More Gadgets from CES

I've been checking out the CES coverage at Yahoo News and there are some interesting finds. From the 5 must see gadgets at CES, I found this:

Asus XG Station - The first ever external video card, designed for letting graphics-limited laptops play high-end 3D games. It works.

Playing video games on a laptop is almost impossible, so it might make a good Father's Day present for my husband:

Say your notebook doesn't have 3D graphics (as is the case with many a crippled business machine). But you want to play Oblivion nonetheless. So you just hook up the an external video card (called XG Station, at least for now) via your laptop's ExpressCard slot, and run a cable to an external monitor.

Close the lid and boom, the monstrous XG Station takes over and does all the graphics processing instead of the lame chip inside the laptop. Because ExpressCard has very high available bandwidth, this is now a real possibility.

I saw the XG Station in the flesh, attached to a low-end notebook alongside that same notebook with the XG. Talk about night and day. The XG-equipped machine was running heavy-duty 3D benchmarks without much stuttering. The non-XG machine looked like it was about to catch fire. Whoosh!

Other interesting products covered by Yahoo:

A leather clad laptop (It's probably aimed at women cause it's pink -- computer companies think that's the color to attract women. If they made it burgundy, I might be interested.) and here's one to match your Lamborghini and they also have a 2 pound laptop.

A lamp that doubles as wireless speakers:

These speakers are connected to your sound system wirelessly using a 2.4 Ghz spectrum that can transmit a signal without interference for up to 200 feet (line of sight necessary). The sound is good, and the speakers powerful. There is an input at the base of each speaker, so you could plug in an iPod or a wired audio source (including a sub-woofer).

And the lamp is pretty nice looking, I wonder if they make it in different styles.

Here are some accessories for your teenager's iPod (What? You thought you only had to shell out the $150 for the iPod? There are hundreds of dollars in accessories):

As Dory and I walked the showfloor the day before the event opened to the public, we also spotted foneGear's latest foneGirl and tuneGirl accessories for MP3 players and cell phones featuring illustrations by Mary Lynn Blasutta. One accessory that caught my eye was a phone leash that attaches to your cell phone, and clips onto your purse so you don't lose it, and fashion earphones that look like earrings. The Diamond Budz are pretty funky with glowing LED gems, and adjustable volume controller.

As well as some cute camera cases from Kodak.

While I was over in the Yahoo tech area, I noticed this review for my palm TX. I have to say that I love it and am very happy with it. I use it everyday. I can access my mail faster on it than on my laptop by going to their gmail for mobile devices page, also I can play Zuma on it while waiting for my daughters or listen to Hugh Hewitt while driving them to school. And the alarm is loud enough to wake me up in the morning. Very nice!

Back to CES, no coverage of CES would be complete without Engadget. From their live blog of the SanDisk press conference:

12:22 - Introducing Kate Purmal, whose job is to manage content for SanDisk. SanDisk devices are content hungry, and YouTube videos are pretty hot. "What's needed is something simple and affordable, and that's what I'm about to show you."

12:25 - USB TV video starts playing. "Now you can easily move content from any PC to your TV. Wait, haven't we heard this line before? Like 20 times this week? Can't say SanDisk is branding this quite a slickly as other people, but SanDisk is making it an open standard, which might help with device compatibility and content quantity.

Early partners include Guba, Movielink and Akimbo. Also teaming up with Pioneer, Mitsubishi and LG for device integration.

SanDisk is also unveiling the MP3/video viewer and it looks really nice. And iriver has an interesting Wifi enabled media player, as well as an ebook reader and iPod shuffle type MP3 player (watch the video to see what the products look like). And Polaroid has their own version of a Wifi enabled media player.

There's a weather forecasting umbrella and Motorola has created a bicycle that can recharge a cell phone:

While the company has seen declines here in America due to a very saturated handset market, nearly 5 million folks per month are going mobile in China, thus the need to penetrate those potentially lucrative third world areas. The vehicle will sport a cellphone charging system to provide a way to energize those handsets so intently desired all around the globe. As expected, a cradle on the handlebars would house the mobile, while the motion of the pedals would generate electricity to recharge its battery pack.

Over at Popgadget, they have the Built NY Electric charger bag:

The item they introduced was their charger bag, a "neoprene bag with six individual compartments and a handle."

This is something I really could use because I can't keep all my chargers and USB cables and card reader from getting tangled together when I go someplace. I could really use something with compartments.

They also blog about the OQO:

OQO had originally placed an entire PC, QWERTY keyboard and all, into a package the size of my open palm, and now they've redesigned the device to address the problems in the first model. The entire machine measures 5.6 x 3.3 x 1.0in (142 x 84 x 25mm), and at less than one pound it's a perfect match if your goal is ultra portability.

And Glenn Reynolds has some really neat shots from CES (just scroll down). The food shot looks good. And the 108 inch LCD TV looks way too overwhelming, you would need a large room just so that you don't feel over powered.

Tags: Consumer Electronics Show, CES, MP3 Players