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The first day of CES saw some cool wireless developments (new chip sets, more 802.11n), and a major reawakening of the personal NAS space (everyone under the sun seems to have an appliance coming soon). The day was also marred by bad shoes and some unfortunate static discharge.
Of the non-visual accounts, SanDisk showed me its technology preview of a 12GB MicroSD card. Yes, it works. However, SanDisk isn’t going to sell it. The company is just proving it can, and will wait until the next step up (16GB) to release a product.
And now for some pictures:
I’ve got a review of the Syspine version of Microsoft’s Response Point coming online any day now. Here’s the D-Link iteration: DVX-2000MS Appliance (top), DPH-124MS (middle) and DVG-3104MS Analog Trunk Gateway (bottom).
Mio was showing its concept design of integrated GPS and Tri-band phone. Big deal, you say? This one is two-faced, hence the name Dual-Sided NAV Phone.
Netgear announced 18 new products at CES this year. I’m going to talk about the wireless stuff in a separate post later, but Netgear also had some new NAS appliances. Lots of protocol support (Samba, NFS, Bonjour), and xRaid technology to autoconfigure the RAID, allowing online volume expansion. At top, the four-bay RND4000 ReadyNAS NV+. At bottom, the two-bay RND2150 ReadyNAS Duo.
The Nokia booth was bustling with activity every time I passed, as the booth had many display units available for hands-on play (very Apple Store). However, all that traffic was really messing with the carpet in Nokia‘s booth, which was shedding like long-haired cat. After scooting across the carpet to try out a phone, I got a huge static shock as I picked up the device — causing me to scurry away before I could find out whether I had killed it.
During a chat with folks from the Wi-Fi Alliance, I was shown this sample of a new 802.11n chip set meant for mobile phones. Atheros and Broadcom aren’t showing any mobile-N chips (I talked with them), but RedPine is.
Otterbox has some new ruggedized cases for the iPhone. This one, which has a hardened shell under a separate rubber skin, took me almost 10 minutes to crack open. There’s also a waterproof one.
Zyxel was showing the new version of its WiMax base station for Sprint (top, middle). The booth people didn’t seem wild about the fact that I kept calling it “the coffee maker.” Zyxel also has a new version of its SIP phone (bottom).
At Showstoppers, I ran into Yoggie — whose original device I quite liked last year. Now Yoggie has announced a slimmed-down, firewall-only device called the FireStick Pico.
Before my day really got started, my shoe completely fell apart even though I’ve only worn that pair four or five times so far. Thankfully, the good folks at Broadcom were handy with the duct tape.