The third day of CERF brought us once again to the Romexpo Galleries in the Liberty of Press’ Square, being driven by the same motives that brought us here since the beginning in this annual heaven of Electronics.

Already having got used to the atmosphere and with the comings and goings of the Computers and Electronics Romanian Fair, we once more stepped in, hoping to see the novelties.

Routine Sets In

Not all that much in the way of the never-before-seen has made its way to the third day. In fact, with a number of exceptions that will be properly discussed later on, pretty much everything was well under the "been there, done that" category.

Just as was yesterday’s case, Clicknet and Ultra Pro held Counter-Strike competitions, the first pitting teams of 2 against members of the TEG clan, ranked nr. 1 in Romania, with the objective of winning at least 5 out of 12 rounds, whereas the second opting for a clean versus, between teams of 2.

Oddly enough, the prizes were not proportionally even with the difficulty of the competitions, Ultra Pro winners getting their hands on yet another lovely graphics adapter from ATI, with TEG skirmish survivors only receiving some PC mice and caps.

Virtual Smack-Down

The Tekken 5 contest, hosted by gaming magazine LEVEL, stole the day, however, being played to the point of utter exhaustion and visible frustration by contenders. Even though the prize was not all that much, merely a set of speakers, tensions ran high all through the mini-event, with crowds of people forming around the players, encouraging their favourites, giving them bits of advice, or commenting upon chosen or possible playing strategies.

The end of the contest brought a lot of dissatisfaction among players and spectators alike, with a highly undeserving winner, some old-guy, walking away prize in hand, happy that his desperate button-pushing compensated for his utter lack of skill. Thank you, whoever you are, for leaving us with a partly out-of-order gamepad, to use tomorrow.

Philips Makes Impressive Appearance

One of the better parts of the day, and also one of the novelties I had previously announced consisted in a trip to the Philips stand, to take part in a small press conference meant to present a few bits of state-of-the-art entertainment equipment, never before seen on the Eastern European market.

The leading exhibit was easily Philips’ new flat WXGA plasma screen tv, having an 1366 x 768p panel, and with features such as Pixel Plus 3 HD, Ambi light, Wireless PC Link, an USB port, and a memory card slot, or 2 HDMI ports.

The runner-up was a breathtaking audio system, WACS 700, with five stations and an internal hard-drive of 40 gigabytes, which is the basic equivalent of 750 CD’s, equaling 6500 mp3’s at 256 kbps.

After the press conference, we were invited to enjoy a tad of interactive entertainment offered to us by the stand’s organisers, a nifty but unpretentious PC soccer game, or sign up for the table soccer championship, where teams of 2 would face each other in a knock-out type tournament.

RDS Press Conference And Free-For-All Buffet

RDS made time today to gather journalists from different corners of the Fair in order to acclaim the successful launch of their new Fibre Optic Cable connection, FiberLink.

Although it was allegedly a "big thing", intended to revolutionise the Internet traffic, as it is claimed by RDS, the press conference was a rather dull event.

There was little information given, besides the one present in the actual brochures and the press representatives also did not seem in the mood to burden the PR very much with tricky and unwanted questions.

All in all the press conference went smoothly, no vital information lost, no precious information gained, and everybody’s attention was turning at the end towards the buffet held by the organisers, that was in contrast very fruitful and impressive.

Another important announcement was passed on, thus, to the needy and expansive mass of Internet users throughout Romania.

New Windows Greeted Half-Heartedly

The day tried to go out with a bang through a presentation of the new Windows Vista. Needless to say Microsoft’s latest project didn’t fail to impress quite a few with its high-end approach at operating system facilities.

But perhaps there was something about the presenter’s dull voice that made the updated graphical user interface, the visual style, dubbed Aero, the improved searching technology, the new multimedia creation tools, or the completely redesigned networking, audio, print and display sub-systems seem unappealing to others, casting a revealing light upon their faces, for us to see written in bold letters "Linux is still better".

Day 3 Epilogue

Would this seem as a dull day to you? Mayhaps, mayhaps not, but for us it was yet another magic display of electronic gadgets, tools and arts, reuniting big internal and international brands and names, different publications and a lot of other show-offs under the same roof. The people-filled corridors seemed rather cosy today, as we made our habitual march from stand to stand from morning up to the late evening.

And so ended yet another day at CERF, leaving us with nothing left but to count and show off our prizes to one another. T-shirts, caps, memory sticks, mouse-pads, you know, mostly everything in the way of accessories, computer or otherwise. We don’t know about the rest but we’re bringing a bigger bag next time.