Posted: Jan 12, 2010 07:00 pm EST
"You can never be too rich or too thin" said the female aristocrat and that pretty much wraps the 2010 Sin City consumer electronics show.

The future will also come to who has the best touch and biggest bandwidth.

More than the skimpy ladies wrestling in the Central Hall; the skinny part involved computers and TV sets. As for the money; Microsoft stocks reportedly dropped immediately after Steve Ballmer's opening note.

Highlights involved disappearing acts worthy of a Las Vegas magic show.

3D: the old, new technology

3D is not a big revelation for the older crowd, but of course the 2010 version is much fancier and people flocked around it everywhere at this year's CES.

The TV sets were sharper, the glasses looked techier. And yet watching Shrek in 3D still somehow felt like watching an Indonesian puppet show.

3D anno 2010 is not close to the futuristic images where projections would allow you to check out actors from all angles. Instead, 3D is still a weird experience where figures seem to move in front of a 2D set-piece.

At a gaming spot, we were told that the glasses were 'active', i.e. they opened and closed "like your eyes." So how are they better than the red and green plastics that came in cereal boxes in the 70s? "They haven't told us that yet," the rep informed us kind of importantly, "but these are definitely better or else we'd use the other ones!"

Watching Fox news in 3D would probably get a bit dizzying after a while, but Avatar is a blockbuster so for special features the technology could be a fun add on to our regular TV sets.

And who'll be the first to film Everest in 3D? Panasonic offered a 3D cam corder for pro use at $21,000 (made to order).

One company jumped on the bandwagon by offering a 3D scanner, currently mostly aimed at eBay, by which products are rotated and dual-cam photographed in 360 degrees. The image could reportedly even be sent to a 3D printer but no such was in place for a demonstration.

How thin can you go?

Among the stuff at the event, the ultra slim TV sets made for most buyers' want. Paper thin with a picture so sharp it will challenge make-up artists, 3D ready and with built in connectivity for Skype and internet streams - they oozed future - even more so in the big hall where they were stacked on top of each other below a huge mirror dome. You better had all you brain-synapses in check for that one.

However, it wasn't clear how much of the connectivity is a reality yet, and again - we saw no displays thin enough to fold or roll.

The untouchables

Speaking of reality - this was a big question mark at the show. In Microsoft's booth, two Samoan bodyguards watched over a row of Netbooks probably far undervaluing the net total of their salaries.

"No touch!" they urged but things got really weird when we tried to hunt down the new HP multitouch tablet unveiled by Steve Ballmer. The guards shook their heads until at last we were pointed to a secret door behind which we expected to find Bill and Melinda feeding African children.

Instead, a female rep at a desk replied to our inquiry about the reclusive tablet: "We don't keep it on the floor."

So where could we find it?

"As I said, we don't keep it on the floor," the Microsoft woman sharpened her already edgy tone.

"It's just to screw Apple," someone offered. Apple's tablet is due for launch January 26, reportedly with ample time to position themselves against competition. We finally did find a dual-touch tablet at the far end of the South Hall in a Taiwanese booth but the rep there passed gas so bad that we had to leave.

So what's the dual touch about? Well, you can drag two different items with two different fingers.

The story repeated when we tried to cover Samsung's transparent OLED screen notebook. "It's not here" reps shook their heads, eyes darting. At the "front desk" finally a media-rep pulled us off to a corner where we were told, "it's only conceptual."

"So it doesn't exist?" we tried to understand. "It's conceptual," she said.

In another booth again, a very cool transparent laptop caught our eye. Could we become resellers? "Of course!" came the answer after which the salesperson took us to a clunky desktop. Noticing we sounded just like the red-car kid in the commercial, "we want that one" we pointed back. You guessed it, conceptual.

Even in the robotic section, the robot looked more like a Las Vegas robot impersonator.
Audience: "Can he walk?"
Robot guy: "No, that's why he's sitting."
Audience: "So what are the legs for?" (the question a bit awkward as it came from a person in a wheelchair.)
Robot guy: "He is really good at speech-recognition!"
Audience: "OK, so say something."
Robot guy: "He's not programmed for that yet, duh!"

Our favo bot Paro the seal was there but wouldn't respond to our petting until we asked the rep to turn it on.

Computer news conclusion

Using touchpad tablets already for our first South Pole expedition in 2001, we had hoped for a bit more innovation at the show. While improved touch technology is the latest rage, unfortunately most of the computing seems to be moving backwards at this point with e-readers and Netbooks vastly scaled down in functionality to allow thinner and lighter hardware.

While simplifying is good, there is a thin line between that and downdumbing. No matter how sleek; e-readers and many of the new tablets and Netbooks can't do a whole lot, killing creativity and transforming us into passive users. The IPAQ still rules the PDA sector, where not much new is going on. And with providers opposing any innovation except that we use their services; mobile phones are useless for expeditions.

The biggest progress was in Netbook battery life - 14 hours in most of the ASUS models.

Power

Most power solutions at CES concerned solar power and batteries, none of which quite frankly came even close to HET's solutions. It was scary to watch the press cover even companies displaying 20 years old monocrystalline panels.

There were some crank based products and a few fuel cells. Again though, at one-time-only 120 W output - an "emergency" fuel cell the size of a suitcase was simply a ridiculous solution.

Another - a desktop model - relied on a small cartridge giving 12 W (enough to power a Netbook for 45 minutes) after which it had to be submersed in a water container. "It's too much water," the sales rep kept complaining at the liquid continuously splattering a prospective buyer's suit.

Good luck bringing this solution to the polar areas or frigid base camps - the entire thing will freeze. In addition, the product required a solar panel for charging - the sales rep recommended a 60 W panel to charge the fuel cell for one hour worth of usage.

Why anyone would want to lug all this gear to a remote area to charge a Netbook for 45 minutes instead of charging three Netbooks from the same panel sans fuel cells for an hour each is beyond us.

The Wrap

Checking the media after the show, we noticed that our colleagues mainly noticed the mirrored dome in the TV section and a black Lexus. Oh, and that Steve Ballmer increasingly looks like the dad in "Everybody loves Raymond."

Some wrote about a toy chopper that can be steered via an iPhone, others covered Apple earphone bling.

The much coveted in-vehicle technology - with streamed internet, TV, traffic and weather forecasts, inter-connected cars and various related safety features - are dependant on highway broadband that, well, doesn't exist. While there were cool cars at the show, most still sported mainly tons of loudspeakers and blinking lights.

As for the photo section, all cams were HD and most were waterproof to 10 ft.

Some buzz involved femtocells (small base stations) expanding cellular connectivity, home cables bundled into one, and homeplugs using existing copper lines for general home network improvements.

While the CES show was interesting in the sense of what the near future might bring, quite frankly, a PBS show later that night about origami in science awed us more.

The US tech sector reportedly dropped 8% last year for the first time in two decades. Even with a hopefully recovering economy, it will take much more imagination than what we witnessed at CES to turn those figures around.

At present, the biggest thinking seems to take place in nanotech and biotech, but that's a whole different set of tradeshows. For explorers, the coolest tech sections to watch right now are probably those and software.

Article by Tina Sjogren.

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