CeBit 2009: News from the show

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While there have been no police raids this year – so far – CeBit has still had its share of news from the likes of Asus, Microsoft, and more.

While the show is expecting 25 per cent fewer vendors, it still expects 495,000 visitors over the week. Here’s our roundup of the top stories from the annual German tech conference.

Microsoft used last year’s show to demo its Surface tech, a touchscreen platform which has lead to some very cool looking coffee tables. This year, the software giant announced that Surface will finally be coming to the UK tables – click here to read about PC Pro’s play with Surface.

Microsoft also used CeBit to extend the reach of its hosted SharePoint and Exchange services, making them available in the UK and other countries for £10 a month by subscription.

Aside from admitting it will kill off the 7-inch Eee PC, Asus has shown off a prototype of a dual-screen multitouch device, which could be used as an e-book reader, netbook or multimedia device.

Fujitsu Siemens continued on its green crusade, launching two PCs that draw no power when in full hibernation mode, but can be set to “wake up” at a certain time to receive updates. The company said that zero-watt technology will be available on two machines – the Esprimo E7935 micro-tower machine, and the P7935 small-form factor PC.

Also via our sister title PC Pro, a group of researchers are looking to use flying robots to bring WiFi to disaster zones, building the “quadcopters” entirely from off-the-shelf parts.

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