Today is going to be our last day at CeBIT, we're going to take a little roadtrip through Germany with a couple of stops. First off we're headed to Minden to meet up with Johan de Gelas, afterwards it's down to Switzerland to catch what's left of the Geneva Auto Show. I've never been to the Geneva Auto Show, much less Switzerland, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to drive down there (I mean honestly, when is the next time I'm going to be within driving distance of Switzerland?).
Before we leave today I thought I'd leave you with a few random notes from my Germany/CeBIT trip thus far:
1) The MacBook Air's 4200RPM HDD really sucks at opening and manipulating tons of very large images (6MP+) in Photoshop.
2) Germans drive very well. Christoph challenges that stereotype ;)
3) I've never seen so much attention drawn by the MacBook Air as I have in Germany. Last night I spent around 10 minutes talking to someone randomly in a hotel about it. He took pictures of it and posed with it. Passers by at the show are also drawn to it. It's not so much a shock that I'm in Germany, but seeing a MacBook Air in Germany is apparently a huge deal.
4) I'm kidding Christoph, please don't leave us in Minden.
5) My German grammar is terrible. I sound like a homeless crackhead when I speak. Christoph's favorite thus far? "Where are Jens?" (Jens from Planet 3DNow was staying with us). At least taking 5 years of German has left me with the ability to make Germans laugh.
6) CeBIT is quite possibly the most organized tradeshow I've been to. Everything is so very well segmented and despite its tremendous size, it's very manageable. I think I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's far better than CES from an organizational standpoint - I don't spend 30% of my time trying to get from meeting to meeting.
7) The OCZ Brain Mouse isn't anywhere near as bad as I expected it to be. I was speaking to OCZ's Ceo Ryan Petersen last night and he does have a pretty good vision for where the technology could go. I'll admit that I was skeptical at first, but after enough iterations I think it could very well be something big.
8) The biggest thing at CeBIT? The platforms. For the first time we've got serious competition from all three major chipset makers: AMD/ATI, Intel and NVIDIA. I don't think I've made it clear how important the Intel G45 is. Hardware accelerated H.264/MPEG-2/VC1 decode is huge and will place it on par in many senses with competing AMD/NVIDIA options. It's also marks the inflection point in Intel's integrated graphics performance. From now on forward, I'm expecting to see Intel finally raising the bar on its integrated graphics performance. Intel is taking graphics seriously for the first time and it should only get better from here.
9) German radio is awesome.
10) HDMI is everywhere on all of these new integrated graphics platforms. It's a good time to be building a HTPC :) (theater updates when I get back, I promise!)
That's all for now, more later.
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ViRGE - Friday, March 7, 2008 - link
So how's the sparkling water? I recall the last time you were in Germany you noted how much you loved it. ;-)crimson117 - Thursday, March 6, 2008 - link
I've been considering building a dual purpose HTPC / Gaming PC... do any of the new platforms allow quiet integrated HD graphics to run in HTPC mode, with an add-in GPU card that only turns on when gaming performance is needed?*crosses fingers*
yknott - Thursday, March 6, 2008 - link
Anand,I'm surprised you haven't driven on the Autobanh yet!
When you get to the Geneva Auto show, be sure to check out the Koenigsegg CCXR Edition. Nothing like an all carbon fiber body with 1018 hp to make your day.