This year's CES featured a large number of computer product launches announced at CES. Many of these products were announced because of the latest laptop processor release from Intel. This meant that many of the product launches were merely updates to existing products and not necessarily radically new ideas. Here are some of the product announcements that I think may really change the personal computer world over the next year.
3. Alienware M11x
©Dell
Many companies are introducing extremely small ultraportable laptops this year. They all sacrifice performance though for extra portability and longer battery life. Alienware has finally heard the call of those wanting strong performance in a very small laptop. The Alienware M11x is an 11.6-inch laptop system that provides enough performance to actually play modern PC games at high frame rates and detail levels at the display's 1366x768 resolution. It is a bit heftier than ultraportables though with a four pound weight. Not many details have been released on the underlying hardware yet but the amazing thing is the under $1000 starting price that not only brings performance but portability.
2. Lenovo IdeaPad U1
©Lenovo
Tablet PCs were a big item at this year's CES. With Apple's rumored tablet later this year, plus HP and NVIDIA announcing eventual products, this may be the year they finally make inroads to the consumer market. Lenovo's IdeaPad U1 takes that tabelt computing concept and combines it with a traditional ultraportable to build what is being called a hybrid laptop. It looks like many other ultraportables until the touchscreen display is removed from the laptop body to provide a fully functional tablet PC offering up to 5 hours of running time. Doc the Skylight OS based tabelt back into the U1 frame and it automatically syncs documents to the Windows 7 laptop. Certainly an interesting idea that has great potential.
1. Wireless Display
©NETGEAR
My wife originally mentioned how great it would be to connect a laptop wirelesses to an HDTV five years ago. Now that technology has made it to market with Intel's new Wireless Display technology. Laptops that feature this technology combined with a wireless-N base station with HDMI output to a HDTV can stream the laptops display at the touch of a button. This opens up a world of possibilities including streaming video which negates the need for devices like the Boxee Box. The technology is still fairly new and requires a compatible laptop. It is limited to just 720p video streams (either upsampled or downsampled from the laptop display) and can't stream HDCP content yet. First products with the technology are expected Jan 17th.
