Ok yeah I know this is like 4 days late but hey it’s my blog and if I want to be late I will – HA I win!

“It’s amazing to see the progress over the course of the year, and truly the Digital Decade is happening. We see it everywhere we look. We see it in photography over 2 billion digital photos were taken this last year; 65 percent of homes are using digital cameras.

We see portable devices proliferating, a higher and higher part of the growing PC market. We see the connections, both through Wi-Fi and 3G getting to the point where you can get information wherever you want to go. And we’re just scratching the surface. More and more can be done because as this marketplace is extended, the number of startups, the R&D budgets of the established companies, all are investing in this global market to do better and better work.”

Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation @ CES 07

I think the quote above sums up the whole of CES this year, the technology on show was incredible, from Vista and 1TB hard disks to toilet roll holders with a docking station for your iPod, yet what was seen this year is only a small percentage of the things to come. “And we’re just scratching the surface” a quote I firmly believe is very much a fact!

Now I know I said I would list the top 5 products and the 5 worst products, but there is one small issue! As I did not go I did not see 1st hand what was there and of course no one reported on crap products that were on show! So I am dropping the 5 Worst Products of CES bit and concentrating on the top 5 – Here we go then, I will put it in reverse order:

5 – The Sharp Aquos 108” LCD HDTV    

     Rolling in at No.5 is this giant TV from Sharp. This monster screen was pretty sparse on the details, it is 1080p and 1080i and has Sharp’s Advanced Super View LCD Panel which is manufactured from 8th Generation glass substrates. No word on price but I’d expect a hefty tag to go with it! Now I don’t know about you but I think that’s once COOL television, just imagine Gears of War on that in HD! Now I just need a house with a wall big enough to accommodate it!

4 – Windows Home Server  

    The Windows Home Server is the long awaited Windows Server 2003 R2-based server for consumers that dispenses with the complexities of most Windows Server versions and provides the core storage, sharing, and remote access functionality. This HP product is designed to be a box that does all the average consumer wants with the simplicity of making a cup of tea. It comes with no monitor and is completely managed via a client on another PC. You can share media files allocate a certain amount of space per user, you can even set it up to backup all the PC’s on the network automatically . This server is perfect for those who want a central location for all their media and files and an easy way to keep your PC’s backed up and safe but for the technology evangelists (you guys) you might find it somewhat limiting. One clever idea is the storage aggregation that occurs. There are no drive letters in WHS all the storage is put into a pool and thus there is one location for storing your data. Expandability is not a problem either, just pop in an additional drive and run the add drive tool and bingo the data pool increases! An excellent product and certainly one I will be looking to invest in, as will a lot of other people!

3 –  Toshiba’s Portégé R400   

    What a piece of kit this is! Toshiba showed of this new tablet/notebook device and tagged it with a Jan 30th release date. This notebook is simply brilliant, have it in notebook mode and you have a full keyboard functionality and yet with a simple twist of the screen it becomes a very sleek and stylish tablet PC. With a Intel Core Duo processor 1.2Ghz and 1GB of Ram (4GB max), as well as an 80GB 4200rpm hard disk this is almost minimum spec for the Windows Vista Business that is running on it. Early reports say it runs well but I will be interested to see once there are some more of the resource hugging apps installed how it performs Also the notebook has the all new Microsoft Active Notifications.

“Introducing the world’s first notebook PC with Microsoft® Active Notifications. Whether the computer is on or in suspend mode, Active Notifications can automatically receive or retrieve email and calendar items so they’re ready and waiting when you need them, visible on the Toshiba Edge Display.

To me that sounds great, but surely doing that means it’s using more battery in suspend mode that say a normal notebook, only time will tell! With a £1,319 ($2,599) price tag I think we’ll have have to see if Toshiba are on to a winner with this one! I like it though!

 TEA BREAK!! GO GET A NICE CUP OF TEA AND SETTLE IN FOR THE TOP TWO FROM CES07

2 – LG Hybrid HD-DVD/BLU Ray player  

    Coming in at No.2 is this little doozey from LG. Could this be the device that ends the format wars? Will this make turn one format into a betamax and the other VHS? Who knows but it’s bound to make an impact. CNET said:

“In case there was any doubt of the unit’s capability, the company’s press event included a demo of one player showing a custom demo loop labelled with a Blu-ray watermark and a second player showing the same loop with an HD DVD watermark. The company’s reps even bravely performed a live demo of playing first an HD DVD disc and then a Blu-ray disc, skipping chapters, and so on. At one point in the conference, the LG representative changed discs, which took about a minute, although the spokesperson claimed a short, 25-second load time.”

The device is 1080p capable and puts out 24–30 fps using HDMI and even has an ethernet port on the back (firmware updates possibly). One draw back though is that the device lacks the ability to access the HDi interactive layer found on some HD DVD discs and as a result some of the advanced interactive features of the discs will not be available! At $1,199 this might be out of reach for the standard consumer but it does pave the way for other firms to market their own devices and thus end this stupid format war!

1 – OQO Model 2 UMPC    

    This for me was by far the best announcement at CES 07! OQO have gone away and basically improved everything in this revision of their UMPC that was one of the most popular of all UMPC’s available. Boasting a 1.5GHz VIA processor, 60GB hard drive, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 5-inch, 800×480 pixel display (with active digitizer for pen-based input), Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11a/b/g WiFi and an HDMI out port this pocket device is certainly on the more powerful side, sadly though this means that unless you pay the extra $300 for the extended battery you will only get 3 hours juice from it! It has a clever docking system though which gives you USB, mouse and keyboard ports, display, ethernet and a DVD±RW/RAM dual layer optical drive. Sadly though to get the device, the extended battery and the docking station (both of which you will need) it will set you back a hefty $2,249! Now that is a lot of cash and not one I see the features of the device justifying, sadly for me though I just love it and when it comes to the time where I need a new laptop (which could be quite soon) I might find myself forking out for one of these! I love it and love the whole UMPC concept. That is why the OQO V2 UMPC has come top of my CES 07 top 5 products list!

Wow LOOOOONG post, I won’t jabber on anymore, if you reached the end of this Well Done, give yourself a big hug!

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