Once again it is that time of the year for us geeky types to make the trek to the land of plenty, Las Vegas. Each year the town that never sleeps and where the lights never go off is the host for CES (Consumer Electronics Show) where over one hundred thousand people come to see the very latest and also the not yet released gadgets that we all will want. You see this event is where new or old companies use to show off what they come up with to sell in the upcoming year. Spread out over one million square foot of convention space is over 2500 vendor booths, but even that is not enough space to display all the new hardware and gadgets. Any hotel that may have an available suite is booked many months in advance by manufactures to showcase their newest technology. Some even have a booth at the official CES grounds and the suites are used for special VIP’s or to conduct one on one meeting. Some are even transformed into cocktail parties so that the after-hours deals can be made. While others use them as the show floors are all booked up. When I was here last year I came across the spot where vendors where already selecting their booth locations and these spots do not come cheap. I have heard prices in the 40-50 thousand dollar range for some booth locations. This does not include the cost of building your booth, shipping it nor the setup or tear down. This also another key factor why some companies rent a suite from a hotel. Sure the suite could cost $2000.00 a night and end up costing a total of $10,000.00 but that is a far cry from the 50 grand it could cost you for a booth. Deals are made around clock like over a coffee at Starbucks, a hand shake at the vendor’s booth or even over a lavish diner. Who really knows how much money is made in deals each and every day, but over the course of the event it could make or break some smaller companies. The larger well established companies such as Microsoft, Sony, and others are present to show off what they have to offer, but for them it is a great way to get massive amounts of press for any upcoming releases. I am sure that Microsoft will be presenting and displaying the new OS Windows 7. With the public beta release just around the corner, it has been stated that date will be January 13th, 2009, this would be the prime time to get it out to the masses to see, use and to write about. I am hoping that they will have some DVD’s available with Windows 7 on it so that I do not have to wait. The crowd was lite this year Over the few days that I am at CES what I will try to do is take you through the event with images and a few comments here and there. The actually show takes place over fours days with one added day on Tuesday for just the press. Trying to jam the entire show in just one day is well, crazy. You would literally have to just run though the event while taking some pictures here and there and being able to get any inside news. Some other sites are lucky enough to have whole teams that will split up the duties of covering the event, but I am just a single person so please bare with me as I try my best to bring you the finest experience I can.On with the show... I figured that I would start off with my two favorite big time players here at CES, Microsoft and Intel. Each year they always have booths, well more like half of a hall, right next to each other. I was a bit surprised by Microsoft this year as they really did not have that much new stuff and they were really pushing what they have now and mostly about the updates they have made to the end users software. Even Windows 7 was on the backside of some display booths. Kind of odd since this will be their next great product. One of the big attractions was the ability to play with large plasma screen that were running Windows seven and they were touch screens. Pretty fun putting you fingers all over a 42 inch plasma and throwing the screens all around. New 120GB Zune player.Windows Seven Demo IntelThis was pretty cool. What we are looking at is touch, well maybe it might just located you hand, projection setup. What they did was use some overhead LCD projectors and put the screen onto large clear pad on a glass panel. This allowed you to use all you fingers and move any part of the screen to any location. What we see here are two netbooks that are aimed towards learning. These ultra portables have a handle across the top and are bit more rugged than your normal laptop. Also they have special software that can turn them into textbook. Even with my aging eyes I was able to read the text with a problem. The netbooks come in two styles, the normal clam shell or as a tablet. The price range right now is about $300-600. The tablet version is a must have for me as I was trying to figure out how to run out of the event with it. Ok so we have all seen mini laptops, but have you seen this small. The screen this thing is just under 5 inches. I first thought it was a kids toy. click on the image for the specs. SSD Drive are leading the way to the future and Intel is pushing the speeds with them and they won an award at the show with their new drive. Not only did they have some cool stuff but they had some might fine girls there. One of the other sights you will see at CES is