Samsung had an impressive line-up, including this elegant but otherwise normal looking Sonoma notebook that seems to me to be one of the most interesting products at the show. Not because the Q30 weighs just a smidgen over 1Kg but because it packs Digital Multimedia Broadcasting – the multimedia version of the Dab broadcasts used for Britain digital radio stations. Regular readers of PCW know that I believe that this, and its close cousin DVB-H, which uses the digital TV signal to a similar end, could evolve into what is in effect a new communications medium.

Handhelds are not ideal platforms for pure TV but they have an advantage over normal TV sets: they are viewed close up, which means they are suitable to displaying text – a far faster way to convey information than audio. My belief is that these broadcasts will evolve into something containing visuals, audio and text – a cross between TV, radio and the internet.

There are DVB-H and DMB pilots in Britain and multimedia broadcasting is big in Samsung’s home in Korea.

But processing that digital signal takes power, as anyone who has a battery-driven Dab radio knows. So a notebook would seem to be a good test bed because it is not quite as power-sensitive as a handheld computer – though Samsung has developed a DVB-H enabled mobile phone. And on its stand was this DMB-enabled Nexio handheld with a 5in screen.

Samsung seemed to be playing a game of ‘mine is bigger than yours’. It showed a biggest-yet 106in plasma screen and an 82in TFT LCD television – both HD ready. And it showed a this 7megapixel phone camera – the reverse side has a keypad – with a 3x optical zoom and the ability to add a telephoto or wide-angle lense. It is small, but Casio was showing smaller cameras with similar facilities. The Samsung design is equivalent to one of these with a phone stuck on the back. The company also showed a phone supporting Bluetooth stereo, of which more in the magazine, and the one on the left, the SGH-i300, which packs a 3GB hard disk - astonishing because it is no bigger than a normal phone. You couldn't do much with the disk in the show model, however, because the Windows Mobile operating system does not yet support it. Samsung says it will be the time the phone launches in the second half of this year.

Saw my first Sonoma-based Tablet PC today, of all places on the LG stand. Can’t tell you anything about it because (see below) I can’t read the CD. There’ll be more in the mag next month.

I'll also be writing more about this little device, which uses a nanoprobe to etch data on to a polymer surface. IBM reckons it can store a terabyte in a square inch, which means you could have your entire movie collection on an SD card. It reads and writes as fast as a flash drive put sadly it is still a prototype.

Sorry about the blurred photos but I was having to grab some of these pictures through glass with confusing lights. Most companies have thoughtfully provided pictures and press releases on CD, to save us lugging screeds of paper around, and the press office here has equally thoughtfully removed all the CD drives from its machine so we can’t read them. That’ll teach me to ring a notebook without one.

I have always been impressed by the accuracy of national stereotypes. The Germans have traditionally been viewed by the English as rather too organised for their own good. They are certainly very efficient but sometimes they seem deliberately to try to break out of the mould. How else can you explain the numbering system of rooms at the convention centre, which obeys no pattern known to man? Rooms 1 and 2 are at opposite end of the building, with other numbers distributed randomly between them, so that to find where you want to go is rather like undergoing an entrance exam for Mensa.

Everything is placed at different levels, providing interesting spaces, but you cannot cross from one room to another without negotiating several flights of stairs. I reckon I have climbed the equivalent of a mountain in the past few days, weighed down my notebook and press releases. It may be a subtle plot to keep people fit, but after three days of Cebit I fear it may have the opposite effect.

No prizes for guessing what is happening in this picture, because you won't, not unless you have been to the Sony Ericsson stand at Cebit. The ball on the podium is a robot camera that can trundle about under Bluetooth control beaming what it sees back to the phone. The man on the stand said: 'it's just a bit of fun. You can send the robot up to 50 metres away to take pictures.' Sounds like the kind of fun that could get you arrested.