Wrapping up CES 2009: Part 1

LAS VEGAS — It’s a chilly 50 degrees Fahrenheit in this fabulous gambling city. And for the second year in a row, I’m here to cover the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the biggest and most spectacular gadget and technology show in North America.

It’s hard to imagine that just a few years back, CES was not the place to find a barrage of new notebook computers, desktops or computer peripherals. That was because PC manufacturers also had their Vegas-based Comdex trade show, and were generally more focused on hitting the back-to-school and holiday seasons than releasing new products in January.

But with Comdex now defunct — and despite the ongoing global recession — 2009 was an impressive year for new introductions, and almost every major player in the PC industry had several new products to show off.

CES isn’t just about computers, though. There is also a whole host of home audio and video products, mobile phones, as well as digital still and video cameras, all of which I’ll cover in another Networks section.

As for the new computers, most were more evolutionary than revolutionary, but when you’re stuck with basically the same small pile of CPUs, GPUs, hard drives, and chipsets, anything that breaks away from the commoditization of PCs is a good thing.

HP’s Firebird desktop continues the integration of HP and its boutique brand acquisition, Voodoo. The system has the distinct look of a high-end Voodoo PC, but is branded as being “HP with Voodoo DNA” and carries a relatively mainstream price.

HP also unveiled its Mini 2140 netbook. In a field already crowded with essentially identical competitors, the brushed metal design and ExpressCard/54 slot of this compact new netbook are refreshingly new points of differentiation.

Other players who took the basic netbook concept and improved on it include Asus, which showed off a swiveling touch-screen version of its popular Eee PC, and Sony, whose Atom-powered Lifestyle PC is an upmarket version of the mini-laptop.

AMD unveiled its new Athlon Neo platform (a low-price midpoint between netbooks and mainstream laptops) and also its new desktop gaming platform called Dragon.

Interestingly, one of the most much-anticipated laptops at CES made only a cameo appearance. Dell’s slim Adamo was officially announced and briefly glimpsed, but no real details or hands-on time were available.

And contrary to earlier rumors, the Adamo looked a lot more like Voodoo’s Envy 13-inch than the MacBook Air.

PC monitor specialist Viewsonic announced its own netbook, an all-in-one PC, and a PC that attaches itself to monitors.

BenQ also had an all-in-one PC that’s targeted at seniors and children and the first projector that can run solely from a USB thumb drive.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was the warm reception Microsoft’s Windows 7 received, despite not really having a big push at the show. (Bill Gates was last year’s keynote speaker.)

Beta testers reported that the upcoming operating system scales very well to low-end netbooks (which just don’t work well with Vista), meaning that growing category might have a very big future.

On the computer monitor side, the buzzword was “Full HD.” Full HD basically means a monitor has a 16:9 aspect ratio screen and either supports 1920 x 1080 (1080p) resolution natively or is at least compatible.

All of the monitor vendors this year had either their full line-up moving to 16:9 or at least the majority of it.

The reason for moving to Full HD is that monitors can then display 1080p content, like movies and broadcast sports, without requiring the video to be stretched or shrunken to fit the screen.

In other monitor technologies, Samsung and Dell were the only companies to debut new monitors with LED backlights. This is surprising, as the industry has been hyping LED backlight to be the next big thing.

Of course, you can’t go high-tech without “green” technology being involved. And in this area, Dell launched a new line of eco-friendly monitors while LG showed off how much power you can save from going green.

Ever heard of stereoscopic monitors? I finally saw them in action in CES. What exactly are stereoscopic monitors? They’re computer monitor screens that, through the use of 3D glasses and a few other devices, make 3D games look, well, more 3D.

What players actually see, though, is an enhanced depth perception, where the background seems further away and the foreground seems closer.

Both Samsung and Viewsonic showed off their 120Hz stereoscopic displays, with Samsung even allowing wireless connectivity between your monitor and your PC.

Samsung had the most diverse mix of monitors on display, ranging from its stereoscopic screen monitor to an LED monitor, to monitors built for laptops that even work wirelessly and even aesthetic designs like sparkling crystal necks.

It’s challenging to make computer monitors sexy, but Samsung was definitely up to the task.