The tenth fall COMDEX show was held in Las Vegas from November 14 to 18, 1988. During its first decade, COMDEX grew from a single ballroom with 157 exhibitors to dominate the Las Vegas Convention Center–and several nearby hotels–with over 1,700 exhibitors. Attendance had grown just rapidly, from about 4,000 visitors in 1979 to over 100,000 in 1988.

Christine Winter of the Chicago Tribune noted the product mix at COMDEX had also shifted from “large systems in the 1970s to an onslaught of personal computers in the early 1980s, followed by examples of the burgeoning ‘after market’ for add-on devices, peripherals and printers that grew up as PCs began to dominate the marketplace in the mid-1980s.” Now, in 1988, there was increased focus on laptops and low-end workstations.

The second annual Computer Chronicles episode to focus on the fall COMDEX show in Las Vegas aired in November 1987, just a few days after the event concluded. Back in the San Mateo, California, studio, Stewart Cheifet and George Morrow looked at some video footage recorded on the show floor. Cheifet noted this was the biggest COMDEX ever, with the most exhibitors and attendees. But what went on at the event? Was there any buying or selling actually taking place? Or was it just PR and gawking?

The first Computer Dealers Exhibition was held in 1979 in the ballroom of the original MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. (That hotel is now known as Bally’s.) According to a 2021 retrospective by Bob McGlincy for Exhibit City News, that first show drew 167 exhibitors and roughly 3,900 attendees. Subsequent exhibitions–known by the abbreviated name of COMDEX–would draw substantially greater interest from the growing personal computer industry and its customers.