SmallBizResource Blog -- Hardware

CES: A Roundup of Roundups

Posted by Gayle Kesten Monday, Jan 14, 2008, 02:28 PM ET

General consensus around the Web seems to be that last week’s Consumer Electronics Show fell short of earth-shattering. With that in mind, a few intrepid conference-goers did us an extra big favor by helping to separate the digital wheat from the digital chaff.

“Digital pundits described this as a transitional year, when previously announced technologies finally ripened into plausible products,” writes Newsweek senior editor Steven Levy. “That's a nice way of saying that there was not much news.”

Fortune Small Business columnist Jonathan Blum agrees, though he managed to sleuth out almost two handfuls of best-of tech picks for and by small businesses. Blum’s list, presented via slide show, includes a solid-state hard drive from RiTek that plays nicely with your current computer, a portable presentation tablet PC from e-Detail that provides a professional alternative to clunky projectors, and a Web-based video communications unit for the hearing impaired from a company named Viable.

Another cool roundup comes from InformationWeek, whose list includes a wireless router from Netgear marked with a mass-market price tag, a prototype ultramobile PC the same size as a smartphone from National Taiwan University, and a solar-powered laptop bag from Voltaic.

The editors of Shiny Shiny, which takes a female standpoint on the consumer technology world, assembled their own list of CES’ top 10 best new products. Among their picks: a smartphone from Motorola that records and edits high-quality video, a 150-inch plasma screen, and a wireless keyboard from Logitech.

Finally, my friends at ChannelWeb present a compilation of 20 products they "love right now." That includes a DVD player from LG that supports both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, and a home-automation gateway from Actiontec Electronics.

Hardware