Hooray for Tuesday! It's now the morning of January 9th and I'm on my way to a 9am meeting with Samsung Mobile, but my cab takes the Strip to get to the LVCC, making me late.( In case you missed the previous entries, here are January 7th and 8th, parts one and two.)
Despite the ongoing accolades others have showered on Samsung's phones, I've always felt a bit pissed. Great designs, but there's always something that falls just a little bit off the mark. Nothing too terrible to put people off buying them (except that flat little proprietary headphone/USB/charging jack they insist on using), but still.
Anyway, I was there mainly to spend some "talk time" with the reps who help me with my work throughout the year as it is now Tuesday and we already have all the major announcements including The Simpsons phones, discussed twice.
While Samsung has had some great new phones, I can't get my hands on the ones I really want to get my hands on. The Samsung X830 is just a badass piece of design work. It's a click wheel controlled music player that plays MP3/ACC/ ACC+/e-AAC+/WMA files. It's a tiny phone with all the essentials you could want in a tiny pocket phone. And it has two separate interfaces - one for the phone, one for the music player - so you not having to open the phone to listen to music. Unfortunately, it's unlikely to ever show up on a carrier in the US. That's life.
Okay, now it's 10am and I'm at Kodak's booth for a quick tour. This is the first time I've seen the company's new line of digital picture frames in person. I've always believed that no one makes digital frames for themselves Buying one myself. Get or give one as a gift, absolutely, but I would never drop the money for personal use.
Photo frames were plentiful at CES this year and Kodak had some of the nicer ones, both in looks and features. Available in 7-, 8- and 10-inch sizes without built-in Wi-Fi and 8- and 10-inch Frames come with Wi-Fi, the frames offer MP3 support for playing music through the built-in speakers, Pict Bridge is enabled so you can print directly from the frame and also do simple edits to the frame. I'm not interested in how the back of the frames looks like, but when they're facing a wall who cares? All that really matters is good looks and a good screen up front and ease of use, and it looks like Kodak has nailed that .
The other hardware items coming from Kodak at the show (aside from some fad bags, considering that hardware) are the EASYSHARE V1003 ($250) and V803 ($200) 10-megapixel and 8-megapixel zoom digital cameras -Resolutions each with 3X optical zoom lenses and available in eight colors. As usual with Kodak digicams, they have a good camera, user-friendly features such as 22 scene modes, blurry warning and digital red-eye reduction.
Next, I stop at the Renaissance Hotel, which is just outside the LVCC South Hall, for two meetings: Buffalo Technology at 11am and Dell at 12pm.
My my my what a great wifi router you have. I don't think it can fire missiles (well, I don't think it's part of the out of the box experience anyway), but it does it looks like it should be able to do that.
The $299 AirStation Wireless-N Nfiniti Dual-Band Router and Access Point supports 802.11a/b/g and the IEEE 802.11n draft specification simultaneously. It is Microsoft Vista certified, has an integrated 4 port 10/ Auto-sensing 100/1000 gigabit switch and includes the company's AirStation One-Touch Secure System (AOSS) for setting up a high-speed, secure wireless network in two steps. It's basically every bit of wireless networking technology that Buffalo puts in a box There's also a $129 USB notebook adapter that looks like the router's antenna, only smaller.
They also dropped a few network-attached consumer storage drives: The LinkStation Live, available in capacities of 250GB (HS-DH250GL; $229), 320GB (HS-DH320GL; $249), 500GB (HS-DH500GL; $349), and 750GB (HS-DH750GL .). ; $749?) and the TeraStation Live is available in 1TB (HS-DH1.0TGL/R5; $699) and 2TB (HS-DH2.0TGL/R5; $1,299) capacities. You can use it as an iTunes server for direct access to the music stored on the devices and you can save photos and videos directly from a digital camera. And they are all equipped with DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance), so they work with other devices, computers, etc. that meet DLNA standards for interoperability in your "digital home". There is also a new LinkTheater Wireless-A/G Media Player. You can read more about it here.
I'm moving on to Dell's suites now. Luckily, this year hasn't been too busy, so it's quick. The first stop is a look at a couple of new displays, including the 27-inch 2707WFP LCD monitor for $1,399 with a resolution of 1,920 × 1,200. I liked their 30" model 3007WFP, but would now buy the 27" model instead. Great picture, excellent ergonomics, ports and inputs, and damn it looks good from the back Instead of plastic, it has a brushed aluminum chassis with a metal-embellished glass back. Yes, you can buy two smaller LCDs with "higher" resolutions, but that doesn't mean the build quality or picture is any better.
While Dell's latest gaming desktop, the XPS 710 H2C, was announced at CES, it wasn't the first time I've seen it. I haven't tested one yet, but I hasten to say that it's the best gaming box / is the best performance system they've built to date. Good design. Big solid build. All the components available for great gaming (including overclocked graphics and CPU). And now thanks to CoolIT, it's quiet liquid cooling. I'd rather go with the 710 Buy H2C as an Alienware, that's for sure.
Well, I'm going to the Venetian/Sands Expo Center now, so check back later for the second half of my day.
