. Or using the new wiring patch panels that can talk to a computer in IT, downloading required jobs to the display panel on the rack, or tracing cables by pushing a button, connecting voice and data instantly. I'd say that the kind of work and speed of completion is about to improve greatly over the coming few years, allowing someone like myself to schedule work for technicians better, and to get more accomplished in less time, and allowing people to have a life outside the office!<br /> <br />So, for the small amount of vendors there, I was very impressed with the few areas we examined closely."

[dazz]

I agree with James that there were a few good nuggets at the show but I was very surprised at the total lack of effort Microsoft Canada put into promoting the PocketPC.

While you can argue that Canadians are conservative, and cautious we have shown that as a Country we LOVE technology. I don't think there is so much a lack of interest in PocketPC but a lack of knowledge about it.

Microsoft Canada allowed the Ontario PocketPC Users Group to have a spot at their pavilion but did not supply any PocketPC's that I am aware of. How hard would it be for them to call HP/Compaq, Toshiba and Casio to get a few demo units for the show?

If PocketPC sales in Canada are sub par I personally think Microsoft has only itself to blame.

dazz

[Charles Pickrell]

I think hosting a user group in the Pavillion was a really smart idea. Who better to demonstrate Pocket PC than Pocket PC enthusiasts! I agree a selection of PDAs to demo and some brochures would have helped the group out, but from what I heard they did a great job and stayed pretty busy answering peoples' questions.

[Jason Dunn]

There's another article on Comdex Canada with photos here:

http://ipaqpocketpccanada.com/comdexcanada2002.htm

[Paragon]

I'm part of the Ontario group but I couldn't make it to Comdex. I do know that the guys that did had a blast. They were very busy as Charles mentioned. Microsoft did supply an HTC to demo but that was about it, I think.

The idea of having the group in the pavillion really only came together less then a month before the show so there wasn't a lot of time to co-ordinate. I think our guys there felt the same, that they would like to have had more devices to showcase. Since this was the first time I'm willing to bet that next time will be much better in that area.

My hat goes off to the people who mannned the booth. Namely Sems, Hooch, Zahir, Ian, Sal, and Greg. I have heard several people mention what a great job they did. Sems did a great job co-ordinating the whole thing, even when some of us (me) gave him a hard time on a couple of things.

Dave

[Rob Borek]

I agree with James that there were a few good nuggets at the show but I was very surprised at the total lack of effort Microsoft Canada put into promoting the PocketPC.

While you can argue that Canadians are conservative, and cautious we have shown that as a Country we LOVE technology. I don't think there is so much a lack of interest in PocketPC but a lack of knowledge about it.

Microsoft Canada allowed the Ontario PocketPC Users Group to have a spot at their pavilion but did not supply any PocketPC's that I am aware of. How hard would it be for them to call HP/Compaq, Toshiba and Casio to get a few demo units for the show?

If PocketPC sales in Canada are sub par I personally think Microsoft has only itself to blame.

dazz

I agree, and I've said as much to Microsoft in a couple of different rants. I was at Comdex/Canada as well, and I saw the Pocket PC demo get cancelled (presumably due to a lack of someone to do the presentation). I saw Palm everywhere, Handspring everywhere, a keynote by the CEO of Handspring... but next to nothing to combat the Palm advertising/marketing push. It disappointed me greatly, to say the least.

[semsoid]

Well, one thing for sure, Comdex is getting smaller every year. It used to be both North and South sides of the convention center, they dropped to North, now only smaller area in South. Still, like Rob said Palm devices were all over the place.

Given the time constraints, we did the best we could as the user group, I even brought a 3970 which was center of attention with XDA. I wish the booth was similar to what it was at PocketPC Summit, Philly. Microsoft booth had most of the available Pocket PCs along with Thera and HTC XDA, a lot of accessories, from Nexian Cam to SD cards, from Sierra Wireless Aircard to simple modems. We'll hopefully be able to do something similar in the next event.

I am glad we were there at least. People were curious about Pocket PCs and we were able to point out "can your Palm do this" 8) , especially with movies and Tomb Raider game and accessories/connectivity, like Aircard.

Cheers

Sems

ps. Rob, the Pocket PC presentation got cancelled because the lady from HP marketing couldn't make it to the second day. If we had known prior, we'd arrange something to replace, but it was last minute notice.

[Jason Dunn]

Given the time constraints, we did the best we could as the user group, I even brought a 3970 which was center of attention with XDA.

I would like to personally applaud you guys for getting involved - it's great to see that someone cares about the platform, even if it's not Microsoft Canada. :roll:

[Rob Borek]

ps. Rob, the Pocket PC presentation got cancelled because the lady from HP marketing couldn't make it to the second day. If we had known prior, we'd arrange something to replace, but it was last minute notice.

The fact that it was being done by HP is, in my own view, a failure of Microsoft Canada.

And, I have the utmost respect to all those who tried to promote the Pocket PC in the Microsoft booth with what little they had. My disappointment is with Microsoft Canada, and no one else. Had I known earlier (I'd been so busy the month prior to COMDEX that I missed quite a bit of news), I would have come and helped out (and tried to get Microsoft HQ to supply some goods and maybe even some goodies). I'll ensure that there is stuff at Comdex/Canada next year :)