Cars, Dolphins, Bad Teeth--This Is a Computer Show?

LAS VEGAS -- Comdex Fall 2000 demonstrates one of the dark sides of convergence: It's getting hard to tell the trade shows apart. And, if current trends continue, someday there will just be one big, unending trade show that all industries, no matter how unrelated, will share.

I begin to realize this when I come upon the Mercedes booth.

It's kind of hard to miss this booth if you spend any time at all at Comdex. A huge banner with the famous car company's logo hangs over a display that sits right smack dab in the middle of what is supposed to be one of the world's biggest computer confabulations.

Computing on a Different Road

I think, "must be early for next week's auto show, or maybe the auto show was last week and they had a hard time dismantling their display." No, the Mercedes man says, if you go over here at so-and-so time we'll give you a ride in a real Mercedes, and it has a computer in it. Hmmm, I can't recall seeing an Intel pavilion at the last auto show I attended, but it's just a matter of time.

I don't get very far past the row of new Mercedes when I see somebody selling furniture. "Now it's the home and garden show," I'm thinking. But no again, this time what I mistook for a TV table is a travel accessory that stows a fold-out notebook computer table in a carry-on bag.

Azpac International's Flightables cost from $129 to $169 and will probably be cluttering airport terminals around the world by the end of the year. Of course, it won't take more than a few more months for the FAA to declare that the devices are air-safety hazards, and then the only people using them will be Three-Card Monte dealers.

Point, Click, Shave

It's hard to avoid thinking about hustlers while one is in Las Vegas, but before I get too carried away with the existential strangeness of this place, I stumble upon another electronic oddity. In a back corner of the Las Vegas Convention Center, between a set of fire doors and a hot-dog pushcart, are arrayed J&J Magnetic's Little Dolphins.

In their matching stands they look like their namesakes jumping out of the water. But what do these brightly colored plastic forms do? They out-mouse your mouse. You don't slide the Little Dolphin along a desktop or other surface; you grab it like a handle and roll your thumb to position the cursor.

Quite a few people may find a cursor-control device you grab more comfortable than one you push and slide, but what will doom this product is not its functionality. It's that it looks exactly like a woman's shaver.

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