My Macworld visit

DAY 1

We start out on Tuesday morning in the press room, and everyone is getting ready to go. Even Tim looks happy and set to go:

We listened to the Keynote, and then Tim and I were off to the Apple booth to see the new “Air.”

I really wanted this to be the replacement for my aging 12″ PowerBook, but it is not. This is a MacBook machine at MacBook Pro prices, but has some serious issues in my view. I want the better graphics chip for one, and at least 4 GB of memory, neither available or possible on this machine. I also do not like that the user cannot change the battery. If one does not sit in first or business class when flying, when the battery goes dead, you are carrying a brick.

One person at Apple argued that they did not want to make it 1/2″ thicker to make the battery replaceable. Form over function? I thought Apple migh have learned this issue from the iPod and iPhone comments. Obviously not, but then again, we know Apple does not really listen to customers.

But the unit is beautiful,and I am sure a better version will come along soon, and there are a LOT of Apple users who like form rather than function, so I suspect it will sell well.

After some roaming around, it was off to Prosoft for the first day of the MyMac trivia contest. Here are just a few pictures of Tim, Jennifer Bell of Prosoft, and a few contestants. Listen to the Podcasts for more on what is happening here:

Back to walking around for the rest of day 1. A quick stop at Quicken to say hello to Christine Morrison of Intuit’s TurboTax Inner Circle (you should join this if you use Turbotax) and have a look at the new TurboTax, written from the ground up. Looks very good, look for a review soon. Equinix was showing something called “Tube Stick”, a very cool USB tuner for your Mac. But unlike other tuners like this, this one receives HD ATSC (over the air digital signals), QAM (digital cable TV channels) and a standard off air tuner. And, it comes with some very cool software. A review of this will be coming as well. Lastly, Tim was looking at a new device to use his iPod as a portable recording studio. Was this it? Stay tuned…

DAY 2

Day 2 started off with Nemo and I checking out what HP had to offer. There were some amazing new printers at HP, and reviews will be coming soon. A few of highlights:

A new low cost photo printer that had 8 inks, including two types of black, and a new photo gray. The pictures from this printer were amazing, especially at the printers low cost. And it prints on many kinds of papers. Watch for a review on this printer, this is one you are going to want of you take pictures.

Also interesting in HP’s booth were a new Laser Multi-function All-In-One printer, a very cool photo printer that not only requires no computer, but lets you edit and modify your photos with an interactive touch screen on the printer, and a very inexpensive home laser printer for well under $200! There was a LOT more, HP had an impressive booth this year, and a solid commitment to the Apple product line.

Back to Prosoft for day two’s trivia contest.

It was then time to go to LaCie to see what they had to offer, and there are some cool new offerings in their booth too. More on these later, but a quick look at two items I liked. The black box is a new hard drive called LaCie LaCinema Premier, designed for the living room! It has HD component video outputs and built in software to play videos, pictures, and music on your home TV system via a remote control, all for only $249. The silver disks are LaCie’s Quadra line coming in early February. With multiple interfaces, and multiple discs, these are fast drives at reasonable costs. More when we get to see them in our hands.

After some walking around the floor a bit more, a number of us ended up at Microsoft’s conference room high above the show floor. First the great view from above:

Now, I would like to say there was something to show from the Microsoft discussion, but it was mostly talk and not easy to take pictures. However, in the “You know your a big company when…” category, Microsoft has specially designed M&M candies made up for them with the Office colors and logos!

Day 3

This started out as a beautiful day in San Francisco, so first, here are a few shots outside the conference hall.

Now, back to the show, already in progress. Nemo and I were off to Crumpler. Timbuk2 was still missing on the show floor at this year’s Macworld, which is strange in a growing Macintosh market, but so be it. But Crumpler was there to win over Macintosh users, and they have the product to do that. Here, Nemo and Bianca Dillon of Crumpler take a tour of some of the bags we will be reviewing in the coming months.

After Crumpler, it was back to Prosoft for more trivia fun. This time, Guy Serle plays host.

With a little energy left, I stop by Kensington for a peek at their new mice, and then off to the West Hall for a quick last minute tour…

Sorry, I will post more pictures from day three later.