Computex 2007: It's time for a change

WHEN FIXING my trip plan to Taipei for this year's Computex, I made sure that my stay covered the whole show period, from Monday afternoon till Saturday afternoon.

That included fighting to find the last remaining room in some ridiculous "hourly rate love hotel" facing a rotting flyover in some non-descript brown-dirt suburb in the middle of nowhere.

At the end of the day, I cut short the Friday show visit, and didn't even bother to go on Saturday - instead, I chose so-called "shopping" in soaked downtown Taipei under heavy rain. For those not in the know, downtown Taipei is not the same as downtown Singapore or Hong Kong: there are very few under/over passes to protect you, so it can get quite "challenging", to put it politely.

Why?

Well, quite a few reasons: Let's start with far less important, or at least interesting, product announcements compared to the previous years. Of course, it wasn't show management's fault that AMD royally screwed its expected Barcelona/Agena/Phenom, call it whatever you like, launch, which could have been the star of the show. Or that there's no R600XTX or GeForce 8900 announced here. As a show face saver, Intel showed plenty of upcoming Penryns - it seems they are pretty much ready to roll.

Then, the combination of hot sweaty weather (usual for Taipei at this time) and constant, persistent, irritating mid to heavy rain, made going around the show a total nightmare. Again, even after the "8 stacked Chinese takeaway lunch boxes, plus ketchup bottle with a straw on top, and 4 coins for some spare change at the bottom" Taipei 101 complex was completed, there was still no proper, fully covered walkway to protect those few hundred thousand show visitors from rain and sun when running like mad ants between the far-away halls 1, 2 and 3 to cover as many as possible of the 1,333 exhibitors.

There are missing links in all directions - not to mention that even Taipei Haunted Hyatt has no proper covered connection to the halls either, despite being the integrated part of the original TWTC complex.

Then, the traffic - OK, it isn't as bad as say CeBit, but still, the metro station is too far away, again without proper covered connection, and there is more or less a traffic standstill around the whole area, from early morning till late evening.

Finally, while the crowds are still there, it seems that even more vendors are relying on nearly-naked dancers etc to attract the visitor attention, even when there are no true news to show. Remember, Computex is NOT a consumer show, but a place for buyers, sellers, vendors, and yes, media, to meet each other, check out the news, discuss deals and so on. Leave the girls for the parties after the shows, they won't help on the expo ground if there are no interesting products behind them. Of course, if you DO have good stuff, the girls are welcome, by all means.

This was the last year that Computex is held solely on this ground. Next year, the huge new Taipei WTC Nangang Expo hall opens further east from Taipei, another half an hour by shuttle buses. It will double the total exhibition space to nearly a million square feet - but, imagine the headache now: not only do you have to commute between the existing three awful halls, but also another round of shuttle / taxi queuing to reach Nangang hall, and come back.

My feelings. Put in some darn $$ to fix the current area's walkways all the way; extend them to a convenient covered place outside the jammed area for direct fast shuttles to the Nangang hall to avoid wasting half the time circling around Keelung Road jam, and do a proper link to the City Hall metro station, since the proposed Xinyi area Maglev light rail line, supposed to circle the area and link the existing and upcoming metro lines, is not up yet, and Xinyi road metro line is still very far from completion.

Finally, the time slot. Comdex has been history for some time, and CeBIT is getting as dull as San Jose's nightlife. But OK, at least it's still alive, so March/April time slots are out of question, but the excellent pre-X'mas October/November time slots are free since Comdex's demise.

This obnoxious hot, sweaty, sunny and rainy weather in Taipei is a big damper on Computex, ever since its very start. A, say, late October time slot would, in my mind, be perfect - even if it it rains, at least we all won't sweat, and, well, Computex is more important than any other show on these fairgrounds - so they should give way. So, how about it? µ