Julie's Thoughts        Judie's Thoughts

Friday

We didn't get up as early this morning, but were still up and ready for breakfast by 8:30am or so. And guess where we ate... yeah, the buffet... AGAIN! ha! Let's just say that I was sick of it by then ;o)

Yah, you can only eat buffet food so many times before it all looks and tastes the same. ;0)

After our protein replacement therapy, we headed out to wait for the shuttle bus. We timed it just right, the bus arrived within 5mins. Too bad it was the last day of the show, we were just getting the hang of things!

We started out in the Central Hall again, but we had a mission today. We were going to explore the Consumer Electronics booths located in the Hilton Hotel.

One of the first devices that we happened upon was the Nixxo NXP-780 two way pager. Similar to Motorola pagers, this one seemed a bit smaller at 3 x 2.6 x 0.9in. and came in Silver, Black and Gold.

The next booth we came to was the Danger Hiptop booth. I for one have been really interested in this mobile phone / web browser / email device and wanted to see if it was for real or just a prototype. Luckily a booth bunny was giving a hands-on demo at the time we were there. Quite a few people crowded around her, but I was able to snap the pictures you see below.

I thought it was interesting that the Bunny said the Hiptop could go CDMA just by swapping out the chip. She said it like it was no big deal, and so I am going to hope that that is really the case. This looks like a really cool and FUN unit!

The Hiptop has a unique swivel display that twirls around to reveal a thumbtype keyboard. Notice the translucent blob sticking out of the right side of the device?  That is an optional digital camera attachment. You can snap pics and then email them to your friends.

I think it's kind of funny how it seems like every PDA-type device is trying to integrate a digital camera in with its basic functions. I mean, even my daughter's Gameboy has a plug-in camera module. Are people really using these things?

The only downers to this device is the fact that it has a mono screen. Color all the way!

Yah, once you've gone color, mono is a total step back into the stone-age... ;0)

At the nearby SanDisk booth, Judie and I almost freaked when we saw 1, 2, and 4 gig SD cards in a glass display.

I admit it, I was drooling...

Obviously they were just for 'show'... but we felt it was really mean to tease us like that! ;o)

Casio had an area set up with their camera watch and Pocket PC accessories. The E-200 pictured below on the right, has a digital camera attached. The iBALL camera card from mmVISION can be used for both still pictures (up to 800 x 600) and video capturing (AVI format).

I finally got to actually see the E-200 PCMCIA sled, but the man working the booth wouldn't let me touch it...maybe he was afraid I would take it and run? ;0)

Finally we felt like we had seen everything we could in the South, Central and North Halls. We were ready to hit the Consumer Electronics section that was over at the Hilton Hotel. This was a blend of all of the things that either were from Taiwan, different Asian countries, or that simply didn't fit in with the usual CES offerings.

After getting my best cup of latte ever from a really nice vendor (that was from Texas, too), Julie and I were ready to get started...

Some really small info devices and PDAs from Alsco Enterprises Ltd. caught our eyes next. The E-mail Pal (below left) is a credit card sized databank that has a 32 character LCD display that can store names, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.

The PDA Kid (above right) is a Palm Pilot for the kiddie set. It even comes complete with a touch screen and Infrared beaming features. There is even a pseudo ICQ IR chatting feature built-in. Neither of these products are revolutionary, but due to their extremely low cost, they would make great give away items for businesses and promotions.

We're talking under $3.00 per item...amazing how inexpensive electronics have grown, isn't it?

Another booth had a small touch screen PDA from a company called Cedar Base Electronic (Group) Ltd.

Judie started channeling Martha Stewart when we walked by the Digital Cookware, Inc. booth. They had a variety of digital meat forks and smart frying pans on display.

Hey, I am the first to admit that I hate cooking (or maybe it's actually the clean-up), but these utensils were really cool. Of course, I'll get really excited when someone invents a "Rosie the Robot" to do the cooking and clean-up for me, and lets me keep the review unit. But until then, these pans manage to make something as domestic as cooking look appealing to me, so I am all for them...

A huge (2 x 3 foot) table top global time indicator caught my eye at the Geochron booth. Invented by James Kilburg (the same person that invented the car cigarette lighter and auto dialing telephone), this timepiece had a beautiful color display that showed the time anywhere in the world. The brightly lit areas indicated that part of the world where the sun was shining at that moment.

This is something I have absolutely no use for, but it looked so pretty sitting there that I could totally imagine it on a wall in a swank office.

