CES 2008: Part 1 Intro and Being Green
I just got back from CES this year, and while everyone is probably quite tired of CES news, I figured I would put a little different spin on it. No huge LCD stories, blacker blacks, BluRay/HDDVD, or any of that stuff. Just the CES as a whole and little gems of the good, the bad and the very ugly. I’ll be covering this in a number of posts, so choose whichever topics are of interest
CES 2008 was really about 4 things:
- Being green and having it shoved down your throat everywhere.
- Cheap knockoffs of big technology
- Bloggers generally being the scum of the show
- The few interesting products that did show themselves
Now, I was quite excited to see what kind of amazing new things would be showing themselves at CES, being a huge gadget guy myself, but there was not a whole lot that just made me step back and say ‘wow’. I like to think I covered the majority of all the halls (excepting the north hall in the convention center that was mostly focused on car audio), but nothing really just stood out as groundbreaking. I’ll get to the more interesting stuff at the end, but let’s go through the above list.
Green CES
Most companies at CES loved to spout how environmentally friendly they were. I realize that it is a good thing for companies to move towards being more eco friendly, but there was a lot of annoyances. Some companies spouted off that they were going green, but had no clue what I was talking about when I mentioned being carbon neutral, and many of the computers there still spouted like 1KW power supplies, not to mention the 150″ LCD that must make the meter spin like there’s no tomorrow. There were some charming little companies pushing solar power. I was a fan of a little company that did some nice looking solar laptop bags (can’t charge laptop, but can keep your phone/ipod up and good). But, for the most part, companies seemed to say they were going green because everyone else was saying it as well. 
It did get a bit old. I went to see new innovations, not how they cut such and such a metal from their chipset.
Look out for part 2, where we cover the fantastic cheap knockoffs of CES
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Comment by bert on 11 January 2008:
I feel like a dunce- but what does CES pertain too? As far as I recall, CES means Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation
Comment by stevey on 11 January 2008:
Consumer Electronics Show
world’s largest consumer electronic tradeshow
Comment by Dave Starr on 11 January 2008:
I’m looking forward to future installments, Everton. I think most people have a very short memory … we were big into half-baked “Energy Star” and other such schemes 20 years ago … what’s been done? Change the name, basically.
Current computer swittching power supplies are cheap to build and energy inefficient as a consequence. Any real engineers out there can tell us why using three-phase theory, etc.
I hail from the day when a 640k 286 machine cost (with an Energy Star label, BTW) cost $2800 USD. Now I can buy a multi-processor giga-everything machine for that sort of money, but the power supply technology, and the artificial load factor increases imposed? Very little change. Power supplies aren’t ’sexy’ and no one pays extra for them.
Comment by bert on 12 January 2008:
Ah. Thanks. Sounds like a convention that will have me in the throes of bliss!
Comment by Kline on 14 January 2008:
energy star was mentioned several times at the conference actually. I guess they are bringing it back
Comment by bert on 14 January 2008:
About time too!
Comment by Jeremy on 15 January 2008:
i never knew Energy Star had disappeared
Comment by Kline on 15 January 2008:
maybe it didnt disappear, but it certainly wasn’t ‘big’ like it was back in the day.