Expo-Sexpo!

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Originally uploaded by The Big K.

My boss had been given the N90 to play with (much like they did with all major US bloggers) but because he is a dedicated Communicator user, he didn't want to give up his tablet so he told me to return the N90 to Nokia. But I thought that I'ld use it for a few days in Delhi. I took a few snaps over the last few days with the phone and it isn't bad at all. Not as convinient as the N70 I had been sent last month, which was immensely easier to use, the N90 has a very awkward form factor with hinges everywhere. Which means you can shoot unreachable unmentionables, but does make the phone quite a handful, as one review I read said - its like the mobile-phone version of the Rubik's Cube. But the optics on this thing are brilliant - it has a Carl Zeiss lens with optical zoom et al.
Note to Nokia - PC Suite 6.5 is awfully irritating to install and takes at least a day to recognise my phone. I had the same problem with the N70 and that was on another machine.
All in all, the first two phones of Nokia's brand-new N-series of 3G phones are both quite interesting, but if push came to shove I would choose the N70 because its more conventional. Shit, I'm growing old!
Now to the Auto Expo...
This photo for example was taken outside Hall 7 of the Auto Expo on the last day of the exposition. I wasn't so dumb as to barge into the teeming mass of humanity, and because I had already seen all the cars and bikes I had wanted to see on the Media Preview Day, I really didn't care for another look. But this Auto Expo was quite tepid compared to the last few - there were no new 'mass' models showcased - unless you consider the new Pulsar DTS-Fi from Bajaj. Which kinda reinforced my theory that this was more a Bike show than a car show - Yamaha had the Roadliner and the YZR-M1 along with Valentino Rossi's 2005 MotoGP bike, Suzuki had the Hayabusa on display, not strange considering that India is the world's second largest bike market and will cross the 10 million bikes/year mark by 2009. No exciting or affordable cars anywhere. And other than Mahindra, no-one had any interesting concepts either, the Honda FC-V is a two-year old concept and differnt from the brand new FCV they showcased at LA, and the BAR F1 car from 2004 was just a body-shell.
The global Auto industry is more interested in the NAIAS in Detroit, because thats where all the big-wigs were. Thats why I've been reading coverage of that show to give me some insights into what might happen in the Indian industry. I don't think Tata's tie-up with Fiat is a good move either for Tata, because Sergio Marchionne is a very clever guy, look at the way he shafted GM. And despite illusions of granduer, the Tata Indica is still a sucky little car.
Not that this 'minor' fact stopped people from going. Nope, even when the gates closed, it seemed there might be a small riot outside Pragati Maidan. I mean the crowd may not seem like much in this picture, bnut let me assure you that despite the tickets being priced at Rs 500 people were buying them and going to gape at the not-so-pretty hostesses.
Oh well, thats that for now.

EDIT : A lot of people have come to this blog searching for details of the Bajaj Pulsar DTS-Fi. OK, there is a picture to whet your apetite, but what do we know about the bike. It has a considerably larger engine than the current Pulsar's - 230-250cc range (hopefully the upper end), uses fuel injection and will give a lot more power than the current Pulsar's - pumping out 20-ish horsepower and it looks rather nice too. I guess it will be priced in the 90k-100k range, but it will perform. However, don't expect it before late-2006.