My feet hurt and I don’t need this many thumb drives: my impressions after four days of CES-related activities. CES is the Consumer Electronics Show now underway (through Friday) at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
I didn’t see anything mind blowing, but I did find all kinds of neat stuff for you.
This year the convention is bigger than ever, with 3100 companies represented at the North, Central and South Halls of the Convention Center plus suites and/or ballrooms at the Venetian, the Las Vegas Hotel (until very recently known as the Las Vegas Hilton), and the Renaissance.
The show spans some 1.8 million square feet of booths and exhibits. That’s the equivalent of 31 football fields. Though I’ve only scratched the surface in my several days here, I’m sure I’ve walked for miles. My dogs are barkin’.
My mention of the thumb drives refers to the fact that, increasingly, press kits given to members of the media, are not paper packets in glossy envelopes but data on USB thumb drives. I’m now the owner of approximately 24 new ones.
There’s great competition to have the coolest one. And I have to say, of the ones I’ve collected thus far, my favorites came from Kenwood and from JVC. The Kenwood one is miniscule. And the one from JVC has a cover made out of real wood, with the company logo carved out. Several this year are not really thumb drives; they are small capacity (256k – 32gb, generally) removable hard drives. But some are not the size of a thumb. They’re integrated into some kind of card, about the size of a business card. I got one plastic and one metal.
This year at CES there are more 3D tvs, more tablets and more ultrabooks.
First, about ultrabooks. The short explanation is that they are like the MacBook Air… sleek, without an optical (CD/DVD) drive, thin, lightweight, and probably solid state. Intel was showing off some of the lines now incorporating its chips in ultrabooks. According to an Intel rep they have to be under three pounds and under a thousand dollars. Great, but Mac was there first. Still, look for more of these in coming months and years. As Cloud computing becomes more common, there’ll be less need for CDs and DVDs and consequently less need for optical drives which take up space and weight in a laptop.
About tablets… there are more of them out there and the Kindle Fire is among the entries that now has apps and video and enough features that it’s close to an ultrabook, but without the keyboard hardware.
About televisions… I did see something for the tailgater in the family. It’s called, obviously, the Tailgater, form Dish Network. It’s satellite dish you can take with you and plug into your cigarette lighter/power port in the car, to be able to catch the big game (or Dancing with the Stars or whatever) anywhere, even out in the woods or at the beach. It weighs only ten pounds so it’s fairly easy to carry. It costs $499. The equipment does not include service; that’s another subscription charge. And no, the Tailgater satellite does not offer broadband Internet access. Dish does have another product that will do that. Dish won an innovator award at CES this year for the Tailgater.
