By Kevin Anderson BBC News Online reporter in Las Vegas

One taxi driver asked: "So, are you here for Com-bust?"

Certainly, there is a shadow over this year's Comdex tech show.

But there is also an anxious energy.

People here still remember the go-go days of the late 1990s, and still see technology as the closest thing to a gold rush that they know.

Everyone wants to know what will be the next big thing.

Microsoft's vision

People come to Comdex because they want to catch the next big boom and ride the wave to riches.

Microsoft: Trying to put new devices in people's hands

Microsoft, of course, has its vision.

Mighty Microsoft seems largely unaffected by the hi-tech meltdown, but slower computer sales can hardly help their bottom line.

Some 70% of Americans own a computer, and businesses have computers they do not even know what to do with.

Microsoft is faced with trying to convince people that they need a new computer - hence the development of the tablet PC, smart displays and the PC as home entertainment.

Corridor warriors

The tablet PC may not appear immediately as an intuitive idea to most people.

But as tablet maker Hewlett-Packard sees it, this is not so much for the road warrior as the corridor warrior.

Road warrior is an American term for that always on the go business person who works on an airplane as much as in an office.

Corridor warriors spend a majority of their working life in meetings.

They do not run up frequent flier miles, but log a lot of miles to the office water cooler and shuttling from conference room to conference room.

Limitation

Microsoft found that people were taking notes in meetings and then having to transfer them to their PC.

And they found that many cultures found it socially unacceptable to type during meetings so taking a laptop was not the answer.

The tablet PC in most of its incarnations is a laptop with some extra note-taking features, allowing a person to scribble notes in their own handwriting.

Microsoft stresses that it was not really created to recognise your handwriting (and indeed the device does not do horribly well), but rather to capture handwritten notes.

But, those notes are searchable.

Recognition is done in the background.

However, if you can not read your handwriting, neither can the computer, Microsoft is quick to note.

Computers everywhere

But one theme at Comdex is computers everywhere.

As Bill Gates said in his keynote, a third of American households have a PC in their living room.

Of course, beige boxes with a rats nest of wires do not really go with anyone's decor.

Microsoft created a couple of different ways of dealing with that decorating conundrum - smart displays and media PCs.

Control panels

Smart displays are clever flat panels that are linked to the computer via wireless Ethernet connections, meaning the beige box can stay in the home office where it belongs.

They can be docked and work much as a normal display or undocked and carried around like a tablet PC.

Unlike tablets, they do not have a hard drive. They are clever but not meant to be stand alone PCs.

But, you can control your PC, surf the web or call up music using the display.

Many functions

They also can be used with the new media PCs. These are, of course, PCs with a media focus.

Friends: Can't get enough?

HP, Gateway and gaming-focussed PC maker, Alienware, are all rolling out such PCs.

They feature DVD players, TV tuners, remote controls and sleeker designs, and look more like home entertainment equipment than bland computers.

Microsoft has tuned Windows XP to have a special interface that is easily navigable using the remote.

And, they have built in a personal video recorder function, which basically allows you to record your favourite television shows to the hard drive.

You can also pause, and rewind while watching live television.

And if you want to keep that archive of Friends shows, you can later burn them to DVD.

Bankrolled

Windows is Microsoft's bread and butter, making billions of dollars for the company.

Recent financial filings show that Windows is financing Microsoft's forays into new markets such as smart phones and its gaming console Xbox.

Microsoft hopes that these new versions of Windows and new types of computers will continue to drive sales of its flagship product.