This week in Las Vegas, people are attending Comdex, the Computer Dealers Exposition, the biggest all-computer trade show in the world. The Consumer Electronics Show, also held in Las Vegas, is just as big as Comdex, and the CeBit show, held in Hannover, Germany, is even bigger. But CeBit is a show for more than just computers. For example, at CeBit you can also see the latest in refrigerators and garbage disposals. Comdex can only be held in Las Vegas, because it is the only American city that has enough convention center footage and hotel rooms to accommodate a show of this size. To put its scale in perspective for those who have never been, forget about the 200,000+ attendees and 2,500+ exhibitors, and just concentrate on the fact that most of the time this week, Comdex attendees will be unable to use their cellular phones. There are simply too many phones on too few frequencies in too concentrated an area.

Having said all that, I didn't go. For the first time in 20 years, I'm not at Comdex, and I am not missing it a bit. I mean this in two completely different senses. I don't miss the congestion and the 60-90 minute wait just to get in an elevator at the Las Vegas Hilton for the inevitable event held in the rooftop restaurant. But I also mean that I am not missing the show because in many senses, I feel as though I am there. This year, I have been following Comdex strictly on the Internet, and by doing so, have probably learned as much as I would had I been at the show, maybe more.

Take the daily keynote addresses by industry big-wigs. Many of these are so heavily attended that it can be impossible to get in to hear them, but I watched them all on my computer screen in Santa Rosa. In all my years of attending Comdex, this is the first time I have heard all the speeches. Gosh, it was boring, but with streaming video I could always pause, take a walk, and pick up right where I dozed off.

Comdex keynotes are divvied out not on the basis of the speakers actually having something interesting to say, but on the basis of the size of each speaker's exhibit booth. Microsoft, which always has at least two and sometimes as many as four enormous booths, always gets the first speech. Usually, Bill Gates touts amazing technology that usually isn't amazing, and industry initiatives that may or may not be real. This is the essence of a Comdex keynote. Posturing.

So a look at the speeches gives a broad sense of the state of anxiety being experienced at that moment by the major players in the personal computer industry. If there was a major underlying theme of all the speeches, it was "back to computing," as most of the speakers tried to distance themselves from the current dot-com meltdown.

That's why Gates chose to display a nifty tablet computer, touting its standalone qualities as much or more than its networking capability. Forget that the computer isn't actually for sale and won't be for a couple years. Forget, too, that tablet computers came and failed during the pen computing era of the late 1980s. This machine perfectly met Microsoft's need to look like a benign technical leader rather than an industry bully trapped in a legal nightmare. And Bill Gates, who has grown increasingly tired of the legal stuff, had a chance to just be a nerd again.

Oracle's Larry Ellison followed a familiar theme, too, pulling out again the concept of the network computer or information appliance. Yes, it makes no sense to have computers that require hours of configuration, have essentially untested combinations of hardware and software, and often take more of our time than they free up by their existence. But there are two problems with this speech. One is that it is the same speech Larry has been giving since 1995. The second problem is that for all the big talk, Oracle's own Internet Computer is hardly the kind of appliance Ellison described. Still, it's nice to hear him. Larry Ellison has a style that is a joy compared to that of most PC moguls. He enjoys the stage and once in awhile something snaps inside him and he goes off on a Dennis Miller-like rant against personal computing in general. And he's right, but that doesn't mean he is offering us a complete alternative.

Michael Dell (notice how we are going through the billionaires in descending order of wealth) gave a speech that essentially said, "Don't even think of us as an Internet company, we build PCs." Contrast this to last year's speech in which the theme was, "We use the Internet better than anyone to sell PCs." This continues to be the case, of course, and Dell's better than average earnings report that just came in owes as much to Internet sales efficiency as anything else, but right now it is death to have your stock be considered an Internet stock. So Mikey just makes lots of PCs.

Carly Fiorina, who isn't even a billionaire but runs Hewlett-Packard anyway, took a completely different approach from the other speakers and chose to tout HP's Internet plans, hardly mentioning PCs in the process. Still, I liked her speech the best. Maybe it was because she talked about medieval history or maybe it was what appeared to be her honest expression of optimism about a future made better by technology. Either way, it was a gutsy and refreshing change, just like my decision this year not to go to Comdex. I'll probably never go back.

Now let's take a moment to consider the reaction to my column last week about the electoral college. From the e-mail I received about the column, I can only conclude that many readers think I am insane. Generating controversy is something columnists are supposed to do, of course, but the pretty much universal negative response indicates to me that there is a lot of emotion attached to any suggestion of change in our system of electing officials. I was roundly accused of ignorance and stupidity, often by people who stated "facts" that upon further research proved to be themselves incorrect. So I'd say we all could do with some more education on these topics.

Some readers thought it was inappropriate for a PBS columnist to even touch on this kind of topic, which they saw as political. I see it as mainly procedural, but what the heck. Either way, I think it would be a mistake to say that PBS and the people of PBS are somehow prohibited from tackling political subjects. Tell John McLaughlin he's not allowed to talk politics and well, you've killed the guy. But that's different, you say.

No, it isn't.