After five years, I once again had the opportunity to visit the RISC OS Expo close to Utrecht and it was nice to see some of the new developments from the Wakefield show. For me, it was also the first time I was able to see an Iyonix computer whereas I have seen many Omega computers since its release. This is admittedly a little bit strange, compared to other users' experiences.Hardware-wise, the stand of RISCOS Ltd was the most interesting. They had an A9home on show running RISC OS Adjust 32. It was not absolutely stable but you could already see some new Select features, such as keyboard navigation of the filer. There was also an iMac computer running VirtualRiscPC.
Neither MicroDigital nor Desk were present at the show which is perhaps not a big surprise because there has been no news for over a year now from this quarter. So Castle were the only hardware manufacture at the show with a range of Iyonix computers on their stand. More interestingly, Oregano 3 was running on these machines. The speed was OK on the Iyonix machine. More impressively, however, was its rendering quality. Even on complicated sites like www.sport1.de or www.gmx.de the display was quite good although not totally perfect.
On the topic of browers, Peter Naulls had Firefox running on his machines. He only had a few pages on his computer's hard disc but they displayed in a few seconds. He has already managed to optimise the rendering speed since Wakefield - but there is still some potential left. Peter is asking for an unknown amount of money before releasing the beta version. Although the Pledge-O-Meter went up all the way from around 40% two weeks ago till 96% before the end of the show it did not reach the 100% mark. So we will still need a few more people to pledge for the browser. Hopefully, it might be released by early next week.
I had a very interesting conversation with Martin Wuerthner, who presented ArtWorks and TechWriter on the MW Software stand. My main interest was the new macro language of the EasiWriter family. The language is C based and may open the door for a lot of interesting features. A short demonstration of ArtWorks with graduated transparency reminded me that I want to upgrade before long.
Another German exhibitor was Steffen Huber demonstrating his CDVDBurn software. As soon as I own a DVD writer I will also upgrade my copy of the software.
Then there was R-Comp exhibiting various software titles and some RISC OS hardware emulating PCs as well as another A9home machine. Paul Beverley of Archive magazine had a stand and also gave an interesting presentation about text handling on RISC OS. From CJE Micro, I bought a driver for the Canon IP4000 printer, and - I have to say it - he didn't have it in stock.
All together it was a nice show and a good opportunity to see new hardware and software previously exhibited at the Wakefield Show. It was not too crowded, so it was possible to speak to the exhibitors. Whether it was a big commercial success I don't know but I think that many people will purchase items later, after the show, once they saw it there in action.
