Introduction

Another year, another Comdex

After all the fanfare, freebies, and Las Vegas splendor, Comdex 2000 has finally come to an end for us. This year we took the quick three-day in-and-out route, since we all had plenty of work (Pentium 4) waiting for us back home. While another day at the show would have been nice, the sleep deprivation would have probably killed us.

Stumbling home off the plane from Vegas, we're often beseeched with the ever-popular "did you see anything cool" round of questions. Usually we're fairly quick to answer this, but looking back on the show this year, nothing too spectacular stands out in our minds. Aside from a few impressive 60'' Plasma screens demonstrating the prerequisite HDTV stream, nothing really caught our attention.

Mmmm... plasma

You're so thin!

Maybe we've become too seasoned Comdex veterans to truly appreciate fancy new products, but I doubt it. Most products we saw were more evolutionary than revolutionary, with the exception of a few innovative new wireless devices. On the wireless front, we were particularly impressed by FIC's upcoming web tablet (covered in-depth later in this update). The biometric products were interesting in a big brother sort of way, but I think our IT people would be more interested in mice and doorknobs that can read your fingerprints.

In this final update, we will be covering the latest motherboard news. On the last day we did a whirlwind tour of FIC, VIA and 3dfx. FIC briefed us on a couple new motherboards including an AMD DDR solution. We talked with VIA about its upcoming processors and DDR chipsets. We'll also be getting down and dirty with the real scoop on 3dfx (we even managed to get away with a few covert Voodoo5 6000 numbers).