Segway, Kensington, Sandisk all dance the Tango

THIS IS the beginning of the end of my reporting of this years' Expocomm 2005 in the land of tango down South, and there's a lot of info to be condensed into a single article. [Where's the booth babes video? Ed.]

I'll talk here about new sightings, products or booths that weren't there last year and which surprised me in a positive way.

Probably what caught the imagination of most visitors was the booth of Champion, which presented the Segway human transporter to an amused and surprised audience. Champion will act as the local distributor and also handle tech support and warranty of the units sold locally. Local prices range from $3,000 greenbacks for the least expensive to around $5,000 for the E167 which they hope to sell not only to the general public but to the local police and private security firms as well.

The Segway HTs and the Wimax offerings were the comment of almost every visitor

There were two girls at the booth playing around with the units and they excelled at its driving. People were allowed to test drive the Segways only after some initial basic training, and wearing a helmet, I suspect to avoid disasters of all kinds. I recorded two small mpeg4 video clips of the Segway HTs in action with my Samsung U-CA5, which you can view here (demo girl) and here (two guys from the public). Thinking aloud... why is it that a girl on a Segway always ends up looking sexy, while a pair of guys -specially if wearing helmets- on Segways seems to look like morons?. I don't know. INQuiring minds want to know... and perhaps Segway could redesign a male and female version of the HTs?. ;)

The second most surprising booth -at least for me- was the arrival of Kensington (Acco Brands), which announced they're opening an office in Argentina and bringing their entire product line down here -yes, even trackballs-. I'm still a fan of my 9 yr. old Kensington Expert Mouse v4.0, and they surely appreciated my brand loyalty. They also allowed me to test my Gateway 7244GX in the "Kensington Laptop Desktop" docking station, which happened to fit nicely, despite being a wide-screen notebook. This landing of Kensington in the country comes not from the US headquarters but from Acco's offices in Chile. In fact, Mr. Rodrigo Muirhead from Kensington Chile was at the booth and was very helpful during my stay at the booth answering my questions. The "Laptop Desktop" docking station is a beauty that I originally wanted to review here on the INQ, but when Acco USA shipped a sample unit to me earlier this year, it got stuck in the customs thanks to the outrageous paperwork fees of the DHL courier -which is material for another article-. I hope the new local distributor -or the Chile office- eventually is able to supply one to do a proper review.

Kensington Booth. And my Gateway notebook in the "Laptop Desktop" adapter

Also new this year was a booth with the complete AXIS product line, including most of its network cameras. These generated a great deal of interest, as did a booth showcasing the Bravo II automated CD printer from Fargo. I'm sure some of the local CD pirates must be dreaming about getting their hands on one.

CD printer from Fargo

Axis network cameras

Sandisk booth

Finally, also new this year was a booth featuring the complete Sandisk product line. "Showcased" were the company's flash memory cards - in all flavours, including the latest greatest "Extreme" series-, Wifi SD cards, and its line of portable MP3 players, in 256 and 512MB versions, everything with local warranty. µ