I went to the Arizona Technology Expo this morning to see what Tech means to Phoenix. Not bad actually.
Insight was the primary sponsor, but Intel, Verizon and a handful of small companies were there marketing their products and services to each other.
What was pleasantly surprising were the Tablets. Four vendors had Tablets on display. Most were ruggedized units although there was a Toshiba and an HP TC1100. I didn’t see anyone else walking around with a Tablet although this needs to be put in perspective: About the only other equipment I saw anyone with was a cellphone.
Everyone said they were pleased with sales–although this is probably a predictable response from a salesperson. The pitch at each booth was that Tablets are good for city and government workers. In fact, it almost sounds like everyone is most proud of their sales to the Homeland Security Offices. Is that where all the money is nowadays?
Outside of this group, many people didn’t seem to know about Tablets although a few did. I carried my Toshiba around and scribbled a few notes and ran a couple demo programs for those interested.
As an aside: I’m beginning to get annoyed by my Toshiba’s display at times like this. When I’m holding the Tablet and wanting to share what I’m doing with others, the viewing angle doesn’t hack it. For “standing up” demos I want a better display.
I missed my chance for a really good demo though. At one booth I was standing behind a couple of nicely dressed gentleman listening to a description of a ruggedized tablet. (I say “tablet” with a little t, because it wasn’t really a Tablet, but rather a PC with a touch screen.) A newspaper photographer was busy taking pictures. For some reason I figured “Cool, this photographer sure is interested in the ‘tablet’.” I should have realized that it wasn’t exactly the handheld computer that the photographer was after. After about 15 minutes the two gentlemen turned around and I chatted with the taller of the two. I was curious to see what they were curious about. But quickly the pair were being pulled along. It was then that I discovered that one of two was Bill Lowe, one of the key IBM executives that led the way to IBM’s introduction of their first PC. I have no idea if they were posing for pictures or were seriously interested in the tablet, but since I’m Tablet-biased I’ll assume the latter. I kick myself that I didn’t have my Tablet running when I was talking with them. I’d love to have pulled a Scoble and gotten Bill Lowe’s autograph. Just seems like a geeky thing to do.
One other pleasant surprise was at the Verizon booth. One of the engineers in the booth had an EV-DO card in his notebook with a live connection. It caught me off-guard at first. I didn’t realize there was service available in Phoenix, but he said it’s just in testing right now. I have to say, web-browsing via this wireless card was amazing. It appeared to be faster than the typical throughput I see with my home cable connection. He gave me some performance numbers, but I promptly forgot them. (Doh! I should have been recording the conversation in OneNote!) I understand the service will be $79 per month with unlimited data. This could be an ideal match for Tablet PCs.