HardwareCentral - Let Loose in the Toy Department: Report From CES 2008

Let Loose in the Toy Department: Report From CES 2008

One and a Half Monitors

January 15, 2008
By Eric Grevstad

We're fans of DisplayLink's network display chip technology, which lets PC users plug second or third monitors into USB ports instead of having to install more graphics cards or a dual-head card. DisplayLink partners seen at CES included Kensington, whose Dual Monitor Adapter ($100) features both DVI and VGA connectors, and Iogear, showing not only its $100 USB 2.0 External VGA Video Card but previewing a Wireless USB version that lets you connect a second display via, well, thin air.

Perhaps the coolest DisplayLink device we saw, however, was Samsung's $550 SyncMaster 2263DX -- a 22-inch widescreen (1,680 by 1,050) LCD monitor that comes with a second, 7-inch, clip-on monitor for handy display of instant messaging, Skype, or other background applications -- or for a digital-photo slide show, if your boss won't let you put a picture frame on your desk.

Samsung also caught our eye with compact, glossy black boxes that looked like DVD players or some other sleek electronic gear -- even with three guesses, you'd never identify them as monochrome laser printers. The ML-1630 ($199) prints up to 17 pages per minute with a 5,000-page monthly duty cycle; the SCX-4500 ($299) all-in-one adds copier and color scanner functionality. Buttonless touch-sensor panels replace the usual printer controls.

Speaking of printers, Lexmark won our Gee, Thanks Award by touting three new Professional Series inkjet all-in-ones, with wireless models at $249, $169, and $149 and a base model at $99. The lifetime phone support and first-year, next-business-day replacement are OK, but try not to swoon at the press release's banner headline -- "high performance [and] reliability with twice the ink."

Actually, Lexmark explains, the line "ships with high-yield ink cartridges, delivering the yield of Lexmark's standard cartridges." In other words, the printers come with ordinary instead of the available larger cartridges, but -- breaking with printer manufacturers' ignoble usual practice -- the ones included in the box are full rather than half empty. Gee, thanks.

Free-Range Eee

Intel CEO Paul Otellini's keynote speech, like previous Intel presentations, plugged WiMax as the chipmaker's favorite future, city- or town-wide successor to coffee-shop-wide WiFi networks. Sprint unveiled a WiMax service called Xohm, now testing in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., with commercial rollout scheduled for later this year in select cities.

Boarding the bandwagon early, Asus chairman Jonney Shih announced that, by the end of this year, 15 percent of Asus notebooks will be WiMax-ready. That includes Asus' hot-selling Eee PC mini notebook; the 7-inch-screened, 2-pound portable will also appear in 8- and 8.9-inch and Windows XP (rather than Linux) versions. The smartphone-sized, slide-out-keyboard OQO PC will also be available with WiMax.

Meanwhile, Everex rolled out an Eee challenger named CloudBook, a similarly sized and screened 2-pounder with a 1.2GHz VIA C7-M versus the Eee's Intel Celeron processor; a 30GB hard disk versus the Eee's 4GB flash drive; and the gOS Linux operating system. It'll hit Walmart.com on January 25 for $399.

It's not WiMax, but Fujitsu waved the broadband wireless banner with AT&T and Verizon HSUPA versions of its slim LifeBook T2010 and tiny LifeBook U810 notebooks. The Fujitsu exhibit we liked best, however, was of the company's prototype Corn PC -- a laptop encased with corn starch processed into a polymer alloy, replacing half of the usual petroleum-based polycarbonate. A company spokesman bragged that rice and potatoes were green-PC possibilities as well.

On our way out of the convention hall toward the MGM and then home, we passed two other notable products. The first was iShoes -- a $600 pair of electric roller skates that promised a poor man's Segway and looked hellishly dangerous at their 15-mph top speed.

The second, from an obscure Taiwanese importer seeking a U.S. distributor, was a combination GPS and breathalyzer. The idea, apparently, is that you can find out that you shouldn't drive and then drive anyway.

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