CES 2009 Preview

Well folks, CES 2009 is certainly in full swing. We’ve been here since Wednesday but haven’t had too much time to post with all the products and companies we’ve seen. In fact, I’ve walked up and down the strip so much I’m pretty sure I’ve got a serious hamstring pull. However, I will continue on because that’s what our readers expect from us. Besides, I’m pretty sure a little exercise will help shed the extra pounds from the holidays…and the fall…and last year, but I digress.

This is my first CES as well as trip to Vegas and it’s been pretty interesting to see all the consumer products on display. So far, we’ve seen MSI, Shuttle, Gigabyte, NVIDIA, OCZ, and Razer with even more on our list for the next two days. Next week, we are going to post some in-depth articles with pictures and video, but for now we thought we’d give you a taste of what we have seen so far.

We got some hands-on time with NVIDIA’s 3D Vision glasses and once you try them, you have to admit they are much cooler than you might think. What really floored us though is the NVIDIA Ion Platform they were showcasing that featured an Atom processor paired with a GeForce 9400M. The 9400M adds the capability to do 1080P HD decoding, as well some decent performance in games like Call of Duty 4 and World of Warcraft. The box itself is incredibly small, measuring only about 6 inches across, yet still it still contains quite a bit of connectivity like 4 USB 2.0 ports, DVI port, and HDMI port. When one considers the size of SSD and even notebook hard drives, you start to ponder the possibilities.

OCZ has further expanded their product line-up to include 2 new gaming keyboards, including one that features OLED technology similar to the Maximus keyboard. While not all keys will feature OLEDS, the software allows users to program not only functions, but also customizable pictures. We hope to get a demo unit as soon as they hit the market later this year.

VoodooPC showed off their newest gaming PC, the FireBird. Voodoo has designed the Firebird around smaller size and better energy efficiency. Utilizing GeForce 9800S GPUs, the unit we saw on display only used a 350 watt power supply and was powered by 3-Way SLI and an Intel Q9550 Quad Core. The FireBird also sported a custom water cooling setup that connected all the major components, including the graphics cards and CPU.


We’ve seen quite a bit so far and they’ve all gotten us pretty excited about 2009. We’ll get some full articles up as soon as we get back, but for now, enjoy a few pictures and let us know what has you excited!