ITCN Asia aftermath

The biggest IT event of South Asia, the ITCN Asia was held in Karachi, Pakistan from 9-11 August. I was there on last two days in the exhibition but I missed the very important conferences because of my university classes in morning. I had the corporate passes for conferences on first two days but the thing i didn't like was they weren't allowing visitors without National Identity Cards even if they have corporate passes. Visitor's without NIC were allowed only on 3rd day I also didn't had my NIC (I am 18! and will be 19 INSHAHALLAH after 9 days, m too lazy to get an NIC :P) but i got in because of my friend who was in the reception team. Three halls were full but there wasn't much crowd as compared to last ITCN in 2006. It had nothing much to offer a person at student level or just a home user but it had allot for businessmen. Following is a smal review of the ITCN Asia

Dany discount coupons:

Dany (www.dany1.com ), makers of peripherals distributed free coupon cards, each card with many coupons was offering discount for Rs 6,700/- with at least discount of Rs 300/- to Rs 500/- on 15 different products. The cupons are valid for 30 authorized dealer shops across city!
Discount at AGN computers stall: AGN computers were offering discounts on all their products (I don't remember the exact percentage). They weren't selling the products there, the discount was applicable from 9th August to 13 August on the AGN outlet. So I thought it was the good time to get a WMC compatible TV tuner card that I was planing to buy so I got it on discount! I may also write the review of that TV tuner card

Wateen Telecom's wi-max From the day I visited Wateen's telecom's stall, my MSN PM is "I want wi-max" :p . Wateen Telecom, a Warid company has made Karachi one of the World's Largest wireless hot spot city. Its first time in Pakistan that w-max internet connection, upto speed of 2MBPS has started. They have plans to launch it for public this month. And what I expect is the affordable, cehaper than Land line DSL. I talked to the sales agent about rates, he said they haven't revealed them yet. While talking to two different sales persons on Wateen Telecom's stall, I asked both of them about their expectation of rates. One said "I think the price of 256K connection will start from Rs 500 with unlimited volume" (its so cheap!) and the other said "The technology is wi-max! so it will be expensive that landlines DSL" (I hope he's wrong). Lets see whats the tariff when its available to public.

BusyPak infotech:
A small software house was selling an accounting software for Rs 99/- I purchased it because it looked a little attractive there, I was in hurry so I didn't saw the demonstration of that on the stall. It seemed to be developed in Visual Basic, it isn't compatible with my Windows Vista Ultimate...I tried it on Windows XP Professional. The interface was dull, unattractive and understandable to use. It had so many development and designing flaws that even a student developer like me takes care of them while programming. The worse was the background picture of the MDI application was not vector edged and was just designed for 14'' display, and on my 19'' display it was just like a 640X480 image in upper left corner of screen .The about section of that application says its developed in India, don't know why they were selling such a low quality software in Pakistan.

No attractive internet hours packages for dial up users:
I didn't found any attractive packages for dial up users. In last ITCN exhibitions, there were many.

PTCL DSL:

PTCL dropped rates of their DSL connection by 30 percent. So the PTCL stall was an attractive spot for DSL subscribers as their lowest package starts from Rs 1000/- per month

Board of Information Technology Sindh:
Board of Information Technology Sindh was offering call center training course in Rs 5000/- who's real cost is (as they say) about Rs 45,000/-. So its a very good call center agent training program for promotion of outsourcing of telemarketing

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Event was good but not as much attractive as it was expected

Links
http://www.itcnasia.com/