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LAS VEGAS--Comdex 2002 definitely was focused on the serious side of technology. Sure, plenty of flashy new gadgets and invisible wireless transmissions filled the convention hall. But it just wasn't the same old technology trip-out. Was it the state of the economy? The fact that event producer Key3Media is considering filing for bankruptcy?

We're not sure, but here's one example: One team of vendor dancers--you know, the ones we complain about year after year for being too scantily dressed and cheesy--this year wore business suits! But this serious tone didn't stop our intrepid PC World team from fanning out to ferret out the best--and worst--of this year's high-technology extravaganza.

The Good

Fast Mover: Planar, the flat-screen specialist, offered the 17-inch PX171M, just 2 inches deep with a street price of $589. This baby has a screen resolution of 1280 by 1240, both analog and digital inputs, and one of the industry's fastest response times (16 ms). The PX171M also gives users a wide range of tilt, swivel, and height adjustments, all at the touch of a finger. This thing can move better than Janet Jackson. --Frank Thorsberg

Elegant Cell Phone: Nokia's model 6100 cell phone will be the handset to have for style-conscious people when it launches this spring. Weighing only 2.7 ounces and barely longer than a business card, the sleekly designed phone feels great in the hand and is one of those products you'll love showing off. The company expects the phone to retail somewhere between $200 and $300. --Ramon G. McLeod

Coolest Audio Device: Connect the $40 Audio Bug from Antonio Precise Products to your portable MP3 player or PC, and play music through an FM radio. Downside? Those $6 CR2 batteries. --Steve Bass

Nice Mice: Contour Design may not have the shelf space of Logitech or Microsoft, but its upcoming mice look great. They're available in three sizes in models for both righties and southpaws, and they have scroll and backward/forward rockers on the sides. They're optical, too. --Harry McCracken

Smallest Scanner: At a mere 10.6 ounces and the size of a fat ruler, Visioneer's $181 XP 100 does what flatbed color USB scanners can't do: fit into my briefcase. --Steve Bass

Coolest Non-U.S. Product: Off the show floor, chip maker Transmeta showed Sony's U-series mobile PCs--tiny notebooks that squeeze Windows XP into a case the size of a small paperback book. Too bad they're made only for the Japanese market. (Specialty reseller Dynamism.com does import them.) --Harry McCracken

World's Thinnest Printer: At 3.9 inches wide and 6.3 inches deep, Brother's MPrint thermal printer boasts an impressively small footprint--but its depth, less than 0.7 inch--is truly amazing. Brother executives say it's currently shipping in Japan and Europe for $299 to $399, but is just a technology demo in this country. --Yardena Arar

Gimme Two Pounds: If the prospect of toting a 3-pound Tablet PC seems a bit daunting, hang on. NEC early next year plans to ship a 2.1-pound slate, which would be not only the industry's lightest but its thinnest (0.6-inch) device. This Tablet PC thing seems to be getting legs: Gateway announced plans to offer a cobranded unit with Motion Computing, a start-up founded, ironically, by former Dell executives. --Yardena Arar

Cool Convergence: CD players and DVD players are a dime a dozen. But Philips's $299 JackRabbit JR32 is an external, portable 32X/10X/40X CD-RW drive and 12X DVD-ROM drive that also has USB 2.0 connectivity plus component-video outputs. So you can connect it to your PC, to your TV for Dolby 5.1-channel sound, or to your stereo for MP3 playback. Add a battery pack, and you can take it on the road. --Alan Stafford

On Screen: ViewSonic's Smart Displays, due out in January 2003, come complete with a Wi-Fi (802.11b) connection to your main PC, so you can browse the Web or check e-mail from your couch. Though not suitable for road warriors, they do appeal to home and business users. As I recently set up a wireless home network, I can't wait to try one out. Being able to check Ahman Green's stats during a Packers game or to check Jennifer Garner's bio during Alias would be priceless. --Joel Strauch

One From Column A and One From Column B: An interesting new entry in the combo cell phone/PDA area is Sony Ericsson's tri-band P800 phone. Send multimedia messages, play video games, check e-mail, store contacts, and even take pictures with a tiny snap-on digital camera. It's also Bluetooth-equipped. Estimated price, $500-plus. It's on sale in early 2003. --Frank Thorsberg

