CES big shake.

The big news late in the week was HPs new Envy Spectre ultrabook. It a beautiful glass-backed powerhouse designed to put competition on the board for Apple's MacBook Air. It has an Intel i5 or i7 processor, with options for 128 or 256 Gb solid state drives. It had an HD screen, capable of 1600 x 900 pixels worth of resolution. It has USB 3.0 ports and HDMI out, as well as integrated Ethernet. The glass on the back of the display is the new corning Gorilla glass. It is extremely resilient, and can take the impact of a drop or fall. This new glass was first rumored to be the main component of new generation mobile phones, HP snaps to attention and issues this revolutionary glass on a full size, lightweight laptop PC!

This laptop won a cNet.com CES "Best of" award and will be a major player in the battle for consumer's dollars in the new ultrabook category. Looks like a worthy competitor has arisen from the PC side of the fence.

CES Day 2

I think this OLED TV made a big splash - LG went BIG on the 55" available for real claim, and it's true! Check out how nice looking and rediculously thin this display is! Although they are higher def than regular LED Tvs, OLED models will be more expensive until the production lines make these routine and not special... a few years away. But drool with me for a moment?

Thin enough?

Really cool side profile...

Higher intensity color, lower power demands, better potential resolution, here come the promised OLED TVs! I first saw one at 2009 CES in the SONY booth. How come they didn't own this market?

More CES Day one

Cool things I followed via Tech Crunch Live cast, Twitter, Huffington Post, cNet and daily CES briefings I receive as a CEA Alumni...

• Intel touting (And giving away from their booth) the newest Lenovo Windows super slim Ultrabook notebook. It's called the IdeaPad Yoga. Designed to compete with my 4 year old MacBook Air, they look great and are ready for the Windows 8 tablet/PC OS to be released later in 2012. Yoga's most special feature that will impress is its ability to rotate the screen and become a Windows 8 tablet, almost independent of its keyboard. Looks to sell in the $1200 range. Great for sales presentations, ShopSIGNARAMA designing at a client's workplace, designing a shirt online... get it?
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• Netgear releases a WiFi dual band extender, this handy $90 box brings more range to 2.4 GHz and 5GHz band wireless networks. If you have a big area or complex construction materials that prohibit good wireless signals in your building... hint, hint, this will help.
  
• Fuji introduces their first interchangeable lens compact digital camera the X-Pro 1. It does 16 megapixel photos, 10 frames per second video, but most importantly, allows for lens swaps. Wide angle, portrait and zoom lenses will be available at release. Price expected at $1300-1500. Gulp!
• Microsoft says they'll have a Windows version of their popular XBOX accessory Kinect at the beginning of Feb. Yes, this is initially slated for gaming, but Microsoft has a winner with this unique technology, if they harness it as a new user interdface for other things in Windows 8 on the PC... cool possibilities.
• Seagate, maker of portable storage products, announces a Thunderboly adapter for their drives. This means that their products can interface with the superfast Thunderbolt ports on newer Mac computers. No, it doesn't magically turn your older Seagate drive into a Thunderbolt device, but at least you don't have to buy a new storage device to work with the new Thunderbolt ports. May all new technologies come with the considerations of those that existed beforehand and make accomodations like this for loyal users!
   
• Last CES, I was very excited about Logitech's implementation of Google TV. That eventually flopped, no reason why, it worked nicely when I saw it. Now Vizio, the economy priced TV you see in COSTCO, will be teaming up with Google TV to release a system this summer. Maybe an appeal to the masses with less expensive entry point to combat the impending release of an Apple TV is Google and Visio's idea? It's not less expensive than the Logitech/Google TV offering, but it will be all ready to go as a part of their TVs. Worth a look this summer, they'll be easy to buy, Vizio has good coverage in stores.

More CES goodies coming!

CES Day One.

It's on! After last night's keynote speech with Steve Ballmer, CES 2012 opens later this morning in Las Vegas. I'm tweeting and retweeting goodies the next few days @DaveAtUFG. Follow along, it's going to be good!

CES sans me.

First time in many years I won't be in Las Vegas for CES techno-geek-mania. But I will be following as many streams and updates as I can this next week to keep the info coming as to what's hot, what's a flop and how the industry sees things evolving for 2012. I have a few contacts there I'll be leaning on for personal updates, so expect some good stories, too. I love this time of year. Minus the bags full of brochures, USB memory sticks and my Nikon D90 full of pictures, I'll do as best as I can to keep the news interesting and fresh! Stay with me on this...