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It was one of those days. At work, phones ringing off the hook (not that there are hooks on cellphones, but you know what I mean), seemed like all the people in the area got up on the wrong foot and all decided to call in. Out in the corner a TV was on, but since it was daytime it was just meaningless infomercials, so I wasn’t paying attention. Until I happened to see a commercial for the upcoming DIGIEXPO. “Ooh, gizmos and gadgets!“, I thought, spider-sense tingling. And since I had the weekend off, I decided to go.

I’ve never been to an expo like this before, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I was hoping for the aformentioned gizmos and gadgets. What most of it was, was rather unsurprisingly and disappoingly lightly dressed women wooing teen-age boys into stalls and stalls filled with X-Boxes, Playstation 3:s and Nintendo Wii:s.

Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate female beauty, and I do enjoy an occasional game, although my console is a dust-gathering original Playstation 2, and none of my computers are really gaming-spec, but I was feeling really out of place here. Sure, there were booths for all the major camera manufacturers and other major players, such as Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sony and Microsoft, but these were all overshadowed by the gaming scene.

Microsoft had the probably the largest single stage, naturally pushing the brilliant Windows 7 operating system, and the recently updated Windows Phone. I sat in on a few presentations, but found it difficult to follow, partly because of the nearby Singstar (or other sing-a-long-game) stage.

I think I’ve become more sensible to noise pollution since I moved out of the city eight years ago…

But what I saw I liked quite a lot. I’ve had a Windows Mobile-phone not so long ago, and the OS in that was really really bad. Not user-friendly in the least and very unresponsive on the whole. But this new Windows Phone seemed quite  alright. They had a few, mostly HTC phones running the latest Windows Phone OS and the little I played around with them I quite liked. I think I won’t automatically exclude every single Windows Phone the next time I’m shopping for a new one.

Nokia also had a presence, not on their own (which I found a bit weird, this being Nokia-land and all…) but as a part of the Microsoft booth, showing off their new netbook Nokia Booklet3G, which seems really nice. I’ve concidered getting one of these netbooks but every time I come to the same conclusion. I want one, I don’t need one. If I moved around more I might get one, but as it is a normal laptop and a phone with a browser covers what I need. But would I get one the Nokia Booklet is the one that seems to make the most sense of the ones I’ve seen.

The only thing I found which could be classified as a “gizmo” was something called a “blobo” by a Finnish company called Ball-it. It’s a gaming device with specialised games. It’s a small ball, a little smaller than a tennis ball, with motion sensors. You control the games by throwing it around and squeezing it. I have to say it seemed kind of gimmicky, and the games appeared to be of the kind you’d get bored from really quickly.

I found a YouTube video presentation of the product and it didn’t convince me. I wonder if there’s a market for gadgets like this, since the so much more versatile Nintendo Wii?

Going into the Expo I though I would come out with a lot of bags and a new bank loan. This turned out to be an unwarrented fear. The only money I spent was the entrance fee, parking fee and a cup of coffee. The Canon-booth did have quite a good deal on a macro-lens which I thought about for a while, but I really want a zoom-lens instead for the kind of photography I want to do. There were some panels, for example about Camera RAW, I would have enjoyed, but since this was a last-minute-call I hadn’t had the time to plan properly and showed up a bit too late.

Overall it was an OK exhibition, but a little less than I had hoped for. I expect a bit more for a 13 euro entrance fee. Sure, that same ticket also got you into Skiexpo and Boardexpo, but I’ve never stood on a pair of downhill ski’s in my entire life…