Classy Party: Electronics giant Samsung rented the Bellagio's Aqua restaurant for a dinner keyed to its "Four Seasons of Hope" charity efforts. Promotion of Samsung products was minimal, and guests got to hobnob with Yankees manager Joe Torre, whose domestic-abuse foundation is a beneficiary of Samsung's program. --Harry McCracken

Another Good One: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Bill Gates (no, they're not the same--BBVD is a band), Beluga caviar, risotto, and lobster all were on hand at Microsoft's Comdex Tablet PC party. --Steve Bass

Tiny Desktop or Big PDA? Samsung's Nexio is a 9-ounce handheld with an impressive desktop-like, 5-inch, 800-by-600 LCD screen and a built-in 802.11b wireless adapter. The Windows CE.Net-based device can be used with or without an optional keyboard for Web browsing and Pocket Office apps. --Yardena Arar

Home Theater for Less: Philips's LC6231 is the company's first widescreen home-theater projector--and it costs less than $2500. Sounds expensive, but it's HD-compatible, and Philips says it'll display an image from 40 inches to 250 inches diagonally, if you have wall space that big. If you don't, you can get a wide-format screen for around $500. Happy viewing. --Alan Stafford

More Home Theatrics: InFocus's new projector, the InFocus X1, and the Gateway Media Center PC bundle--including a 42-inch plasma display--were among a growing group of products for digital home theaters. The X1, which can do double duty as a business projector, will go for a very reasonable $1699, while the Gateway package runs $4000. --Yardena Arar

Tutorials and Training in a Flash: EHelp and TechSmith, best known for its SnagIt screen-capture software, both demonstrated products that can quickly produce Flash animations for online training, particularly software training. Both products can essentially capture activity on a screen, such as cursor movements, and create animations that are ideal for businesses that need moving product demonstrations on their Web sites. Since both programs can output to Flash, the file sizes are quite small compared with those of streaming media or movie files. TechSmith's Camtasia Studio retails for $249 and is available by download. RoboDemo from EHelp retails for $399. --Ramon G. McLeod

A Palm for Your Wrist: Now this could be handy. Fossil's Wrist PDA is a wristwatch and a personal organizer based on the popular Palm operating system--complete with an illuminated touch-screen face and a little stylus built into the wristband. Coming by mid-2003 in two models, a $299 Fossil version and a less-stylish $199 version under the company's Abacus brand. --Yardena Arar

Best of Comdex Award: Another publication that shall remain nameless doled out the official best-of-show awards, but if I'd been in charge, I'd have advocated for the single coolest product I saw, the Duesenberg on display at one of the evening press events. This classic 1930s roadster melds functionality and style in a way that puts today's technology products to shame. The only drawback: At a current value of $1,000,000, it's more than a tad on the pricey side. --Harry McCracken

The Bad

Parrot or Pariah: If Microsoft's Office animated paper clip Clippy drove you nuts, then Mitsumi's Talking PC Mascot might push you over the edge. Called Poll-E, this animated plastic parrot figurine connects to your PC and squawks, flaps its little wings, and wags its tail feather when you get e-mail. It retrieves messages and uses text-to-speech technology to read them aloud. Poll-E also tells you the time to alert you to calendar entries. The 1.5-foot figure will run you $49, but the true cost may be your sanity as it constantly twitches and mutters inaudibly. --Tom Spring

Smoke, Mirrors, and Partitions: Many vendors commented on how un-busy Comdex 2002 was. But you still had to slog through hordes of people clogging the aisles and exhibits to get from one end to the other. Psst--anybody ever heard of walk right, pass left? Word has it that the show was crammed into a smaller area than in previous years, and that the aisles were narrower than in the past, slowing traffic. --Alan Stafford

The Eyes Don't Have It Award: One exhibitor showed off a system for projecting 3D movies, "no glasses required." But the blurry images were so tough on my eyebones that I felt like I needed a new prescription. --Harry McCracken

The PDA Worm Turns: Palms were once known for affordability and portability, while Pocket PCs were the somewhat clunkier upmarket cousins. At this show, however, Dell unveiled a $199 (after rebate) Pocket PC, while ViewSonic and HP showed off very attractive, thin, and lightweight Pocket PCs for $299. Palm did display its $99 Zire, but its new color Tungsten T goes for a pricey $499. This isn't the way the PDA wars will be won, guys. --Yardena Arar

Most Unfortunate Product Name: At his annual keynote, Bill Gates showed off a new Microsoft Office application for taking notes, either via Tablet PC pen input or with a keyboard. It looks intriguing. But the name--"Microsoft OneNote"--sounds more like a criticism than a compliment. --Harry McCracken

