Showtime!

Rabid is well pleased that CeBIT is holding another PC show at last. These shows have certainly shrunk somewhat from their elephantine past, and many of them have become extinct.

But no matter if they make any money for the event organisers, nerds love to wander through aisles of high-tech toys. And never forget, it’s the nerds that pay full price for the latest and greatest, so be nice to them.

Plenty of toys on display from Telstra, Adobe, NEC, Unisys, Intel, IBM, Symbol, HP and Blackberry just to name a few of the 700 exhibitors.

And 2400 of Rabid’s reseller mates have pre-registered to cruise the aisles looking for shelf stock. Why this year there’s even a dedicated open source section with at least 20 vendors squeezed into the ring.

Of course you won’t find Microsoft hanging around there, in fact the software giant is notable by its complete absence from the exhibition halls.

Everyone is making a fuss about Microsoft deciding not to exhibit at the show, but if you think about it why would they?

With 99.999% market share it would be cheaper for Bill Gates to personally visit the 15 recalcitrants who don’t use Windows, and hand them an autographed copy. Heck they’ve probably got a pirated version anyway, which is about the only reason they don’t show up on the radar.

Microsoft must have recently bought itself a side-scanning over-the-horizon radar because it has spotted a bunch of users with dodgy copies of Office.

Previously the Redmondites seemed only to care about pirated Windows code, which is a bit weird since Office costs a tad more than a copy of WinXP. Anyway, now they’re going after the Office pirates and most analysts think the campaign won’t sell a single extra copy of the software.

Instead, a mass exodus to Open Office is being predicted. And that could really bite Microsoft in the bum. Hardly anybody has had a good look at Open Office, but when thousands of pirate-users get locked out of Bill’s Office they might well find they like the vista on offer from open source. Gotta watch out for that Catch-22 Bill!