Nemo’s Notes from Underground San Francisco v2006.1 ‘” Macworld Expo at Moscone Center
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Excited Macintoshers are still pouring into this Expo at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 12, 2006, the busiest day for the showroom floor. The entire facility has broadband Airport wireless, so every available horizontal space in hallways and dining areas is taken by a guy with a 15″ PowerBook. Apple is brilliant by choosing this group of customers as the targets for its new Intelaptops.
During the entire week at the conference/expo, I’ve seen only a handful of 12″ or 17″ PowerBooks, or either size of iBook. I happen to be using the oldest, slowest Mac portable in the state of California, with fine results: my reliable blue G3 iBook 366 running OS X Tiger.
Gil, a new friend from Brazil, asked me if I could help him obtain a similar prehistoric machine for him and his girlfriend. She thinks it’s cute, and he wants one for his computer museum. I suppose my credentials as laptop geezer are fully established, unless I show up next year with a PowerBook 100.
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I mentioned “guy” PowerBookers above. Beth Lock asked me, a few minutes ago, via email:
Hi John.
Just a quick note to let you know I am still interested in reviewing children’s software, age 3-7 if you run into any vendors at MacWorld.
Also looking for a “cooling” stand for my powerbook, not necessarily for free or for review, (but that’s always nice if it is 
)but if you see anything cool I’d appreciate you letting me know.
Have fun!
b
p.s. where’s all the women? 99% of the pictures I’ve seen show 99% men. Any gurl geeks there?
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Here are your answers, Beth.
No kiddie software, or certainly not much in evidence, from the 350 vendors, because the Moscone marketplace isn’t coming here for that purpose. I’ll be glad to help you locate some next week, after the show.
Rain Design has a decent cooling stand that David Weeks and I evaluated a year or two ago, and other companies have similar products. Again, I’ll help you make a decision, if desired. Our review is at <https://www.mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=1776> and we gave Rain’s iLap a rating of 4 out of 5, FYI.
I did an informal population survey calculation using the crowded up escalator between 5:55 and 6:15 for my sample group, as thousands of participants and exhibitors departed the Expo hall at the end of the day just now. The approximate ratio is nine or ten men to every woman, except for exhibitors, with twice as many women as the general Macworld population, because so many mostly young women are used for public relations and marketing. As to the photos, I’ll try to strike a gender balance with my final set on Friday. Good observations!
JN
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David Weeks is home in Arizona, David Every should be back in Ohio by now, Roger Born is waiting upstairs for his son to accompany him on the long journey to southern California, Bakari Chavanu is on the road heading to Sacramento for the night, and Owen Rubin is finishing a long day at his real job. He and I will be representing MyMac.com here at Macworld for the final day, tomorrow, Friday. Can’t wait for it to happen!
[to be continued on Friday morning — plenty more to report]
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Nemo
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