[STORY] SIMO was great, an amazing experience

Well, it's here, it took some time to write it, but this is basically what I did during on Saturday and Sunday November 11th and 12th.
As I said in a previous post, I was in the SIMO, a big computers and technology exhibition in Madrid, hosted in a place called IFEMA.

I went on Saturday morning, at about 10:30 local time, with a couple of friends. I walked through all the pavilions (from now on, when I say pavilion I mean the different buildings where there were stands, with products, etc) to see what there was in each one. It took about two hours, since there were a lot of them, and they were so big!
There was a big place with Mac stuff: Mac G5, lovely screens, iPods, etc. In the Toshiba stand, they were showing the possibilities of the HD-DVD, they had LCD screens with movies in High Definition, you could also buy a HD-DVD drive (the cheapest was 800€)

Me

Anyway, I have no doubt the best pavilion was one entirely dedicated to Microsoft. Good job Microsoft, you did a great job. They shown there: Windows Vista, Office 2007, Flight Simulator X and a lot of stuff of the xbox 360 that I'll detail later.

Windows Vista

There was even a place for Windows Live. They were showing the possibilities that the new Windows Live environment gives the user (Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger, Live Search, etc).
What you see in the photo below is a fight between two guys inside a Messenger dress. Quite funny, it was making a lot of noise, you could hear it from any place of the pavilion, people laughing, shouting...

Windows Live Stand

The XBOX 360 was the star of this pavilion, with a big stand full of consoles in Samsung Screens, showing Pro Evolution Soccer 5, Fifa 07, Gears of War (without any doubt the great success on SIMO 2006) and Viva Piñata.
Moreover, every half hour a great guy made a kind of conference about the new devices that will come out for xbox 360, as well as showing the people that didn't know the consoles, the multimedia possibilities it brings to the general public (the commonly called "casual gamers"), as the option of seeing photos, listening to music, etc.
I have to say he made a great work on showing how great the console is because of these little details. He shown the camera, the HD-DVD device (not connected, cause there was no dashboard update yet), the wireless wheel and the new headset.

One curious details is that the consoles were not normal consoles, but debug consoles, as shown in this image:

There was another pavillion called "iLife" (doesn't it reminds you of Apple stuff?), where there were basically consoles. Sony overall had PS2s with Guitar Hero, Buzz and other games like that. They made some tournaments as well, I participated on one of xbox 360 Dead or Alive, I wan the first match, and lost the second, but I took many magazines that were there for your disposal :P
But the queen of this pavilion was the Sony Play Station 3. Don't get me wrong, you couldn't play it, you couldn't even touch it or get any close, it was inside a crystal box looking beaty next to the controller (the "sixaxis").


Well, and this is it. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed that day. I'm looking forward for next year SIMO, I hope studies allow me go.