Show and Tell

Singapore hosts 4 consumer electronics events a year; the IT Show (March), PC Show (June), COMEX (August) and SITEX (November).

This week it's COMEX and as for all the shows, it runs Thursday through Sunday. I usually try to go on opening day to avoid the crowds. It works to some extent or maybe you just end up attending with the other people who can choose to avoid the Saturday and Sunday crush.

I've been to all of them now and they are all the same. Same 3 floors of Suntec, same escalator madness, same Sony stand on level 3, same big names on level 4 and same smaller companies on level 6.

This time I was in the market for a big hard disk drive. At the PC Show in June, the best deal was a 3 interface (USB, Firewire, eSATA) 1TB for S$349 (£134). At COMEX, the same item is S$249 (£96), and you could get the same drive in a USB 2.0-only enclosure for S$199 (£76). I whipped out the plastic NETS card.

It's analagous to Moore's Law, which strictly relates to number of transistors on a chip doubling every 24 months but is nowadays quoted for many measures of technical advance including the effective price-per-megabyte of disk storage. In this case, the 29% drop in 2 months is because the manufacturer is likely clearing stock ahead of the next product cycle.

I only go to the shows because the retailers hold back stock specifically to have show sales. Some Sim Lim stores ran dry of drives ahead of the PC Show. After the show, many of the advertised deals are achievable with regular bargaining but the shows work mostly on sticker pricing so it may be less work.

Otherwise I wouldn't bother. Too crowded. Too much tat being hawked as quality gear. There was one stand, I don't know what they were selling, international dialing cards perhaps, that stuck me a having a uniquely simple sales pitch. They had two ridiculously pretty booth girls in micro-skirts handing out leaflets (not answering questions, just leaflets) under a sign reading "Sign up today, get free stuff".

Vague Nibble of the iClones

The Times ran a light-weight piece about the first iClones (iPhone copies) available in Singapore. Bylined "Attack of the iClones", the tone is of cheap sensationalism and hyperbole; they describe the iPhone as a much-hyped gizmo. Reality check: Apple is now in the top 10 phone manufacturers after only 9 months of sales. And hype means excessive or intensive publicity; or exaggerated claims made in advertising; the official Apple advertising is notably simple and extremely unusual for mobile phones as it entirely consists of demonstrating the device is use.

There are a few imported iPhones in Singapore already. Indeed the world-wide trade in them is brisk since it's only officially sold in about 6 countries (US, Canada, Germany, France, UK, Ireland?). China Mobile says there are over 400,000 in use on their network alone and it's never been sold there.

The main thrust of the article was to introduce the D800i HiPhone, at first glance a striking fascimile of the iPhone. I had a play with one in Sim Lim recently and I can tell you straight, Apple has nothing to fear; it's rubbish. They were asking S$320 (£110) and it is a conventional tri-band phone with a removable battery, look-a-like touch screen and music player (max 2GB micro SD card). But a clone it certainly is not. A clone is a biological term and even the everyday meaning is that of an exact copy. I'd say a facsimile, from the Latin fac simile, "to make similar", is a bit of a reach as well.

The HiPhone doesn't have WiFI or a web browser, just a WAP browser, so this really is just a phone, not a hand held Internet device. The limited flash memory for music barely exceeds the smallest, £35 iPod Shuffle and is woeful against the lowest configuration iPhone that has 8GB. The screen is fuzzy with muddy colours. They copied some of the screen icons but they mean different things; they have to because so many features are missing. The other software is strictly a box-ticking exercise to claim features with a user interface (surely the one thing they should have cloned) a series of nightmarish design shortcuts.

At least Samsung's new Instinct looks the part even if it is similarly cobbled together. If you are still tempted, be aware that T-Mobile is clearing the low-end iPhones for EUR99 and industry insiders are tipping SingTel to launch a new 3G iPhone here in September. Anyone buying one of these fakes is going to look embarrassed very soon.

Deepavali & Cheap Laptops

Today is a Singapore public holiday for the Hindu festival of Deepavali, or Divali. Known in the West as the festival of light, Indians put up fairy lights on balconies and will be letting off fireworks and lighting sparklers when it goes dark.

It's another one of those discriminatory religious things at work:

Where exigencies of service permit, Hindu staff are allowed a half-day time-off on the eve of Deepavali. Annual leave taken on this day will be regarded as a full day leave.

Apparently, the Little India district will be all lit up with fire-walking ceremonies which I'll try to go to if I have time. It's crowded at the best of times but it's only a block down from Sim Lim Square (building full of consumer electronics) and the food is just heaven sent.