Tuesday, September 10, 2002. 10:58AM.
Fall IDF 2002. San Jose, CA.
I’m in between sessions at IDF, hanging out until the next presentation begins. I am still recovering from the dullness that was the 10:00AM mobile track presentation. Fifty minutes of vague and dull PowerPoint poisoning is not good first thing in the morning.
The basic theme of the presentation was “our next mobile processor will be great, but we can’t really tell you anything about it.” No power consumption numbers or specific speeds, no release dates or . The term “best in class” was thrown about a lot, much in the way it is used to describe mid-sized sedans in television commercials.
My backpack is developing some conference-related residue. I am slowly collecting a number of useless marketing trinkets that are supposedly related to hi-tech products. Since USB 2.0 technology claims to be “hot”, the USB Technology Implementers’s Forum is handing out pot holders. To be perfectly honest, I would think that the CPUs need pot holders more than the peripherals (the low-power Pentium4 Xeon uses 30 watts … yes, that is considered “low power”).
The Serial ATA group is a bit stranger … they have little cell phone chairs. This is a black item, formed into the shape of a recliner, that is used as a cell phone holder. Whenever you’re at your desk, just take your cell phone from your belt and place it in the handy cell phone chair. What does this have to do with Serial ATA? Well … www.serialata.org is printed on the front of the chair in bold white lettering.
Trust me, it doesn’t make any sense. My company doesn’t really bother with marketing trinkets, aside from the occasional polo shirt (which everybody in the computer industry appreciates). I have collected a wide array of trinkets on this trip … t-shirts, pens, tins of mints, small plastic crystals that glow Intel blue when you tap them … each one of these items somehow emblazoned with a product name or website.
Some of these trinkets are pretty cool, and can be used as barter within the hi-tech cubicle farm (much in the way cigarettes are used as prison currency). I have a pen with a built-in laser pointer, which I use on the road for presentations and at home as a cat toy. But most of the stuff I accumulate on these trips gets used as a way to placate co-workers or decorate cubicles.
At least the odd blinking trinkets I collect are more interesting than the PowerPoint.
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