CES 2008 Picks and Pans

Everybody and their brother wants to replace the slew of cables required to hook up an HDTV to the various video sources in your home entertainment center (set-top boxes, media players, game consoles, and so on). But with all the various ultra-wideband contenders--which include the WiMedia Alliance's Certified Wireless USB standard,Pulse-Link's CWave,Amimon's WHDI(used inBelkin's FlyWire), and SiMedia's   WirelessHD--what's a poor consumer to do? Help! --Yardena Arar 

Lenovo's U110has an 11-inch screen, weighs about 2 pounds, and sports a stylish, decorative design that doesn't look as if a PC company was merely trying to slap some bling on a business PC. You can choose a 64GB solid-state drive or a 120GB hard drive. The one deal breaker for some people is that it doesn't come with an optical drive; you'll have to buy an external USB option. The U110 comes out in March, but pricing has not yet been set. --Narasu Rebbapragada

Graphics tablet king Wacom showed its newCintiq 12WX, a pen tablet with a built-in display that gives artists pen-and-paper-like functionality. And the new model isn't just half the price of previous Cintiqs--it's also far sleeker and lighter. --Harry McCracken

Hitachi unveiled its new line ofplasma HDTVs that are only 1.5 inches thick. Being a lover of sexy-looking technology, I had to wipe the drool off the side of my mouth. The best part: These aren't prototypes, and you'll see them on the shelves in the spring. I already have my name on a preorder. --Greg Adler

A glass case at the LaCie booth held theGolden Disk, an external hard drive housed in a shiny metallic enclosure that looks like a million bucks. The product goes for a reasonable $189, so I'm guessing that's not real gold. --Harry McCracken

A lot of things look good in gold. Hard-disk storage isn't one of them. While I'm sure thatLaCie's USB 2.0 Golden Disk($189 for 500GB and $500 for 1TB) works fine, paying an extra $50 over the average price of a 500GB drive--and up to $300 over the price of a 1TB drive--to see my reflection in a backup device isn't my idea of money well spent. --Narasu Rebbapragada

One manufacturer of cell-phone accessories showed Crocs phone cases, inspired by the inexplicably trendy shoes. The cases are just as ugly, plasticky, and rife with little holes as the footwear is. But someone liked them. --Harry McCracken

Gave Us That Warm Fuzzy Feeling

All of Sharp's newAquos HDTVsthat are 42 inches or larger will come with free calibration. The best part is, you don't need to wait at home all day for a TV guru to show up at your house: The sets each have an ethernet port that Sharp's customer service can use to calibrate your TV via the Internet. A tip of the hat to Sharp for making our lives easier. --Greg Adler

Intel representatives showed me the company's first motherboards that supportCrossFire, the two-graphics-card setup devised by AMD's ATI group, and explained that they worked closely with AMD engineers to implement the feature. Okay, so the two companies may still be fierce archrivals, but it's nice to see they cooperated to enable something that a lot of gamers might want in their next PC. --Harry McCracken

The Blu-ray Disc format has been on a roll all week long, starting with Warner Brothers' preshow announcement that it would back Blu-ray exclusively and ending withword that Universal is doing the same. The buzz around Blu-ray stayed strong in between, with big excitement surroundingSony's demoof copying a movie from a Blu-ray Disc to a PlayStation Portable. --Melissa J. Perenson

This year, event organizers announced that CES was "going green" by reducing the show's carbon footprint, and they promised to promote energy-efficient practices. To offset the event's 20,000-ton carbon footprint, the Consumer Electronics Association said it would make donations to tree-planting organizations and other eco-friendly causes. --Tom Spring

Kudos for the green practices, but I'm skeptical. The largest U.S. trade show aims to offset carbon by investing in environmental projects through Carbonfund.org. That's 20,000 tons, people! Exactly what projects will measurably do that on an annual basis? Let's be honest: CES is meant to be a huge, ostentatious light show. It's Vegas! Why make the empty claim? I'd like to see the CEA make a more serious effort to cut down on the excessive amount of paper and nonrecyclable swag at the event, and encourage members to lengthen product life cycles and employ reusable materials so we don't have to recycle as much. That would be more meaningful. --Narasu Rebbapragada