Of PC Celebs and Snacks

IF LAST night's after-hours reception was any indication, CeBIT America is the rage, especially for the who's who of media that turned out. Faces seen ranged from Dan Dern, former executive editor of Byte, to John Dvorak of Dvorak Fame.

Unfortunately, most of the so-called unique & exclusive products being "showcased" at the Marriott Marquis reception were merely upgraded versions of previous offerings. For instance, HP's new 2.60GHz box is configured the same as the 2.66GHz one I have at home with the following exceptions: 1) It's a .06GHz slower processor, with hyperthreading enabled. 2) The cosmetics are a little prettier 3) It has the brand-spanking new front-side high speed bus 4) The damned thing is $400 cheaper than the $1400 I paid out three months ago.

The HP people laughed nervously when I asked them where I could get my rebate. And the HP reps were doing the hyperthreaded shuffle (i.e. "Well, it's there, but your mileage may vary…") Note to the homebuild crowd: There's a reason why it's called the Bleeding Edge, and typically your arse is the one that's cut.

I suppose the big thrill of the night was gawking at the Linksys rep in her black dress with plunging neckline. I don't know if she was checking out the reception for future participation, but many of the male reporters were checking her out.

VIA was there and more on its gizmos later. It was supposed to show me a fully operational radio station in a box, along with various products built around its mini-Board. Aspire Digital had some cool tower speakers for under $500 bucks that I could be seduced into buying if I had a bigger house.

Most intriguing was a product by DejaView out of www.mydejaview.com. Expected to ship in September in a paperback-book size format for the electronics, it has a box and a mini-camera about the size of a thimble. The wired camera easily connects to the brim of a hat or to sunglasses and runs a 30 second running MPEG-4 video buffer. If you get flashed or see someone run over on the street, hit a button and the buffer gets written out to an SD card. It is supposed to solve the problem of "I missed the shot" when something exciting happens. Scenario pitched is parent watching little-league soccer (oh, sorry, football for your Euros) and Junior kicks a goal, but you didn't have the camera ready.

Man, I can't wait to see the laws and lawsuits waiting to be fought over this baby! One of the OEM applications may be in cars and the "button" would be the trigger on the airbag, so you could have a 30 second snapshot of the time up until an accident. Interesting, eh? µ