Growing up in the 80s, I always wondered what the future would bring. Interstellar travel? Flying cars? Lunar colonies? Well here we are in the future, and we have none of that. Fuel economy hasn’t improved much, it still takes light years to journey across the country, and we’ve forgotten how to travel to the moon. But CES 2010 has proven one thing – that the technology that existed back in the 70s and 80s is still very much alive and well, just a whole lot smaller, faster, thinner and WIFI enabled. Oh, and computers are much more awesome.

The big show cases this year, and probably just like every year, was Microsoft and Intel. Microsoft didn’t have anything too groundbreaking to display – just exhibitions on Office 2010 and Windows 7. Intel had a few fascinating displays – mostly small netbooks pimping their Atom processor. I really had no idea just how small the Atom chip was. Take a peek below. According to the Intel representative, there are about 45 million transistors crammed into a sliver of silicon much smaller than a dime. These powerful chips make it possible run most applications on machines that fit in the palm of your hand, like the pink ultra-tiny netbook. It's also touchscreen enabled, so the keyboard isn't terribly critical.



Yes, netbooks were a key part of CES 2010. When they first went mainstream with Acer’s EEE PC, they caught a lot of flak for being underpowered and criticized for their crammed keyboards. This year’s convention showed that netbooks have matured greatly over the last year, especially Acer’s lineup. Samsung had quite a few nice products, but they wouldn’t let me take pictures so I just won’t bother reporting on them.

You may recall the T91 series of Acer netbooks that went on sale earlier in 2009. They were highly anticipated convertible netbooks that turned into a tablet-like device. Unfortunately the software that accompanied them, namely Windows XP with a funky Acer touch screen software overlay, fell flat with reviewers. The chunkiness was coupled with another drawback – the lack of multitouch.

But the T91 series has rapidly evolved into the T101 series. Thanks to Windows 7, the T101 now readily supports multitouch, which most iPhone or Android user will tell you is critical in today’s mobile computing. Having to resize a window manually is soooo 2006. The plethora of netbooks and tiny computing devices tell us that the future belongs to mobility. The fly in the ointment is Apple, who is expected to start competing with netbooks with the launch of the iSlate, iJesus or iGod...or whatever portable contraption Jobs & co. are expected to launch later this month. Pricing will be an important factor in determining whether the iJesus/God makes headway into the mobile computing market, since a good quality netbook can be purchased for less than 400 bucks.

Date: 2010-01-12 Source: http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1895