Loved CES

CES was a bit overwhelming, mainly because I spent the first day of the show completely off of the show floor and in off-site meetings as well as in my hotel room finishing up our Core Duo Notebook article. I really do love it when NDAs coincide with major tradeshows :)

The rest of the AT team was getting to see and interact with all of the cool stuff at CES, but eventually on the second day of the show I finally made it to the show floor. The stuff on the floor was amazing, and if you haven't read our coverage on it I strongly suggest it. Not everything is PC related but I think the PC and Consumer Electronics markets have been on a crash course for quite some time now, and it's tough to be an enthusiast of one and not the other these days.

Everyone always asks me what the coolest thing I saw at the show was, and I usually respond with a few different items. This year's CES was no different, so in no particular order here's what I thought was cool:

ATI's OCUR: Wow, I want one of these. Nothing makes me want Vista more than ATI's OCUR since I love MCE but I need HD-DVR support. ATI tells me there are only around 13 of these devices in existence right now, and I'd probably get tossed in jail if I somehow managed to get one and get it working on my cable network. Damn.

Motorola's In-Ear Bluetooth Headset: It looks a little weird (and the prototype charger is even stranger) but the chance of not having to yell to someone on the phone while in a crowded environment is all I care about.

Rollable Displays: There are few things cooler than a display being rolled and unrolled, and still having it work afterwards. Why do I get the feeling that in another 10 years I'm going to be talking about how today's kids are spoiled and remembering what things were like "back when I was in school."

Hitachi's OLED Demo: Thin is in, and you can't really get any thinner than the Hitachi's 7" OLED monitor. Toss a few of these things all over the house and 21st century, here we come.

Lenovo's Thinkpad X60s: It's small and it's Yonah, although I would like to see how the Core Duo based X60 fares in comparison.

Honestly, if you could somehow merge CES and the Geneva Motor Show I'd be in heaven.

If I had the time I would have loved to be at MacWorld today, but unfortunately there's too much work back here for me to have gone from CES directly to MacWorld. It is unfortunate, since it's looking like Apple will introduce their first Intel based notebook there tomorrow (among other things), but I guess I'll have to wait with everyone else to find out what happens at the show :)