Gadget guys rejoice! I have it on good authority that the electronic gadgets revealed this year at the annual International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas had more hits than misses. More cool toys for you and I to play with in 2011!
This is the largest trade show in the Americas folks. That’s a lot of gadgets and a lot of people. The good news for the economy in general is that more people attended this year’s convention than in the two previous years.
The 2011 mega-hit gadget developments included:
- Tablets These are the touch-screen tablet computers designed to compete with Apple’s iPad and there were lots of competitors. To stand out from the iPad, there were hardware offerings that included front-and rear facing cameras for video chatting, high def videos, and 4G.
- Verizon’s 4 G devices Verizon Wireless unleashed its 4G network in December with amazing data speeds. For now, only plug-in laptop modems can take advantage of this service.
- Windows running on cell phone chips What this means simply is that laptops and tablet computers will have longer battery lives and give Windows a better chance to become dominant in the world of tablet computers.
- Intel & AMD with new chip designs These chips have major design changes which will help hold off the advancing tablets and smart phones. Traditional computers using their new chips will be more competitive with mobile devices. The computers will be better at graphics-intensive tasks and playing videos. With the added efficiencies, there will be longer battery life as well.
- 3-D TV’s with cinema glasses Though 3-D TV’s were out last year, they required large, battery powered glasses to view. This year’s versions boasted light, inexpensive glasses. LG, Vizio and Samsung are big on this new gadget. (Personally, I don’t want a TV that I have to wear special glasses to watch! It’s hard enough just to track down the remote!)
- Free TV for mobile devices TV broadcasters have added signals that are designed to be picked up by laptops and cell phones. Though similar offerings have failed in the past, makers Audiovox and LG are believers and are providing several “Mobile DTV” gadgets this year.
- High Speed color inkjet printing Startup Memjet has come up with a major development in inkjet printing that allows desktop printers to cheaply print one page per second in color. The head is stationary and spans the whole page. The cost of the printer will be about $600.
Live long and prosper!