PC Expo 99 Show Report - Part One

STAR WARS Episode 1 Digital transfer
Monday night, Keith, Daniel Reznick and I attended an all-digital screeningof STAR WARS Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, which is being shown for only amonth in four select theaters around the New York area and Los Angeles. Thedigital format means no scratches, skips, or dirty film, but it really goesbeyond that with a visual quality that is hard to describe. Projecteddigitally off a massive hard drive with Texas Instruments' DLP Cinematechnology, STAR WARS took on whole new levels of sharpness, depth, andimage quality. Digital sequences such as the pod race and droid/Gunganbattle scenes were even more realistic. And digital characters such as Watooand Jar Jar Binks were virtually perfect.

In the future, movies will be deployed via satellite to theaters andprojected digitally this way, and our glimpse at this future was reassuringand exciting: We're right at the beginning of an age of degradation-freemovie making.

PC Expo 99, Day One: Tuesday, June 22, 1999
Though I was excited to see STAR WARS digitally, I spent most of Mondayfighting the need to sleep, and Tuesday morning arrived rather unpleasantly.Keith and I headed into New York for the opening of the show earlier than wehad anticipated, arriving around ten. This year's PC Expo lacks anyblockbuster announcements, but as always, it's the show to see on the EastCoast.

As usual, Microsoft's presence is obvious all around the Javitz Center,where PC Expo is held. Outside, a massive inflatable SQL Server 7.0 boxgreets attendees, while product billboards hang everywhere in the entryway.Microsoft's gigantic booth includes a Partner Pavilion where allies andother smaller companies can show their wares under the Microsoft umbrella.Executive Software recently released Diskeeper 4.5, their excellent diskdefragmenter for Windows NT. A lite version of Diskeeper 5.0 is included inWindows 2000; Executive says the full version, which will ship late thisyear, will allow for more advanced functionality. They're currentlyreviewing whether it makes sense to release this product during the Windows2000 beta cycle. IBM was showing off its sleek black IntelliStations andflat-panel screens running Windows NT. And Windows CE partners such asAvantGo and Casio displayed their portable solutions.

Microsoft has three theaters running constantly, with demos of Windows 2000,Office 2000, and SQL Server 7.0. The most exciting announcement so far,however, has to be Microsoft's new line of keyboards, which include theNatural Keyboard Pro, the Internet Keyboard Pro, and the Internet Keyboard.The Natural Keyboard Pro is a full-sized ergonomic keyboard that answersuser complaints about the smaller Natural Keyboard Elite with its odd keyplacement and miniscule arrow key layout. But the Natural Keyboard Pro alsoadds a bunch of new features, including two USB ports and Internet andmultimedia hot buttons (which are small blue buttons arrayed along the topof the keyboard). The other two keyboards are normal "straight" keyboardswith similar features. They'll all be available in October and trust me:I'll be first in line.

Microsoft was also pushing its new Terminal Services, which is now bundledwith Windows 2000 Server. This cool feature lets you run applicationsremotely off a server using Windows clients, dumb terminals, managed PCs,and the like. One of the demo machines was an Apple iMac; there wassomething serendipitous about seeing the iMac running Windows 2000.

One of the unexpected highlights of the show is Corel, which recentlyreleased its WordPerfect Office 2000 suite, featuring WordPerfect 9. We'regoing to be reviewing the suite soon, so I don't want to give it all awayhere, but the short story goes like this: Don't count these guys out yet. Ina world where Microsoft Office has been able to steal marketshare through machine bundling, it's easy to write off WordPerfect. But this product offersfeatures Microsoft Office can't touch, such as real-time preview, at a pricethat blows away the competition. Corel understands the market in a way thatI never thought was possible and there's even the possibility thatMicrosoft's antitrust trial could have a positive effect on this company'sability to get their product into more people's hands. The crowds at theproduct demos were certainly enthusiastic.

America Online, which included Netscape Communications, CompuServe, and ICQin its booth, was showing off its latest online clients. But they got asmall black mark for handing out Communicator 4.51 on CD when 4.61 has beenavailable for a while now.

Creative Labs was demonstrating its new Nomad portable MP3 player, whichfeatures a beautiful small form factor, 64MB of RAM, PC connectivity and anice suite of software. This is another thing I'll be buying as soon as Ican. They say it will be out "later this year" and I can't wait: It looksfantastic.

Be was on hand with a curious new logo that is reminiscent of Newton's oldlogo and a new version of its namesake OS, Be OS 4.5. The company and itspartners were showing off audio, video and other multimedia software thatplay to the OS' strengths. Though Be just keeps getting better, it's hard tounderstand why they bother in a market dominated by Microsoft. AlternativeOS fans are turning to Linux in droves, but the Be OS is smaller, quicker,easier to use, and far more elegant. Do they have a chance? I don't thinkso.

Adobe surprised people with a new version of Photoshop, 5.5. I wasn't ableto figure out what any of the new features are, but I'll look into it. Theywere also demonstrating their other products, such as Illustrator 8.0.

Downstairs in the low-rent district, the pathetic small "Linux Pavilion" wasmanned by exactly six companies in an area smaller than my bedroom. I fullyexpect to read on Linux news sites that "Linux conquered PC Expo," but don'tbe misled: The Linux presence here was a joke. Newcomer Linux Magazine,which joins Linux Journal on newsstands, joined Caldera, Red Hat andSendMail (oddly enough) in the Linux Pavilion. All in all, however, theLinux Pavilion was a non-event as usual. In fact, there were more iMacs atthe show than Linux PCs from what I can tell.

One sad note: The once mighty Borland was represented by a patheticallysmall Inprise/Borland booth in the back of the cellar at PC Expo, shillingJBuilder 3 and Delphi 4. Only a few shows ago, these guys had a massivepresence with constant product demos, but those days are clearly over.

What's next?
Keith and I will be joining Larry, Joel, Howard, and George from WUGNETtonight to attend a few parties. I'm not sure which we'll be hittingexactly, though we're shooting for the PCxPress, Windows NT Magazine, andSpencer the Katt parties at least. I'll have a full report on the PC Expoparty scene tomorrow