The biggest annual technology trade show in the world just finished its 5 day run in Las Vegas. As usual, a lot happened and a lot of new products were released. I would write about them for you, but other more qualified experts have already done it, so I am going to let you read their roundup. There are some pretty exciting things coming our way, so you might want to take a few minutes to browse through some of them.
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has grown in leaps and bounds from its early days as a showcase for such things as TV's and stereos and other forms of home entertainment. Actually, there used to be two huge trade shows in Las Vegas: Comdex in November and CES in January. Comdex did all the computer things, leaving home entertainment to CES.
But, over the years, Comdex got greedy. It started charging outrageous fees for show floor space. Then, as more and more consumers got into the show (it used to be for computer industry folks only) more and more of the large computer companies like Microsoft stopped buying floor space. They still came to Vegas for Comdex, but they took hotel suites rather than show floor space to meet with the regular and potential customers. It was much cheaper for them.
Comdex started to die. It took a few years and it is still not officially dead, but it is close. The last show was 2003 and attendance was way down. In the meantime, computers and home entertainment started getting closer and closer to the point today where they are almost integrated. So computer-related companies now show their wares at CES.
In a way, that is sad for me. I attended several Comdex shows over the years and usually came back with hundreds of dollars of free goods and I enjoyed my 3-5 days in Vegas. I never have been to CES, but maybe sometime in the future. I can't say Vegas interests me much these days.
To read the CES roundup, go to:
http://www.cnet.com/4520-10602_1-5579129-1.html
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