Consumer Products Blog
Last day of the Hong Kong Electronics Fair
By Derek Wallis - Last updated: Friday, April 16, 2010Today is the last day of the Hong Kong Electronics Fair, and the wind-down was quite evident, both due to the reduced number of attendees, and also the exhibitors starting to pack up (even though the fair organisers expressly forbid them from so before 5:00pm). For me, it was a day for collecting samples and re-visiting a few of the areas of the show that I had not covered in detail earlier – notably the International ICT Expo, which is a subsidiary part of the main fair.
Many of the exhibitors in the ICT Expo were offering management-related software packages (ERP systems, HR packages, inventory management software etc.), and various support services. This stuff is probably all very interesting if it’s your job, but not to me. Anyway, I still walked all of the aisles, just in case there was something interesting hidden away in one of the booths, but ‘rocket’ speed was necessarily adopted.
The ICT Expo also featured many vendors of computer hardware systems and components. However, if I wanted to look at this kind of stuff, I’d head over to the Mong Kok or Wan Chai Computer Centres. For those that have never experienced them, these places are not dissimilar (how I love double negatives) to the now uncommon UK ‘Computer Fairs’ of a few years ago. They are basically mini shopping malls, spread across several floors, each accommodating dozens small shops, the largest of which probably still have less than 20 square metres of floor space. Each ‘shop’ is rammed to the gunnels with every computer peripheral, component and cable imaginable. What space remains is filled with hordes of malodorous computer geeks who, whist able to build a PC blindfold, have no concept of what aluminium zirconium tri-cholorohydrex glycine is best used for. Moreover, every time I go to one of these places, I’m just itching to wear my ‘Life’s too short for Linux’ T-shirt. Bill rocks, and don’t let anyone try to persuade you otherwise (now putting on my flame-proof suit)…
However, I’m maligning the HK ICT Expo a little – the vendors offering sophisticated digital signage products were quite interesting. A few years back, these products were little more than a cross between an LCD TV and a digital photo frame. Now, they have touch-screens and are fully interactive – many supporting ‘multi-touch’ and ‘gestures’ too. Imagine a 42” iPhone, and you’ll be pretty much there.
Anyway, now the fair is done, I’ll be making my way back to jolly old Blighty tomorrow – or will I? It seems that jet engines are (quite understandably) not too fond of diamond-hard, volcanic ash. If you fancy a (not entirely representitive) practical illustration – take the air filter out of your car, drop in a handful of carborundum dust, and see what happens!
Now, as an engineer I, of course, hate flying. I am only too aware of how many components the plane is made of, and how few of them need to stop working before I’ll be having a very bad day indeed. Thus, I’d prefer that the airline chose to avoid things (e.g. volcanic ash) that stop these critical components (e.g. engines, bearings etc.) from working. Consequently, it looks like I’ll be here in Honkers for another day or so, until it – quite literally – blows over. Oh well, in the words of the eminent Alan Beresford B’Stard: “…ho-hum, another day, another lobster…”
