In Bombay...

I was away for on thursday and friday in bombay at the Microsoft Executive Summit(MES) at the "Renaissance". Bombay is a city I love and it was great being there. As usual, my travel had its share of adventure. My hotel bookings were bungled up and I was stranded in the bombay airport around midnight. Had to call a sleeping friend to find a place to spend the night. The MES was primarily a hifi focussed sales pitch by MS. But it worked as a lot of the decision makers at the summit got the exposure needed about microsoft products. Some of the case studies were interesting and struck a chord with the work we are doing. We may end up doing more business with MS after this. The renaissance is an amazing place. The hospitality over the two days, needless to say, was very good. Two days away from work, with a little bit of networking and a little bit of fun thrown in.

The HCL beanstalk NEO PC, which was launched just a few days ago, was on display at the MES. What a PC. Seriously, I have never been a fan of MS or HCL, but the XP media center version on that PC was amazing. This one is a TV and a PC. It has a cable in, can record upto 30 minutes of TV programming (the closest we can get to TiVo in India), 120GB hdd, 256mb ddr ram and a 128 MB exclusive video ram on an agp card, p4 2.88 ghz with hyper threading and the works... at a lakh and 10 thousand, i think its a damn good deal. Atleast, its worth a look at one of these hcl frontline stores. Hot stuff.