It’s January and that means that we have once again paced up and down the halls of Consumer Electronics Show, CES, in Las Vegas. I have often thought that the show should be named the “Consumer Electronics Marathon” because you have to put in the miles of a marathon to get even the smallest glimpse of the show. One day at CES, I walked nine and a half miles and I didn’t cover even a third of the space. It is an amazing and massive show, one that truly should last more than one week but would cause so much pain that even the most able body would be suffering after much more time. It is even more so when you consider there are nightly parties which make it so that you hope for 5 or 6 hours a night and caffeine or energy drinks are on the limps of just about everyone who works a company. This year’s event saw Iggy Azalea walking the Monster Booth, Neil Patrick Harris speaking of childhood friends, and Joe Perry Of Aerosmith designing his own line of portables that are all about the treble for old school rock and roll.
The companies presenting at CES came by land, sea, and air as self-driving cars spun doughnuts in the parking lot, giant speed boats filled booths like chrome-covered beached whales, and drones designed to do everything from carry a camera to patrol your houses like a guard dog hovered about. In pevious years, a great amount of the North Hall was dedicated to camera cases but now it was taken over by tons of vehicles and vehicle additions. South Hall became mostly the place for drone tech. VR/AR tech wasn’t even kept in one location but was in two different casinos on the strip. TV tech wasn’t kept in the same place as well, with LG dominating a great space at LVCC and TiVo located next to C-Space, the speaking session stage. Health and beauty tech was always kept in the same hall at the Sands but this year they spread out among the casinos. I’m not complaining but rather pointing out that the show really should be lengthened and more care taken to make sure they are grouped more like previous years, it felt a lot more scattered this time.
Google had the most popular booth by far, with a giant pinball machine and just about everything Google has or makes was possible when the ball showed up and was cracked open. The line was easily 90 minutes at times, which when you think about how little time you actually have at the convention is a remarkable amount of time and they had two that I knew of, I tried standing in one line but it was well beyond my disability to spend that much time in one spot.
The beast that really seemed to take the show was a gaming laptop from Razer called Project Linda, and it won a heck of a lot of awards. The most altruistic item I came across was from AFLAC of all places and deserves a write-up all its own. I got to pet their mascot duck and wow it was so soft and sweet!
I enjoy it every year even though my disability slows down my chances of seeing as much as I would like. CES only gets more amazing every year and I can’t wait to go back in 2019.
