The public pressure due to the article of The Register and Tom's Hardware Guide about CeBIT's online press ban forced CeBIT to a last-minute change of its policy. On Monday or Tuesday Dr. Roloff finally assigned Ms. Inga Buss specifically to register online press. Whoever tried to get a press registration in the last two days before CeBIT could finally receive his press badge.

On Thursday I was asked to for a meeting with Dr. Roloff, the person in charge of CeBIT's press registration. He had a very hard time until he finally managed to apologize for the mistakes that were made (original comment "I did not say that we did not make mistakes "). There was still no major change in his opinion that the majority of online-press applicants did not really deserve a CeBIT press registration. He's got a pretty funky plan for next year though. His department wants to ask every exhibitor of CeBIT 2000 to produce a list of online-journalists or online-publications, which they consider as worthy to come to CeBIT. People who ain't on the list ain't gonna get a press registration next year as well. Thus I suggest that we all be very nice to the companies we write about, because a manufacturer that received a nasty review won't do you the favor and put you on the list.

<summary=Is Intel really hurting? The booth of the Chipzilla at CeBIT 2000 is significantly smaller than the booth of AMD and the service is worse as well. Is there a hidden message behind that?>