all the shows that are broadcasting from the event. ThermalTakeThe past couple of years ThermalTake has received awards for their designs and this year is no different. Their newest case, Spedo, was able to grab an award. Also coming out soon for ThermalTake is a Phase Change cooling system that has a controller, with the compressor, that fits into the drive bay area. SilverStoneSilverStone had the Raven case out for display and I must say that any images that you have seen do not do it justice. It's stealth like feature may make it hard to photograph. In person the Raven looks great! As you can see the motherboard is placed in a whole new direction with the rear of the motherboard pointing up towards the top of the case. This little unit is a small form factor case that is primarily aimed at thr HTPC crowd. An added bonus from SilverStone is that they went right to the manufacture and had special Slim Line Blu-Ray DVD players made and they come with the case! BFG-Phobos: Gaming at a new level.BFG has been working on a complete gaming system and it it like no other. All the components will be handed pick by BFG to make sure that the system gets the best of what they have. It will have the Phobos edition graphic cards and more Phobos branded products to be announced. The case has been designed from the ground up and is made completely out of aluminum. The outer shell of the case made from a couple of pieces are welded together, ground down then painted. There are no side panels to access your hardware if you need to what you have to do is remove the top panel and remove a few thumb screws and pull out the innards. All of the cables or routed out the bottom of the case rather than the back. A touch screen is used as an interface to important information about the hardware and OS. You can get system temperatures, IP addresses, hard drive info, music files and with the touch of the screen you can set the performance level of the PC to three different levels. so basically you get overclocking with just touch. No more jumping into the bios to do some need speed to play your games. Samsung had a few cool things like a wireless monitor for you laptop. I don't know how many of you use two screens but one you do you just can't do without. So when you work off you laptop you miss it. This allows you to put a monitor anywhere and it is not tyied down to just laptops, it can be used with any PC. They also have a setup where you can do six monitors through a single USB port with an adapter. Funny story with this picture is that a lot of people where trying to take pictures of this and they were all being told "No pictures please", but I walk up and start taking some without a word spoken to me...ah the benefits of a press pass...lol Razer Razer had just a few items to show off at their meeting space and one that caught my attention was the new wireless/wired mouse with 5600 hardware dpi. In case you are wire kind of gamer all you have to do is unplug the wire from the wireless base, plug the cable into the mouse just below the wheel, like any other mouse, and you now have no fear of any inferance of the wireless. The wireless access point is also a stand to charge your mouse with and the base emmits a blue color that slowly pulses. LGLG is getting more and more into the PC area, they even have a full PC available. USB TV The year of the NetbookIt seems like where ever you looked someone had some sort of netbook to show off. Even small companies that I never heard of had at least 3-4 models to show off. I can see the large draw to as have finally came out with a laptop that is convenient to take with you anywhere and powerful enough to handle normal everyday task. I should know as I have one and it was a joy to carry one around as the weight is about 3lbs and the battery can last as long as 5 hours. I you are in the market to get you might hold off as long as you can as there are some pretty nice and cheap units getting ready to hit the market soon. CoolITCoolIT Systems was there in full force showing off all kinds of products that included the their new Domino A.L.C. and a few upcoming items. A good size booth was on display that had a small area that test people speed on how fast they could install the Domino A.L.C. the average time was about 5 minutes and the fastest time, I believe, was just over two minutes. What we see below is a system that is running the Domino A.L.C. and a unit that uses the same internal parts, but this one is cooling a pair of ATI cards in CrossFire. Not to be out done but what what do we see here...could that be a NVIDIA 295 being cooled with the Domino A.L.C. Lets take a quick look at a couple other setups they had displayed.Hmm...wonder how these keep getting in here CrucialCrucial was present with there line up and was showing off what they had. The two items that caught my eye were the Tracer Memory modules and the Color Memory Modules. What makes this different is that not only do the heat spreader come in different colors, but the memory PCB's are also colored to match them. Lian Li MSI There was so much to look at that you just can not see it all and talk about all of it so I will show you some more stuff from around the CES show. The End...
