newsBYTEs: Special Report

Because of time zone changes, the clock seemed to slow down as I flew west to attend last November's COMDEX. But it sped up quickly when we arrived in Las Vegas. This year's COMDEX was as big as ever, with over 10,000 vendors and 250,000 attendees crammed into the Las Vegas and Sands Convention centers. The intensity of activity is unbelievable, seeming to compress months of ordinary life into five days of COMDEX time.

As usual, the action began before the show began. COMDEX officially opens its doors Monday morning at 10:30 am, but the big "pre-show" event is the Sunday night keynote address by Bill Gates. Among other things, Mr. Gates announced the new Windows Media Player for the Pocket PC, which now includes streaming audio and video capability, letting you play Windows Media (.wma, .asf, .wmv) files on your Pocket PC. You can download it at (www.microsoft.com/mobile/downloads/default.asp). He also demonstrated a tablet computer running "Whistler," code name for Microsoft's next-generation operating system for desktop PCs. Interestingly it has the flat icon look of the Pocket PCs. Finally, he talked about Microsoft's vision of a post-Web future. As is, you get more information than you can handle from the Web. Bill painted a future where content was filtered and delivered to users based on their desires. What caught my attention was the emphasis he placed on the Pocket PC being a part of this future.

The next big pre-show event is the invitation-only Mobile Focus/Digital Focus show, which took place at Caesar's Palace immediately after the Bill Gates keynote. This is kind of a mini-COMDEX focused entirely on mobile computing and digital imaging technology. As usual, I got lost in Caesar's Palace and had to ask directions. When I finally found the site, I spent most of my time visiting booths in Mobile Focus, touching base with the following vendors:

• Casio displayed a new vertical niche Pocket PC as well as some other interesting accessories. I report more on Casio news later in the article.
• Compaq (www.compaq.com/products/handhelds) is still flying high over the critical success of the iPAQ Pocket PC. I learned that they will release a monochrome screen version of the iPAQ to the worldwide market, but not in the U.S. They were also showing off their wireless solutions for the iPAQ, including the Air Card 300 wireless CDPD modem, which can be used with the iPAQ via the Compaq PC Card Expansion Pack. Compaq has a number of iPAQ solutions being developed for the health care industry.
• Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com/jornada) was showing off some new colored flip covers for the Jornada Pocket PC. I heard rumors from non-HP sources about a digital camera card in development for the Jornada, but got no confirmation from HP.