I think Judie and I booth saw the LifeView booth at same time. LifeView is the maker of the iPAQ FlyJacket and soon to be released iCAM Digital Video Camera Add-on.

The swivel lens makes this camera convenient to use in any orientation. I'm anxious to see how well this device can capture actual video... Look for a review of both the FlyJacket and iCAM soon.

Did you catch that this can also act as a digital video camera? I thought that was pretty cool - too bad the FlyJacket doesn't come with a built in PCMCIA slot. It does have a Type II slot though, so even if you can't use a 2 or 5GB Datapak, you can still use a 1GB Micro-drive. I wonder how much video that will translate to?

The next booth that we saw had an IR printer module. Unfortunately, the booth was void of bunnies and literature... So all we have is the picture below. Anyone know what it is?

A small MP3 player from the Korean company Personal Telecom, Inc. looked interesting. This was a small player available in two versions. The MP10, which was just an MP3 player, or the MR10 which had voice recording, and FM radio features built in as well.

The only bad thing about them was the fact that they only came in 32, 64, and 128 MB memory configurations. There was no external memory card slots.

Not having the ability to increase the memory on an MP3 player might make people think twice about buying it...

It would definitely make me think twice about it...

The next MP3 device we came across didn't have an external memory slot either, but it had something else to make up for that deficiency. Instead of using .MP3 or .WMA format, the credit card sized slimAUDIO player uses a new audio format called Bytero which compresses files MUCH better. Better compression means you can store more files in the memory available.

The people working the booth explained that the Bytero compression would allow it to hold something like triple the amount that .WMA would have allowed. That was pretty cool, but I still would want more room. If you can't tell, memory is really important to me...

This player also sounded really good when we test drove it.

Yes, it was exceptionally clear and sounded great.

It was almost noon, and our stomachs were beginning to rumble. We decided it was time to have some great Chinese food, so we grabbed a cab over to P.F. Changs. Once there, we only had to wait about 15 minutes and then we were seated. Julie got the Moo Goo Gai Pan (which I had never tried before) and I got the Mu Shu Pork. We also ordered some pork pot stickers, which were yummy.

These were real pot stickers unlike the pseudo ones at the buffet. I must say that they were GREAT! I could eat those for every meal.

As we were riding back to the Luxor, I saw a Hard Rock Cafe billboard advertising Aerosmith on January 11th. Holy cow! Today was January 11th! So after some massive begging on my part, Julie finally said she would go if we could get tickets. I think she was secretly happy when I found out that tickets were sold out. ;0)

Aerosmith is ok..... Now if it would have been U2 or Cake, I would have been as excited as you! Hey, Aerosmith is FAB!

Instead, we went back to the Luxor. Blah!

After dropping off all of our stuff, Julie and I decided to take in an IMAX movie. It just so happened that both of us like Egyptology, and since we happened to be staying in the Luxor, it was only fitting that their in-house IMAX theater would be showing the Mysteries of Egypt. I don't know about you, but I love IMAX movies. This one was especially good, too!

It was fun. I wish it would have lasted even longer though.

After the movie, we did some souvenir shopping for the families. We loaded up on soaps by primal elements. Since Julie loves Holstein cow stuff, I got her the Cow soap , which comes in a Holstein pattern. I got Sarah the Candy Bears soap. For myself, I bought the Happy in Love  and Chili-fest bars . Fun, huh?

We walked over to the Excalibur hotel, and took a look at the Krispy Kreme donut shop...bliss.

Ha! We looked but we didn't eat any! What's wrong with that picture?

We wasted about 30 minutes watching a really lame puppet show, but hey - we had all kinds of time to kill.

The little boy behind us loved it though... he was so cute giggling...

When we got back to the Luxor, Julie and I decided to enter round two of our mad-gambling sessions. This time, we went directly to the quarter-slots, and I quickly lost my $20! Julie was much more prudent and quit when she was down to $17.50...

I knew I was going to lose it all, so I figured I'd quit while I was ahead ;o)

We realized that we were getting tired around 6:30, and it wasn't long before we decided to call it a night.

Saturday morning arrived and we both headed back to our respective states and homes.

Of course, my flight was 1� hours late taking off because some drunk lady broke her seat! UGH!

The Consumer Electronics Show was a fun experience. It made Comdex Chicago look like my local 4H fair in size comparison. Now, I'm wondering how it compares to the Fall Comdex show.

I think CES probably blows COMDEX out of  the water...

Judie and I saw some interesting things, ate some great food,

(...if you don't count the buffets!)

...watched some great entertainment and met some nice people. So, when's the next event? Do we need to start packing? ;o)