TechEd 2004, Amsterdam

Lots of people here at TechEd Europe, interesting talks (incl. Herb Sutter's C++/.NET talks and the three-part Visual Studio 2005 Team System intro by Prashant Sridharan).

Yesterday I visited the Windows Mobile area and had a chance to play with the new devices which will hit the market very soon, incl.

• the new Orange C500 Smartphone (very small!),
• the Sagem myS-7 Smartphone (entry level phone, fantastic display quality - the best I've seen in a Smartphone),
• the Motorola MPx220 Smartphone (excellent thing with 1.3MP camera, flash, and vastly improved parameters; comes in Black and Silver),
• the Motorola MPx PPC Phone Edition - my absolute favorite, a Pocket PC in clamshell design with a sophisticated opening mechanism which allows for usage in phone mode (portrait) and PDA mode (landscape), incl. a QWERTY keyboard; can't wait to get my hands on one of these, though I might have to wait till Q4/2004,
• the Sierra Wireless VOQ Smartphone (featuring a unique fold-out QWERTY keyboard which, however, makes it quite bulky; I blogged about this earlier).

So, lots of good news from the device field. Until the MPx is available, I'll stick to my Qtek2020 (unless I can get the new MDA III from T-Mobile which they just announced, which comes with an extractable keyboard and WiFi support...).