Weed This Category Out: DVD drives and authoring software were big at Comdex this year, but you'd have better odds playing craps than trying to pick a winner among them. Many vendors' descriptions of their authoring applications sound exactly the same--burn your home movies to DVD in no time with only a few button clicks. But they conveniently forget to tell you that the process may take hours (if you're going to take full advantage of rewritable DVD's capabilities). --Alan Stafford

I'll Believe It When I Can Pay for It Award: PCE showed its Personal Computing Environments, which looked like high-tech dentist chairs with built-in PCs. The company's stated mission: "Anyone who uses a computer has the right to comfort and performance." Anyone with between $4000 and $7800 to blow on a PC, that is. --Harry McCracken

Most-Quoted Financial Stats: Everywhere I went, industry executives brought up Microsoft's recently released quarterly report, which for the first time broke out results by product line. The gist? Windows and Office are immensely profitable, and much of the rest of the company's efforts lose money. Which makes it tough for companies that lack those twin cash cows to compete. --Harry McCracken

The Ugly

Least Lovable Mascot: This one's a toughie--among the contenders are MSN's Butterfly Guys (who cruised the Strip in a double-decker bus) and multiple Austin Powers impersonators. But the prize goes to HP's bipedal Pocket PC, who lumbered about in an oversize costume and sometimes seemed in danger of knocking down attendees or personally toppling over. When last I saw the poor guy, a Key3Media representative was complaining to an HP employee and threatening to ban its anthropomorphic IPaq from the hallways. --Harry McCracken

"How Did I Get Myself Into This" Award: Definitely goes to people trying to get the hang of riding the Segway HT people mover without looking silly. --Steve Bass

Winner, Captain Video Award: How about those Sumacke goggles from Suma Brand, which claim to protect your eyes from glare and dry air? (The alluring design will also make you the talk of the office.) But for $150 (no, really) there's no peripheral vision, so your boss can sneak up while you're Web browsing. --Steve Bass

The Cabbie Consensus: Last year, most of my cabdrivers were bitterly angry about the scarcity of Comdex attendees compared with the profusion of taxis--some of which had been brought in from elsewhere in Nevada. This year they simply seemed resigned. One predicted that Comdex wouldn't return to Vegas next year, and he didn't seem upset at the prospect. --Harry McCracken

Hair Raising! Perhaps least likely to win Best of Comdex was the motorized Ting Ting Head and Joint Massager sold through OFT. This $35 device is designed to tingle the scalp. Hey, that already happens whenever Windows crashes. --Steve Bass

Well, Who Knows? Valet parking attendant at the Aladdin hotel asks, "So, you think this'll be the last Comdex?" --Steve Bass

"Mispronounciation": During a demo of what looks to be a well-designed Netbarrier 2003 firewall, the person walking me through called "protocols" by their lesser known name of "portocols." Ah well, she may have been selected for assets other than deep firewall knowledge. And hey, even Bill Gates himself misspoke during his keynote, dubbing the pulse cannons of the Xbox game Mech Assault pulse "canyons." --Joel Strauch

The Other

What the Heck? Comdex didn't have as many performers as it used to, and that's probably a good thing. This particular acrobatic troupe's performance had something to do with Microsoft products. Was it an attempt to symbolize a computer user's interaction with a software manual? --Ramon G. McLeod

Demo Most Shrouded in Mystery: Transmeta also showed "select" members of the press a prototype PC based on its Astro CPU, which won't show up in shipping systems until next fall. The demo was tantalizing--even though it was held in a pitch-black room the size of a closet. (Hmmm, maybe it was a closet....) --Harry McCracken

Biggest Vegas Trend: Las Vegas's attempt to remake itself as a family-friendly destination seems to be over--this year, the town was festooned with billboards and cab signs advertising "adult" shows. The word "sexy" was much used--quite a contrast with the Comdex show floor, where truly sexy tech gear was tough to find. --Harry McCracken

Most Appropriate New Slot Machine: My hotel had a bank of "Winning for Dummies" slots, inspired by the Dummies computer books (formerly published by PC World's parent). I put $10 in one to try my luck and ended up feeling like, well ... a dummy. --Harry McCracken

Weirdest Program: Crazy Talk takes a photo and a recording of your voice, and turns it into an animated, talking head. Okay, it's not great for productivity, but it's ideal for playing when you're facing a deadline. --Steve Bass