The Sights And Stars Of CeBIT

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrive at the Hannover Congress Centrum Monday for the opening ceremony of the CeBIT fair in Hannover, Germany. California is the fair's government partner this year -- the first time a nonsovereign state has had that honor.

Everybody at CeBIT wanted to see Schwarzenegger's opening ceremony keynote, as the crowds in the Hannover Congress Centrum's entry hall attest. Unfortunately, only about 2,000 tickets were available and many were turned away.

"Arnold, what is good in life?" ... "To push the infinite limits of human potential, to move forward in a strong and powerful way." Schwarzenegger said all those things in his address to the "winners" of CeBIT.

Life-size models of Schwarzenegger as the Terminator decorate the reception hall at the Hannover Congress Centrum, where a rollicking party was held after the CeBIT opening ceremony Monday.

Merkel and Schwarzenegger tour CeBIT Tuesday, drawing huge crowds as they make their way through IBM's enormous booth, then go on to visit the California Pavilion and sections dedicated to Green IT and social networking technology.

The convention center is massive and sprawling, with architectural wonders such as this hall -- an enormous wooden structure that looks as if it would make a fine home for a tribe of Wookiees.

CeBIT organizers went all out in celebrating Green IT, a major theme at this year's show, decorating enormous conical structures with turf in the central promenade at the convention center.

CeBIT lucked out -- in the week before the fair, drizzly weather kept the green mountains at the convention center nice and healthy. But by Tuesday, the sun was shining down on fairgoers.

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner delivers his keynote Tuesday at CeBIT. Turner's main message: Times may be tough, but there's still plenty of opportunity for technology innovators and integrators to grow their businesses.

Intel's Craig Barrett shares the stage with a young German student who has developed a weather-tracking application on her Intel Classmate netbook. The outgoing Intel chairman delivered two CeBIT addresses urging better science and math education in Europe and the United States -- one at Monday's opening ceremony and another as part of the Global Conferences series on Tuesday.

American Power Conversion's Rob Bunger gives the lowdown on the power and cooling vendor's latest Touch Safe hot-swappable, hot-pluggable breaker/cable system, part of the company's lineup of new products for high-density computing and data center management.

Intel's wall of motherboards is an impressive trip down, ahem, memory lane. The chip maker occupies two halls at CeBIT -- one with its business and mainstream consumer-oriented fare and a second that Intel has turned into a gaming megaplex.

Fairgoers enjoy racing games courtesy of Intel in the chip maker's Extreme Masters gaming megaplex at CeBIT.

Finnish overclockers crank up an Intel Core i7 to 4.9GHz during a demonstration of CPU overclocking Tuesday in Intel's Extreme Masters pavilion at CeBIT.

Professional video gamers from Europe, North America and Asia are competing for grand prizes totaling $280,000 at the Electronic Sports League Global Finals this week at CeBIT. Competitors are vying for world championships in World of Warcraft and Counter-Strike. Sponsors and suppliers include Dell, Intel and gaming peripheral vendor Razer.