Good Bye To Another Macworld

With another MacWorld tucked away in our minds, we all wander away from the conference with thoughts of what we want to buy, and dreams of the things we wish we could buy (I still want that Mercedes SLK iPOD accessory!)

In the next week or so, the staff will pick what we thought were the best of show products and software, and hopefully we can do some fast, small reviews of each of those products to help you decide if you want them as well. I already posted a few favorites of mine which I mentioned in recent postings, but I still have a very large stack of stuff to go through to figure out what I missed.

The strangest site of all at this year’s MacWorld did not take place at the show actually. It takes place about 30 minutes after the show, when someone fires off that starting gun (not really a gun) that signals to all the show exhibitors, “Start your tear down.” I am sorry I do not have pictures of that happening, because it is a strange metamorphosis indeed to see the bright, cheerful array of products and booth turn into a large pile of stuff to be packed in boxes and hauled home. And hauling all that back to your work place is a big problem if you have ever attended or run a show booth. Just what can you do to not haul it all back?

Give it away or sell it for cheap! And if you are in the right place at the right time, there are bargains and freebies to be gained, prizes to be won. Unfortunately, this is my favorite time to be wandering the floor, and I was not able to do it this year. My “real job” did not allow me the time to attend the last 30 minutes after the show this year, but I did run across two young guys who did. Seems that if you are at the right both at the right time, many vendors and exhibitors will simply give away stuff they do not wish to carry back, and if on display, can no longer sell as new. Some will sell $500 items for $50, and an array of swapping between vendors, trading one product for another starts to take place at this time as well.

These two guys, Alex and Nick, I caught hauling their loot onto a BART train in San Francisco near the convention hall heading back to Oakland late Friday afternoon. A couple of young jazz musicians (around the age of 16 I am told) who like the rest of us who attend the show, lust after all sorts of very expensive toys we simply cannot afford to buy. But for these guys, being at the right booth at the end seemed to pay off for a few of these things.

Nick (sorry guys if I got your names swapped) scored a very cool set of ProSticks in that 30 minutes, simply be convincing the right people at DVForge/MacMice that he was “most worthy” of walking away with them. At $329 a set, this is a major score for this young guy. These are not some cheesy little computer speakers, but high quality speakers with a ported subwoffer that pump out high quality sound. He told me his buddy also scored a set, and it seems Alex tried as well but was not as lucky. Guess it is all about timing! Alex did get a copy of Poser, and they both got iPOD accessories, music, shirts, mouse pads, other software and trade show swag as well. Major score guys, makes me wish I had made the time to be there. Well, there is always next year!