CES 2007 (Like a kid in a candy store)
Features:
-1800 dpi 3G infrared sensor technology for enhanced precision.
-1000 Hz Ultrapolling™/1ms response providing pinpoint accuracy and lighting fast speed.
-Five programmable, ultra-large non-slip buttons with Hyperesponse™.
-A 16-bit ultra-wide data channel.
-Zero-acoustic Ultraslick™ Teflon fleet.
-Always-On™ instant response.
-Award-winning On-The-Fly™ sensitivity drivers.
-Right-handed form factor.
I just love the idea of a right handed mouse from Razer. It just feels more comfortable for me to use. The entire top of the mouse is covered with a rubber-like skin that gives you grip even if you have sweaty hands.
Crossing over into a new area for Razer is the Razer Mako 2.1 THX speakers. The Razer Mako represents a groundbreaking new desktop speaker design from the sound engineers and gaming industry leader Razer and audio industry pioneer THX Ltd. The Razer Mako 2.1 is the first desktop speaker system to incorporate THX Ground Plane™ and THX Slot Speaker™ technologies, which raise the bar for acoustic fidelity and performance in the desktop category. Whether the listener has connected their desktop computer, gaming console, television, CD deck, or portable MP3 player as the Razer Mako’s input source, the system will deliver sonic presentations that are the best-in-class for any 2.1 desktop speaker system. This is the first time that THX has actually co-designed a set of speaker. THX normally just approves or verifies speakers that have their logo.
I was given a one-on-one demo of these speakers and all I can say is WOW! I have never heard a 2.1 speaker system sound so good and rich. The sound seemed to be coming from all parts of the room as I walked around in the booth and even when cranking them up is was clear without any distortion.
SilverStone had a few new items displayed, but the one that really caught my eye was this super small form factor case. Not a 1/4 inch of space has been wasted with this one. A micro ATX motherboard does have to used, but you can still use a full size power supply.
Even with this case being so small they some how found a way to pack a quad video card setup into it. Everything was so tight that you could hardly find a place to stick your finger in. They did have a concern about air flow, but with 2 fans in the front and the PSU pulling out the hot air I think it just might work.
I got to the convention center early on Wednesday and went in, thank you press pass, to the Intel, Microsoft, and Dell areas. They were all right next to each other…imagine that. The Xbox section caught my attention when I saw some one jamming on a plastic guitar. Hmm, yep there it was Guitar Hero II on the Xbox. I hear that it will be available sometime in March. Last year my son and I got a chance to see Guitar Hero before it was released. They had a demo of it at the Gibson Guitar tent, we both watched for a bit, looked at each other and said…”yeah right, ha-ha”, and little did we know what a hit it would be.
Onto the next game that I was able to see and play was Crysis. Let me just say one word… OMG! Awesome! Unbelievable! OK that was more than one word, but I said them one at a time. Being in the building before the rest of the crowd gave me this chance to play the game. I walked up to an empty terminal and proceed to mess around with the game. The graphics was like looking at a movie and the details in scenes are just amazing. As I messing around a guy walks up to me and well I thought I was going to get booted off, but he started to talk to me about the game and started to show me a few new things added to the game before CES. One was is the ability to grab the enemy with your hands, which he said “I’m not supposed to show anyone that”. As we continue to talk and look at the game I soon came to find out he was not some one that just demos the game, he is one of the developers. I of course had to ask a few questions, like what kind of system will you have to have to run the game. “Today’s average machine will be able to play the game, but of course the better the machine the better game play you will get. This machine is an Intel Duo Core with an Nvidia 8800 using DX10 with the graphics maxed and you notice a few slow downs here and there. Over at the other booth there is the same system that is running a quad graphic cards setup and runs without a hitch. We do run the game on different levels of PC’s to make sure that the game plays.” he told me. I intern said “Since you said that the video cards are Nvidia does this mean it will be optimized for them?” “No…Half of the machines we use are on Nvidia cards and the other half are ATi”. It sounds like the game should be ready about sometime in the middle of 2007, I can hardly wait.
Next I found two guys doing a demo of both the Intel processors and Microsoft’s Vista. The demo was how well the Intel Duo Core works with the new OS. At first I was not to impressed as I already have one of the
Duo Core chips (sorry AMD people I do love it), but as we got farther into the demo and told me a little more about Vista it became quite clear as it will be the way to go. Shown on the screen was a HD Movie being played, IE open, Task Manager running, Word open, and encoding a full DVD at the same. The system they were running it was in a tiny box on the table top with 2 gigs of RAM and a 2gig CPU. Believe it or not the CPU was only maxing out around 50% usage. What, how can that be…Vista my friends. Vista is a total rewrite of the Microsoft OS and uses many new options that were not available before, that along with the Intel chip you got a smoking machine. Oh, they had a machine running XP and doing the same operations right next to the Vista one and it would hardly do any as the CPU was maxed out. Now just to the right of this demo was the Quad Core Intel chip running the same demo as the other machine, but it was also doing a virus scan plus 5 other things that I can’t remember and the CPU was only maxing out between 25-27%.
This was very, very short overview of all the great things to see at CES. If you are ever giving a chance to attend one you must do it. Make sure you bring your walking shoes and have a few days to stay or you won’t be able to see all that is offered.
