[ale] Computer show on Saturday

[Charles Shapiro]

I actually went out to the Bluestar Productions computer show (
http://www.supercomputersale.com/ )  at the Georgia International
Convention Center last weekend.  

It was a fairly small show, with only about 20 vendors present. One of
the merchants told me that this kind of show was a little bit of a
crapshoot -- some are a lot better than others. The crowd was mostly
techno-peasants, some with high-school age children who seemed more
knowlegeable than the dad with the money.  Few vendors would take checks
-- if you go, use cash or a credit card for your purchases.

Much of the gear was the kind  of stuff most of us already have bangin'
around in our attics and basements: ISA sound cards at $2 apiece, piles
of 10 MB NICS,spools of cat5 wire, broken or outdated laptops. I was
specifically looking for a Lian Li Aluminum case & a decent power
supply. Alas, the only Al cases I saw there were way overpriced. They
had some alleged 400W power supplies, but they were suspiciously light
to me. One dealer had the PCI sound card of my dreams, but alas he
wanted $30 more for it than I'd pay in town. And he wouldn't bargain.
Foo.

I did get a couple of cheap 1.44" floppy drives, a 20-gb drive, and a
$12 video card. The computer book vendor had a good selection of
O'Reilly books also, although they tended to be a little out of date.
But I found a couple of Python books and the TCP/IP administrators guide
for $10 apiece.

All in all, good if you're into rummage sales. I'd definitely go there
if I were looking for a cheap server for connecting to the net or
hooking your printers up to your LAN. I think I'd buy or build my main
machine elsewhere though.


-- CHS



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