As some of you may have noticed, the server running the show website is down. Alternatives have been provided at http://www.wakefieldshow.org.uk/ and http://wakefield.riscos2001.com/.
Cerilica have officially announced Vantage 1.00 will be on sale at the show, although due to duplication dates you won't receive the actual goods until June (although 0.99b arrived in my mailbox this morning). Looking at the final feature list it should be worth just a few days longer however; with great artwork creation facilities, desktop publishing features, and interactive design tools, we should get our first top-class vector graphics package since ArtWorks first appeared nine(?) years ago...
Stuart Tyrrell has announced new additions to his range of input hardware. In conjunction with Simtec comes PS2MouseMini, a smaller version of his successful converters for using PS2 mice in RISC OS machines with old-style mouse ports (from A310s to RiscPCs), so you can use all sorts of cheap and cheerful or expensive but cool mice on your RISC OS machine for just £18.95 (okay, so I've happily used a cordless wheel mouse on the "grown up" version for a while now). There's also a MultiMedia Keyboard, which has "a novel 'click' type [of key], providing positive feedback of keypresses". The 19 multimedia keys can be re-programmed in simple obey files or in BASIC programs, and can be mapped to keyboard shortcuts (allowing control over, for instance, WebsterXL which has "excellent support for shortcut keys"). Cost £34.95 inc. VAT and carriage. And finally if you're running out of space on your desktop there's a high-quality KVM switch that can be controlled via the keyboard or an auto-scanning feature, allowing the sharing of Keyboard, Video (monitor) and Mouse between two machines for £99.95 inc VAT and delivery, with discounts on mouse converters bought at the same time.
Photodesk (Spacetech as was) are offering a 5% discount on digital cameras, which I won't harp on about after buying one last year (it's excellent though :), and will have the Canon S800 (the new 6 ink high end photo printer) plus the S450 general purpose printer (also with 6 ink photo option) and its A3 equivalent the S4500, with photo-real drivers at the show. Co-comp are offering show discounts on domain names, including live setup at the show. They're also running a name-the-alien competition, and have announced their online shop based on their own system but using WorldPay for creditcard verification. Zenta Multimedia can't be at the show, but have deals on a number of their CDs, including £10 for their new enhanced font CD - 4,700 fonts for a tenner. Just dont tell Harry, he'll be up all night trying to convert 4,701...
And the tenacity award goes to R-Comp for press releases on just about every product in their range. The Krisalis games CD includes patches and electronic documentation (as well as the games themselves!) for almost the complete Krisalis back catalogue, including greats such as Speedball II and Gods, and should complement the release of Descent II. They're also selling lots of networking gear, including print servers, and are willing to discuss hubs etc.