Posts Tagged ‘CES2011’

CES 2011 was awash with car entertainment systems this year from custom installers, but long gone is the time where you could, for most cars, easily buy an aftermarket system and fit it to your car. Most systems are designed into the car, which brings the cost of a high quality upgrade close to $10,000.  Added to this cost is the chance that some critical system features may not work when the installer is done.

CES 2011 was surely not the big Google TV event many would have predicted a month ago, but Google is making subtle progress to build its army of supporters.

Ford has taken the wraps off the much anticipated Focus Electric, an electric version of the company’s compact car that will be available for purchase in late 2011.

Microsoft’s Bing unit has just released a new commercial in its Search Overload series, which are among the best TV ads Microsoft created in the past few years.

More than 60 tablets are expected to be announced at CES 2011. This is an overview of the most noteworthy announcements. Latest Update: Dell Streak 7.

At CES this week, Microsoft dropped a bomb when it announced that the next generation of Windows would work on both x86 and ARM processor architectures. The effect? Microsoft started a race between a bunch of new vendors initially including Nvidia, Qualcomm, and TI to become the Next Intel. Clearly, AMD is going to want a big piece of the action and Intel isn’t going to surrender what the own without a fight.

Analysis – CES is typically a showcase of the creativity and innovation capability of a company as well as products we can expect to appear within 12 months. If this is true for Microsoft, and if Steve Ballmer’s CES opening keynote yesterday is any indication, then the company may be heading into one of its most boring years yet. It appears that Microsoft has surrendered its role as a trendsetter and has become a stale IT giant that is about to be replaced. Where is Bill Gates when you need him?

It was an inevitable move for Microsoft: To compete with Apple and Google, Windows would have to support ARM, an architecture that reaches now more than 1 billion devices every quarter. It’s not just Wintel anymore. Its Winarm now as well.

Microsoft has effortlessly exceeded its goal of selling 5 million Kinect sensors during the past holiday season. Kinect will get a big software upgrade, but you can get it only as long as you subscribe to and pay for Xbox Live Gold.

Intel is preparing the rollout of its Sandy Bridge processors over the next few days at CES 2011 and we are seeing reignited enthusiasm at boutique PC makers to make the processor much more interesting again. Those who can spend more than $5000 on a PC should be able to pick up stunning desktop and notebook systems.

AMD today introduced three new Phenom II processors. The Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition is AMD’s fastest quad-core processor to date and the new X6 1065T slots in as the fastest sub-100 watt hexacore processor.

AMD today announced the debut Fusion APUs with the new Brazos platform which consists of low-power processors targeted at entry-level notebooks and netbooks.