Las Vegas, Comdex -- breakfast

It's almost 8.00am here and I've done the morning round (shower, breakfast etc) and made the first mail pick-up. Astonishingly it took me three goes to connect via AOL. Usually I would bet money that I can get onto AOL from an American hotel room quicker than I can figure out the taps. Well, the first failure was because the hotel forgot to turn on my room phone. The second was because I plugged the phone handset into my notebook, instead of the plugging in the outgoing line. Doh! Anyway, the next job is to register for Comdex, and it will be interesting to see how long the queue is. There's the feeling that the great days of Comdex -- traditionally, the world's most important computer trade show -- have passed.How many people will turn up? The Gates keynote, which will be held this evening, used to attract such a huge crowd they moved it to the MGM Grand Arena, where he appeared between world championship boxing matches and Britney Spears. (Not on the same night or at the same time, which would, of course, have been interesting.) This evening I'll be trying to count the empty spaces....