Convinced by this cool-looking robot, I decided to go for a spin at the Electronic & Technology show at Mer Rouge.
After paying the entrance fee of Rs 25 (wait, what!?), here’s what I saw…
Cooking utensils (NMC). Huh?
More utensils. O_O
A mixer-grinder! Wtf?
& fruits! Did I end up by mistake at a Food show?
Massage chair.
Health Protection Instrument (fancy name, actually a foot massage). Home Appliances Show then?
Photography’s empty stand.
Technorays solar heater. First indication I was at a tech show?
As if it couldn’t get worse, there was also the ever-present Cash & Carry…
With its mega stand…
The largest range of TVs…
& mobile phones…
& laptops…
& half unpacked PCs.
With error screens!
Another computer vendor, who brought along their mascot.
Sharp LED TV & various electronics.
Cameras & the Smart Board at Home2Office.
The media were also present with the MBC.
Radioplus
& Le Matinal (giving away complimentary copies of their papers)
The Mauritius Research Council. Only brochures available. & posters of technologies which we already know everything about.
The Rajiv Gandhi Science Centre. They brought along a few toys, including this satellite model.
A fan-powered wind turbine prototype.
A solar panel prototype.
Among all the stands, there was only one which exhibited a new product – an inverter-based AC.
The particularity of this AC is that it has no outdoor unit but has air vents & a water outlet.
Placed directly on the wall using this boring drill.
The principle of the inverter-based AC is explained on Wikipedia.
Air conditioners bearing the inverter tag use a variable-frequency drive to control the speed of the motor and thus the compressor. The variable-frequency drive uses a rectifier to convert the incoming AC current to DC and then uses pulse-width modulation of the DC current within an inverter to produce AC current of a desired frequency. The AC current is used to drive a brushless motor or an induction motor.
Standard air conditioners run at constant speed while this one runs at a variable speed, hence uses less electricity & makes less noise. It’s supposed to be around 30% more efficient than conventional AC.
The other thing that caught my eye at the show is this laptop, which I had already seen at Infotech (28th August 2010).
A reasonably-priced laptop (which I’ll certainly recommend)…
Until you take a second look at the specs – Core i5-460M & Nvidia GT 420M.
& that’s weird because the GT 420M (with Optimus) was announced on 3rd September 2010 & the i5-460M released (according to Wikipedia) on 26th September 2010.
Even better, the Acer 5742G was officially released on 27th September 2010.
I can confirm that this is indeed the i5-460M, which has a Windows Experience Index of 6.9, while the i5-450M does 6.5.
& this is the 1GB version of the GT 420M.
So the question is why was the Acer 5742G released in advance in Mauritius? Figure out…
The Last Word
If you've been to Infotech, you've already seen everything. With bombastic words like Electronic & Technology, I was expecting some decent hardware on show. How disappointed I was when what I found was that not only the expo area was small tiny, non-technology items like cooking utensils, health equipment & ice-cream (which had a dedicated stand) was being exposed. The organisers should probably thank C&C for saving their ass by taking up half of the stands available...
An EPIC FAILURE. Imagine Infotech, but with only a handful of the exhibitors & 10 times worst. That’s what this show was. An absolute waste of time (& money).
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