For the rest of the coverage, I went through the convention show floor to scope around. Here's the highlights of what I hit with the limited amount of time I had.
NVIDIA
The big news of NVIDIA’s
booth was the Dell Quad SLI PC. The case has an impressive fire design. Off to
the side NVIDIA showed off the innards of the beast in a nice clear acrylic
case. You can see the arraignment of the
bridge connectors on top. On display was
Battle for
Middle-earth II playing at 2560x1600. Of course, a monitor to support that
resolution is boku bucks but if you’re able to afford this Dell PC then you
shouldn’t have a problem getting a display to also display that
resolution. There was certainly a nice
crowd gathered around the display and I found myself drooling at the setup.
Creative Labs
Fatal1ty was all over the
booth with daily matches against the professional gamer. Big news coming out of
the company was their foray into mice and Fatal1ty’s own branded gaming mouse.
The Fatal1ty 1010 mouse features 1600 DPI and an optical engine. Four buttons
are featured on this mouse and taking a cue from Logitech’s top of the line
gamer mouse, you can change weights to customize the mouse. The top center of
the mouse pops up when pressed down so you can change the weights. You can also
dynamically change the sensitivity on the mouse with the included software. I
wasn’t too impressed with the unit given that a lot of the mice are moving to a
laser engine as well as only having four buttons.
There are a few other
Fatal1ty branded products coming out. From the pictures you can see a headset
as well as the usual X-Fi sound cards that have already been released.
Creative also has a few
other non-branded mice coming out and they do have one laser gaming mouse on
display. I don’t know why they didn’t market this as the Fatal1ty mouse as it
looks better than the design of the 1010 in my opinion.
Logitech
Logitech didn’t have much
new to show in CES but I was able to get a close up look at the Harmony 890.
The remote looks like the Harmony 880 but it sends signals via RF so you don’t
need line of sight to operate your appliances. The receiver, which looks like
the old Logitech wireless receivers, is capable of attaching a few IR blasters so
you can control your units that still operate on IR. Like the Harmony 880, the
Harmony 890 also features a base to recharge the unit. The remote sells for
$400 so it’s certainly not an inexpensive piece of equipment. Nevertheless, the
ease at which you can program these remotes as well as the amount you control
makes this a remote that I can’t wait to get my hands on.
Leadtek
Leadtek’s booth was showing
their line of video cards and a few of their USB TV units. Speaking to one of
the reps, I was a little disappointed to hear they won’t be concentrating on
video cards as much this time around. That’s too bad as I thought Leadtek
produced solid cards. Hopefully, they will come around when NVIDIA releases
their next line. I was happy to see the Gaming Nexus Editor’s Choice logo on a
few of the displays.
I
didn’t spend nearly enough time at the convention as I should. Being a veteran
of E3, I really enjoyed the atmosphere of CES because you didn’t have booths
trying to overpower each other. There weren’t yelling or overly loud music
blaring at you. I was able to talk to and hear people without having to raise
my voice; something I wish the folks at E3 would learn from. While I didn’t
stay at CES long, I really enjoyed the
convention atmosphere and hope to go back again soon.
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