Any student looking for a way to experience the year’s greatest technological achievements without going broke will have a chance tomorrow during the 2006 BGSU NW Ohio Technology Fair.

The fair will take place in the Union’s Lenhart Grand Ball Room from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Kim Fleshman, the event’s coordinator, said there will be between 55 and 60 companies attending. Office Depot, Apple, FedEx, Dell and Hewlett Packard are some of the corporations that will be participating at the fair.

“This year we have eight new vendors. There will be new things to look at and see,” Fleshman said.

Students will not only be able to see some of the new technology available – like Fujitsu’s Pen Notebook which is meant to replace the traditional pen and paper – but they also will have a chance to win prizes. There will be raffles going on throughout the event, giving away prizes such as mouse pads, USB Drives and an iPod.

The event is not only directed at students, but at the faculty, staff and administration. Fred Lammer, a sales engineer for Torrence Sound Company based out of Perrysburg, said his company is looking for more ways to do business with the University.

“We did the sound system in the football stadium, the audio visual in the Alumni Center, and the paging in the Ice Arena and the Rec Center,” Lammer said.

Torrence Sound System also has a contract to do the sound system in the new Sebo Center worth nearly $189,000.

“We have been a locally owned company for 78 years,” he said. “No one knows anything about us. That’s why I am going to these fairs so they know we are still out there.”

Joe Flaherty, a representative from Fujitsu Computers, said that his company wants to show the University the benefits of having Pen based Notebooks.

“With a Pen Notebook you can do anything you could do with a regular pen and paper,” he said. “You can even download your books onto it if they are on a CD. And you can annotate the books. You can highlight, underline, make notes, and delete any marks that you don’t need.”

Fujitsu Notebooks have already been incorporated by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and are being given to all of their students.

The fair is not meant to facilitate sales but to act as a conduit for information.

“The fair is just to let northwest Ohio see the type of technology that is out there,” Fleshman said.