I should have known better!

All the bad omens were there warning me not to go to another trade show:

It rained. The train was late. And the woman at the donut shop forgot to put sugar in my coffee.

But did I heed the signs? Of course not! Instead, the dutiful technogeek living inside me urged me to go on, to continue my quest for a return to the days of yore when my mouth would water at the sight of another computer trade show at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan.

I had high hopes for C3Expo, which is a new show built upon the carcasses of CeBit America and TechXNY. Unfortunately, those hopes were dashed, kicked and stomped upon when I saw what awaited me on the show floor --- there was virtually no one there!

The booths took up less than a tenth of the available exhibition space and, as has been the case the past two years at the shows C3 replaced, the only crowd I had to battle was the line waiting to get into the men's room.

Even the satellite shows such as Showstoppers and Pepcom's Digital Experience failed to attract the number of exhibitors or the members of the media they normally draw to their events.

But even in this stocking filled with coal, there were a few gems:

• The folks at Xerox Corp. used the show to announce two new printers that have to be the fastest in the industry. The company's new Phaser 6350DP color laser printer can produce color documents at the rate of 36 pages per minute and their new Phaser 8550 "solid ink" printer prints color at 30 pages per second.
• Executive Software officially announced it has changed its name to the Diskeeper Corporation, taking advantage of the more recognizable name of its flagship product.
• Security was a hot topic, with Panda Software announcing TruPrevent, a new product that will be preventive rather than reactive when dealing with viruses and spyware.
• Seiko Instruments announced a new line of Smart Label Printers that will operate on Windows or Macintosh systems and can print labels from just about any Windows or Mac application.

Will I go again next year? You bet. After all, without Don Quixote, would there be windmills?

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