With so much to choose from, you'd think it'd be hard to select favorites from the mammoth CES show in Vegas. As so much of it is identical, and so little of it innovative, it's not so hard at all. Come back often for updates as we add more categories and updates!
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Best Notebook: P-171XL FX__
With a model name that spews alphanumeric characters about as fast and hard as its graphics processor spews pizels, Gateway's P-171XL FX pulls on a steel-toed boot and rams it into the gaming notebook competition.
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Runner Up: Lenovo IdeaPad U110__
IBM would never, ever have made a notebook as sweet-looking and flamboyant as this miniature marvel. Like a Hawaiian garland slung around the neck of a stone-faced, grey-suited executive, this addition to the world's most austere laptop lineup will be something to watch this spring.
Most Innovative: Pioneer Project Kuro Prototype
As disgusting as it is to claim anything about televisions is innovative, Pioneer's remarkable Project Kuro prototype, with its abyssal blacks, gives us all a fantastic reason not to buy a new set until its projected 2009 release date. Cheers, Pioneer!
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Runner Up: Eye Fi 2GB SD Card__
Looking like an average, if orange SD card for cameras, the Eye
Fi automatically uploads photos to the web via WiFi. It works, and it wins: your shots are on Flickr within seconds of being taken. By the time the guards figure out what your up to, their evil employers'
secrets are already on the web. Pull the film out of that one!
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Best Display: Mitsubishi's 50" Laser TV__
It is what it says it is, and it changes the game, delivering twice as much color as the other top televisions that will be released this year.
Runner Up: Alienware/NEC Wraparound DLP
As goofy as it is awesome, only gamers are likely to be interested in this bizarre 2800x900-resolutioned contraption, which multiplexes a series of DLP rear-projection units behind an enormous curving display.
Best Cam: Sony HD camcorder of Your Choice
There's so many, it's not worth picking out any of these finely-differented options for special fondling. Cheapest is the
DVD-based HDR-UX10, packed with features and coming in at a tasty $800, while the HDR-SR12 has a 120GB hard drive, a 5.7 megapixel sensor for still images and a $1,400 tag.
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Runner Up: Exilim S10 and Z80 __
For years, concealed-carry cameras have been much the same, regardless of manufacturer. With the half-inch thick S10 and the 2x3.5"
Z80, Casio's new Exilims bring the meaning back to that oh-so-suggestive brand name.
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Best Couch Potato Assurance Device: FyreTV__
A near-infinity of smut streamed at up to 1.5 megabits per second to your TV for $10 a month, the deliberately bland-looking Fyre
TV lets you search according to measures such as hair color and
"Buxomness." Talk about the fetish of small differences!
Runner Up: Logitech diNovo Mini
A fingerprint-attracting handheld, Logitech's BlueTooth DiNovo
Mini is the prettiest couchtop remote keyboard ever, with a tactile trackpad that can be turned, at the flick of the switch, into a D-Pad for media center browsing and gaming.
Best Tiny PC: Everex CloudBook
America's Nanobook will be priced to give the Eee a run for its money: at $400, its 30GB hard drive marks it as more akin to standard laptops than the 8GB model from Asus. seven inch screen (800x480) , gPC
Linux and a full keyboard, this tiny subnotebook ...
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Runner up: Pico Bayard__
Built around Via's Pico-ITX 4" motherboard and a 7" touchscreen display, the
Pico is a polished, perfectly-mitered art-deco wonder. And, unlike almost everything else at CES, it's unique.
Best Phone: Neonode N2A
Swedish delight spotted by Wired Science's Chris Hardwick, the
Neonode N2 is a tiny touchscreen GSM phone you can't yet get here in the United States. At $700 unlocked, however, we recommend you wait until later this year when it heads to our shore.
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Runner Up: Qualcomm Snapdragon Concept__
A 1 GHz
CPU for mobile devices, Qualcomm's Snapdragon will go toe-to-toe with
Intel's Menlow and Allentown, not to mention ultra-efficient chips from
Via and AMD. This one, however, was on show at CES, in the form of a truly tiny UMPC.
