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PC Expo '99 Coverage 27

Posted by Hemos from the rolling-it-up dept.
Reporting live from New York's Javits, Ars Technica has gone the latest round of coverage, with info about Quake III and BeOS, amongst others , including Simcity 3000 on Be, along with the sorry state of the Linux "pavilion". That's one of those down sides - the Linux shows themselves are usually pretty rocking, but outside of that turf, the showcasing is pretty lacking - preaching to the choir situation.
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PC Expo '99 Coverage More

PC Expo '99 Coverage

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  • "preaching to the choir situation."? Do you even know what "preaching to the choir" means?

  • Contrary to the other posts (ie trolls), I think you will find the reason the Linux Companies have the larger presenses at shows like LWCE or ALS is that they can get more bang for their buck. Linux companies like RedHat, VA, etc are more likely to sell to Linux people that to the folks at a PC Expo.

    Also, there are a lot of computer shows around, Comdex, Interop, PC expo, beyond the Linux shows. Most companies probably don't have the resources to do to all of them. Even with RedHat IPOing, they still don't have the resources of an Oracle or IBM to hit every major show they would want to sell at. What might be a better idea is if the Linux companies pooled their resources under say Linux International, and sent one rep from each company to sell the Idea of Linux. Then they can be sold on VA or RedHat or SuSE.

    Finally, If the audience of PC Expo is IT professionals, then maybe a less glitzy presence is what they want. Selling to the Linux Community is different than selling to the Suits, even if there is some cross over at both kinds of shows.

    Chris

    I'm not speaking for any Linux Comapnies or any Linux shows here. Just tossing out stuff to think about.
    --
    3rd Annual Atlanta Linux Showcase [linuxshowcase.org]

  • Yes, I would've thought that one would want a different sell-approach to the IT professional crowd, but the sad (*and strange) fact of the matter is that the glitzy, big booths get all of the attention.

    I talked to a few random people (I was going to compile an interview), and I've comer to realize that many of the suits are true busines-types: that is, they gague the success of something by its outward appearance. This is to say that some of the people I talked to assumed that Linux was still small and minor, mostly because the Linux pavillion was small and minor.

    Short-sighted, I know.
  • It doesn't matter if it sucked or not. Why? Because, when I was there, I saw the laughable Linux Pavilion, and was impressed that we at least have a presence. To add upon that, Compaq's oft-hated glitzy booths were hiding a few secrets.
    One, they had a beowulf cluster there, of 1 GHz (or maybe I messed that part up) of Alphas. That's right. Beowulf. As in Linux. Toshiba was also showing off their new servers running Redhat 6.0, and Corel had their Netwinder demos ready to show off. By the way, cool thing: doubled up rackmountable Netwinders. Imagine a cluster of those babies hooked up. Sony's also starting to make sure the VAIO laptops work under Linux. To top that off, even the less significant companies (i.e. those that don't manufacture PC's) are starting to warm up to Linux support for their hardware.
    PC Expo is meant to show off new technologies to the semi-gearheads. But nowadays, they don't give us the blank stares when we mention Linux. I'd say that's a massive step in the right direction. The Pavilion was more or less Redhat's attempt at recognition, but Linux still had its three days.

    Christopher Kalos
  • The Linux pavillion at PC Expo was definitely disappointing. I expected to see the biggest and best support yet for Linux and, as mentioned in the original post, there were just a couple of undermanned, small booths that weren't showing much. Where was VA Linux Systems with all of their recent backing?

    My first thought was maybe Linux won't make it to the big time after all.

    My second thought was that I better not pour my life savings into RedHat stock.

    Ralph Alberti
  • I visited the show on Wednesday. There really wasn't anything new from last year's show.

    While I didn't have much time to visit the BeOS booth (I was at the show with my boss) what I did see wasn't flattering. They had some video playing on BeOS and quite frankly, the quality stunk. The framerate didn't seem very high, and it seemed quite jumpy. This wasn't the BeOS I remembered seeing last year at this show.

    I haven't seen anyone mention it before, but Castlewood was there in a big way (for a small startup). They had some corny comedian handing out plastic noisemakers and getting people to make lots of noise. (They were located in the very back of the first floor and needed something to draw crowds.) I got to hold the Orb (SCSI external). The drive itself seemed sturdy as well as the cartridges. I think I'll purchase one as soon as I'm sure they're not going to break after a month or two like SyQuest's 135MB and 230MB drives did.

    The Compaq booth was just plain stupid. They had some dancers doing a jazzy routine singing about "e-biz city." They also had this corny guy they called "Dr C." (I think) talking about how Compaq invented everything from the first firewall to who knows what else. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Compaq hasn't done anything extraordinary since they produced the first IBM compatible machine. Since then they've just purchased companies which have done extraordinary things. (And lets not forget their valuable input into debacles such as EISA! :-) However, the Compaq booth wasn't all bad--you could sit for a few minutes, and they handed out Compaq chocolate bars.

    Perhaps the most amusing portion of the show was watching the herds of people going crazy at the Iomega booth. Here is a company who is raping its customers by charging $10 for 100MB. They make it up with colorful marketing, and people love it. Most of the rest of the world uses MO drives. I guess, and I can say this because I am one, most Americans are idiots. (I'm American, not an idiot :-)

    And yes the Linux Pavilion was a sorry sight. RedHat had a guy and a girl running a very tiny booth. Both of them looked like they wanted to run out of there quickly and get away from the crowds hording around their tiny space. Caldera had a much more professional offering, but still wasn't all that impressive.

