I made my requisite pass through the exhibit hall yesterday afternoon but it really didn’t look much different from the vendor space in Atlanta last year.

Everybody is offering THE “solution”, mostly for fixing your NCLB problems but also quite a few fixes for internet safety.

Actually, the only major change on the exhibit floor from years past is the giant booth that’s missing: Apple.

From that you might wonder if the company is having financial problems or abandoning education (again), but in this case I actually think they’re pretty smart for not paying to erect a small house on a large chunk of expensive floor space.

Apple has plenty of visibility at this NECC in other, more productive ways.

Instead of running classes in a noisy booth surrounded by the mad house of other vendors, they have a couple of rooms off a high traffic corridor to offer the same sessions.

Plus most of the rooms for hands-on workshops are full of big screen iMacs, another good use of their marketing money.

And look around. Identify from a distance the brand of laptop being used by the teachers you see around the convention center.

While there are likely more PCs than Macs at NECC, that white glowing apple is very distinctive and probably the best advertising Apple could have.