Stefan Mileschin

Major OEMs - such as Acer - throw lavish parties for VIPs and spend a fortune on booze and disc jockeys, hoping that people will tip up. But, apparently, despite the lavish hospitality, few enjoyed it and few tipped up.

It was a different story at the AMD party at the Bellavista ball last night - hosted by some bizarre coincidence by a fair lass called Bella.

We don't know if her surname was Vista. We couldn't get close enough to her because the venue was jam packed with gamers and as far as we can tell 100 percent of them were geezers. Mr John Taylor, an executive at AMD, took us through the history of Chimpzilla, reminding us all of the breakthroughs in the early years of the 21st century, including 64 bit computing and the rest. We are sure that AMD is trying to re-invent itself, but exactly how we're just not quite sure about.

The Tweaktown party, earlier in the week, was a buzz. The very nice Cameron Wilmot played host in an extravaganza which outlines the fact that no-one throws better parties than journalists, with or without an $500,000 DJ tab (Acer's).

And talking about tabs - and by that we don't mean cigarettes which cost an astonishingly cheap NT 83 cents here - Microsoft has an interesting take on when a tab is not a tab.

Anything smaller than seven inches is a phone, and you should buy Windows Phone. Anything larger than seven inches is a tablet, and its bizarre and, let's confess totally Byzantine licensing scheme has got the world+dog here in a tizz.

Still, all credit to Microsoft OEM man Nick Parker. Faced with a straight question, or even with a googly one, the night watchman of the Microsoft team plays a straight bat. And we mean bat, not bhat.

http://news.techeye.net/business/ace...e-p-out-of-vip