The Which Computer? Show, on at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham until Friday, can best be described as busy, but dull. Certainly, it has established itself as the premier computer show in the UK, but, as with Compec before it, the seeds of its destruction are being sown with more and more companies pre-announcing their products in the period between Christmas and the start of the show in order to get more publicity than their rivals. Several of the previews that appeared elsewhere in the computer press concentrated on the burgeoning software market. But, written as they obviously were, well in advance of the show, they fail to reflect the reality. The CAD and Desktop Publishing villages are a sop to the main hype points in the industry and also seem slightly out of place in what is primarily a business computer show. Below we highlight a few of the things that attracted our eyes or reached our ears.
