With all of the mish-mosh that was at the show this year, it's only appropriate that we close out our three part coverage of Comdex with a section for "all the rest of the stuff" that doesn't fit into our regular categories.

Ranging in size from 14" to 50", flat panel displays were in almost every single booth at the show. The digital LCD computer displays were limited in both resolution and size compared to their much cheaper CRT based cousins, but certain models impressed everyone with their clarity and color saturation. One model that stands out in my mind is the NEC 20" LCD, which sports a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1024. This showstopper seemed incredible, particularly when considering how little desktop space it occupied while displaying incredibly vivid colors. Hopefully the resolutions can be increased so users can pair a sweet LCD up with a next generation 3D accelerator like the Voodoo3 (which is one of the few upcoming entertainment parts that supports a true digital out ability) to achieve some insane gaming quality……Of course a 20" LCD is currently in the $5,000 - $7,000 price range, so this option may not be for everyone, heh heh heh…..

The larger flat panel displays were in booths from Panasonic and Hitachi, based on Gas Plasma display technology. In particular the 50" unit in Panasonic's booth had the Mossad and I thinking the same thought: "DVD retrospective of Jenna Jameson's greatest performances"…..All this for only $9,000.

Another piece of sweet assed hardware we ogled while at Comdex was the Sega Dreamcast. Frankly I'm really not a big fan of consoles for other than light-gun games or applications where the PC just can't cut it. Especially when you've been using a Voodoo2 SLI rig since April it becomes hard to look at the low rez images coming from a strange looking "cartridge" based machine like the Nintendo64. Add in the ridiculous $70 price for a N64 cart and it's like the final nail in the coffin as even the incomparable Half-Life only costs $34.99 for God's sake….

But the upcoming Sega machine could eliminate almost every gripe we've got against consoles. We saw a few of the Japanese release titles at Comdex that will be sold when the machine debuts in Japan next month. (USA Dreamcasts are expected to be ready in Sept 99).

Full multiplayer support via a plug-in 56K modem was the first thing that got our juices flowing until we saw the NEC powered graphics running. We don't know how the Videologic PowerVR Series 2 cards will perform when thrown into a PC, but we can say that they are easily up to the task of throwing down some gorgeous images when powered by the Dreamcast's 200MHz Hitachi SH-4 CPU.

I could go on and on about the Sega machine's accolades here, but I'll save that for our resident expert on the topic (Mossad) as the machine's USA launch approaches.