While the guys are having tons of fun in Vegas (I don’t want to know, just bring back cool stuff, k?), I’m watching the CES news from above.
Okay we have lots of new HD TVs. Check, that was a given. More Bluray players are coming out, even portable ones. Not totally unexpected, but since Blu-Ray isn’t doing that great, I’m a bit surprised. Netbooks galore. We’ve been waiting for CES for the cool stuff to hit so, again expected.
Yeah, Palm has a new phone thingy. I’ve heard both yawns and hoorays on that one, so I’m going to just set that aside. What I’m seeing those are some unifying trends that are pretty exciting, even if they aren’t terribly geeky.
Netbooks are becoming that second computer we all like to have around. Face it, most of us geeks keep old under-powered laptops around just to strip down and check email and such. This is when we haven’t fried the buggers totally, but that’s different.
Sure I have a netbook. Do I use it every day? No. Actually I want to wipe it out and play around with some things again. It’s like a disposable machine for me. Why? Because I only want to rely on it to get me online and do basic stuff.
That’s it. If I save anything to the HD, it’s just temporary.
What I’m seeing now is that we have TVs that are more Internet-aware than ever (I’d hope so) and easier connect to the rest of the stuff in your house; and that’s the key here.
We have gotten to a point where people don’t just have a computer and a printer. No, we have a few computers. We have routers. We have game consoles connected to the Net. More and more folks have devices like AppleTV to stream programs from the net to the boob tube (more than a little irony there in that old moniker, eh?). A family with high speed Internet is the rule, not exception. I doubt that many folks would give it up. I bet cable TV would go first.
Lots of homes are already “One Laptop per Child” homes.
What does this mean for manufacturers?
It means people are going to want to connect “stuff” together. Oh and it has to be dead, freakin’ simple. “Normal” humans don’t have time to tweak routers and stuff.
From where I sit, I’m seeing that come together.
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