Comdex: The 1 Year PC

Jim Edlin and David Bunnell (1982) COMDEX: The Year 1 PC, PC Magazine Vol 1 No. 1, February-March 1982, pg. 54

Article “Comdex: The Year 1 PC” by Jim Edlin (editor) and David Bunnell (PC Magazine Publisher and Editor in Chief), provide a review of the November 1981 Fall comdex. 

From the article:
Three years ago, there was no such thing as a comdex.

Two years ago, the national trade exposition for computer dealers was held for the first time. About 180 companies set up exhibits in the Ballroom of the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel, and maybe 4,500 people came to see their wares.

Last year the show expanded into the Las Vegas Convention center’s two small halls – a space double that of the Hilton ballroom – to accommodate a doulbe number of both exhibitors and asile-walkers.

And this year (November ’81) COMDEX moved into the Convention Center’s big East Hall, which dwarfs the other two halls combined. Six hundred forty-four exhibitors … and nearly 25,000 people reportedly attended. It was a fitting sign for the year when IBM finally decided to enter the world of the personal computer.

20 Add-ons in Two Months: The pleasant shocker for us was right down at the end of our asile, in the booth of a Cleveland outfit called Tecmar Scientific Solutions. In about the same time it took us to produce our eight pages, Tecmar Scientific Solutions had produce a complete line of 20 Add-on accessories for the PC. They even had an expansion adapter that could pass for the PC Sysstems unit’s twin – until you peaked inside and saw a 5-million character Winchester storage disk where the PC has its diskette drives.

As for all [the other] COMDEX exhibitors who had nothing to display for the IBM PC, it seemed like more than half of those we asked clamied they were in the process of getting something together.