Whats new at CES

Gaming

This is a field that I usually don’t take too seriously; however after over a year of integrating a tablet into my daily life, I have come to recognize that mobile gaming is a HUGE industry and for better or worse it will help shape the future of tablet computers.  One of the most impressive gaming advancements was project-fiona: a tablet based consul with access to the Xbox gaming library.  This combines traditional gaming, with accelerator based controls.  Well done!

Appliances:

There were quite a few additions to the appliance space this year:

• Samsung introduced a washer and dryer that will send you text messages when your clothes are done.
• Several companies offered advancements to the robotic vacuum market currently dominated by Rumba.  One of the more intriguing robo vacuums was an air filter on a  robot base, designed to navigate your home in search of the dirtiest air.
• LG introduced a fridge with a blast jet to cool a beer in 5 minutes and a bottle of wine in 8 mins.  Finally an invention that get me!

Tablets

Nothing really new here. Visio has a tablet. Viewsonic has a tablet.  Huawei has a tablet. All are supposed to be cheap, and all are likely to be crap.  The Playbook has new firmware to enable tablet functionality (email).  Intel has a chipset that can run android.  There are much fewer waves in the tablet space as compared to last year when every company that had access to LCDs was making a bid for the next great tablet.  It looks like the ipad has claimed that title and the industry is slowing starting to accept that hardware only approach to tablets will never be a sustainable business plan.

The Future of PCs

2011 was a bad year for PCs, and a great year for Macbooks.  So what do you think the creatives in the PC world do?  Make Ultrabooks!  Ultrabooks are the PCs attempt at a MacBook Air.  They are thin, they have great battery life, and they are expensive.  Some of the really cool ones to note are the Samsung Series 9., and the Lenovo Yoga. We all know that you can’t just copy an Apple product, make it run windows and hope to charge the same price.  So I don’t have high hopes for the Samsung Series 9.  However the Lenovo is something really cool.  It is a 10” tablet with touch panel, that has a swivel cover with integrated keypad.  Many companies have tried to implement this including Dell and HP and Asus.  But form factor is the killer in this market.  If your device is thicker than a tablet, and less functional than a PC you will fail.  That is why I excited for the Lenovo device.  If it really is thin enough to carry yet functional enough to use for work, it will do great.