One of the fun technology events every year is the Consumer Electronic Show. I've never had the opportunity to attend this in person, but maybe now that I have family in Vegas I should try and make it out some year. CES is a huge event that highlights some of the cool and crazy stuff that all the big consumer electronics companies are working on, and attempting to bring to market. Since I've been laid up sick for the past day and a half, I've been catching up on the news feeds of all the stuff that's currently coming out.
Although CES isn't strictly laptop and computer focused, computer companies still play a major role. This year, I'm seeing a lot of emphasis on thin and light computing devices. ASUS and Lenovo have both released some exceptionally light weight laptops, and hybrid tablets, that give the MacBook Air line a run for it's money. Additionally, HP is building off the success of it's Stream line of Chromebook competitors with an HP Stream Mini box.
Most of these devices rely on cloud services to operate, and unless you're going to try and set up your own cloud, like a friend of mine, you're probably already comfortable using most of these ecosystems. In the past couple weeks of using my Chromebook, I haven't even really noticed, or lamented, the lack of internal storage. That's what most of the big players right now want you to be comfortable with, because the other big concept that is all over CES this year is the Internet of Things. In general IoT is just a buzzword for devices that connect to the internet. The real panacea with all of these devices is getting them to talk to one another, a problem that some companies are working on, but are probably a few years from realizing.
Apart from all the cool gadgets that are being showcased, the one item in particular that caught my eye was an announcement from Dish Network. They are starting up a service at the end of the month called Sling TV. The idea is that for $20/month you get live streaming of TNT, TBS, CNN, Food Network, HGTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, the Disney Channel, ESPN, and ESPN2. It's all delivered over the internet, and is contract free. This is exactly the service I've been looking for, and you can bet that we're going to probably give this a try as soon as it comes out.
So there's a few thoughts on a couple things I've seen come out of CES this year. My RSS feed has been exploding so I'm sure I've missed a bunch of stuff, so maybe later today I'll dive into all the automobile announcements.
Although CES isn't strictly laptop and computer focused, computer companies still play a major role. This year, I'm seeing a lot of emphasis on thin and light computing devices. ASUS and Lenovo have both released some exceptionally light weight laptops, and hybrid tablets, that give the MacBook Air line a run for it's money. Additionally, HP is building off the success of it's Stream line of Chromebook competitors with an HP Stream Mini box.
Most of these devices rely on cloud services to operate, and unless you're going to try and set up your own cloud, like a friend of mine, you're probably already comfortable using most of these ecosystems. In the past couple weeks of using my Chromebook, I haven't even really noticed, or lamented, the lack of internal storage. That's what most of the big players right now want you to be comfortable with, because the other big concept that is all over CES this year is the Internet of Things. In general IoT is just a buzzword for devices that connect to the internet. The real panacea with all of these devices is getting them to talk to one another, a problem that some companies are working on, but are probably a few years from realizing.
Apart from all the cool gadgets that are being showcased, the one item in particular that caught my eye was an announcement from Dish Network. They are starting up a service at the end of the month called Sling TV. The idea is that for $20/month you get live streaming of TNT, TBS, CNN, Food Network, HGTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, the Disney Channel, ESPN, and ESPN2. It's all delivered over the internet, and is contract free. This is exactly the service I've been looking for, and you can bet that we're going to probably give this a try as soon as it comes out.
So there's a few thoughts on a couple things I've seen come out of CES this year. My RSS feed has been exploding so I'm sure I've missed a bunch of stuff, so maybe later today I'll dive into all the automobile announcements.
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