    I belive this show is dying. Last year the lower floor was full. This year it was half empty. Companies like Dell didn't even attend. Perhaps Miller Freeman (the company that runs the show) has been charging too much. Perhaps companies who already do plenty of marketing (like Dell) can't be bothered with the expense? Does anyone have any better reasons?
  • Man, I don't know what Expo this guy was at, but he pegged it all wrong.

    I seem to remember talking to the guy who actually did the Be port for quake III. Hmmm... IdSoftware is in charge of it? I don't think so. And I find it very hard to believe that anyone at the booth told him that, perhaps he misheard someone. Unlike most of the other booths, the Be people there were some of the most important parts of the company. There was no one there who would have told this guy that Id was doing the port.

    I don't remember the guy's name off hand, but when I asked him about the Be port being multi threaded he said:
    "Yes, I just got the code from Id a week or two ago, I worked on it a bit and now the Be port is multithreaded"

    Or something along those lines.

    And the comment about the Word processing capabilities for the iToaster, Everyone there was more than willing to tell you about it. I didn't even need to ask, they just said: "yeah, it's running Gobe"

    Over all I think the Be booth was the best one by far, and any comments otherwise are misinformed or just wrong. As for available software they told me that their PR department works faster than their engineers, so the signs up were a little to optimistic, (meaning, not everything listed is done being ported over).

    Yes, the linux booth was rather sad. Redhat did a piss-poor job on that one.

    And the Alpha Booth, what was wrong with the skit? I found it one of the best booths at the show, and was upset that it was on the bottom floor and not up with the bigger players. Unless IT managers become zombies when they go to these shows, (which isn't the case according to the ones I know), a company trying to make themselves seen and have fun at the same time is a good thing to do.

    Now Viewsonics dancing birds, that was lame... but what are you going to do?
  • Troll much?
    You've managed to take the point ARS was making and spin it 180. Ars was complaining that the vendors at Linux shows don't show their wares at the mainstream shows.

    In other words, they were complaining about a LACK of promotion.
  • That's right, it's only more stable than windoze, and completely free. The fact that companies like RealNetworks, Intel, and IBM are supporting it doesn't hurt either.
  • (Just to put this in perspective, I'm 16 years old, so I don't have a driver's license yet.)

    Thrusday morning, my father and I drove all the way out to the Javits Center in the city (from Long Island) for a fun afternoon of browsing around at various exhibits and various other stuff. We get there at about 11:00, and proceed to the registering booths to pick up ID tags. Around this point, we see on the bottom of the registration form that no minors below the age of 18 are allowed on the floor. That doesn't sound good. So we go ask a person at the information booth if that means I can't go in. It does. So we go up to the show managers section, or whatever its called. Due to insurance reasons and other things, it's their policy (dictated by their parent company in England) that nobody under 18 can be on the exhibit floor. No exceptions. Period.

    Well. That sucks. That day was pretty dissapointing, as you can imagine. Does anyone understand why they have these strange policies? I've been to other computer shows at the Javits Center, and they don't have any age requirement or anything. While I was there, I also saw a man and his young daughter that had the same problem. I'd assume they went home dissapointed too. I saw a pair of 14-15 year olds walk up the stairs to the registration section and back down again without name tags. FWIW, I'm a programmer and have set up a local network at home for shared internet access and I'd guess I know more about comptuers, etc. that a good deal of the people there. Anyone have a similar experience anywhere?
  • Does anybody know of intentions to port SimCity to Linux? I'm having a "Hey, me too!" reaction...

    --t
  • Likux is not in a sorry state. When you get up close I've seen countless people go "And did you say this stuff was all free?" Then that's usually followed by comments on how robust this OS is and how it's really in a postition to start compeating w/ the enterprise Unixes (Solaris, IRIX, Tru64, ect.) out there. These are pople who though Linux was not ready for enterprise untill theay really took a good hard long look at it. So in my experence the reverse is true. There's not enough publicity and when people who know what it is there looking at take a closer look theay are usualy plesently suprised at the power and comunity support behind Linux.
  • Sorry to hear that... I'm 16 my self I had no problem getting in...
  • ...Insurance probally wasn't the only reason for the age limit... It seemed like they were trying to make it a very pro. show the last thing they probally wanted was poeple bringing thier little kids and having them run around or get lost in the crowds...
  • It has to do with legal stuff and insurance... if you're a minor, the people who own the building will have more liability for a minor getting hurt on the premesis than an adult... they have to get pricier insurance if they want to do an all-ages gig, and if you're trying to seduce a corporate sector, most promoters would just save the money and make it 18+.

    Same goes for concerts and their ilk.
  • Unfortunately, it wasn't just less glitzy. Besides being in an out-of-the-way part of the show, the whole thing was also too small to really get a good look at anything if anyone was in front of you at the booth. I was there yesterday with my boss, his boss, and another colleague. They were really interested in getting a look and some information about Linux, but and none of them really came away from the pavilion knowing much more about it than they had already heard in industry magazines. Luckily the head of our department is an old Unix guy, so we will be setting up some Linux boxes anyway. Plus I've been talking about what Linux can do for awhile now. :-) But that decision is in spite of the presentation at the show.

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