Tech Olive

CES 2011 has now come and gone and what a week it was! While the show officially started on Thursday, companies were already announcing and unveiling new products as early as Monday, and since I didn’t cover everything that happened under the Las Vegas Convention Center roof, I decided to sit down and reflect back on the week, as well as catch up on stuff that I missed.

After the break, I’ll be recapping some of the best in PC products that were shown at CES and give you my prediction on what this year will have in store for us based on what we saw at CES 2011.

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Just a few days ago, Samsung unveiled their ultra, ultra-thin 9 series laptop to take on the MacBook Air head on. With its 1.6GHz Core i5 CPU, 128GB SSD, 4GB of RAM, a black-lit keyboard, 13.3-inch LED display, and 6.5 hours of battery life, it’s quite a competitor, especially for the fair price of $1,600. Samsung has just updated their press release and has given this bad boy a release date of “February 2011.” Not exactly a date, but it’s good enough for us.

[Press Release]

Bigfoot Networks, makers of high-performance ‘Killer’ network cards, have announced a partnership with motherboard manufacturers MSI, Gigabyte, and ASUS. The result of this partnership is, of course, the inclusion of Killer network card technology as onboard networking hardware on new motherboards, including Gigabyte’s new G1 Killer series motherboards and ASUS’ ROG Rampage III Black Edition motherboards. We even saw some details about future MSI integration, but no models were mentioned by name. No details on pricing or availability were announced.

With Bigfoot Networks also having recently announced plans with VisionTek to include Killer networking technology, it’s becoming easier and easier to get your hands on a fantastic Killer network card.

[MSI Press Release, Gigabyte Press Release]

Hot on the heels of the game’s PC release, Angry Birds is once again branching out to new platforms. This time, it’s with the help of giant toymaker Mattel. Angry Birds is getting its own board game. It’s only a singleplayer experience (just like the video game), with players drawing “Mission Cards” that will instruct them how to construct the pigs’ stronghold which they then destroy by launching birds from a slingshot, of course. It’s set to cost $14.99 and is aiming for a May 2011 release window.

via [Joystiq]

Well, well, well. We already know that Kinect can work on a PC with a little hackage, but Microsoft wasn’t going in on that just yet. However, in an interview with BBC, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the company will support Kinect for PC “in a formal way in the right time.” He went on saying that when they “have an announcement to make, we’ll make that announcement.”

So it seems like Kinect for PC will definitely be coming officially at some point, and it’ll be interesting to see how they will implement the device within the PC platform.

via [BBC]

Though the game’s release date is still lost deep in the corners of time, it seems Microsoft is holding out on us as evidenced by their display of a playable PC demo of Fable 3 at their CES booth this year. No further information has been given regarding the game’s development or release status, but things are looking good for a Fable 3 2011 PC release.

via [Joystiq]

I suppose this isn’t a huge surprise at all. Thanks to Verizon’s current 3G “MiFi” mobile hotspot and their recently launched 4G LTE network, it’s a no-brainer that Big Red would eventually release a 4G version. This one’s being manufactured by Samsung and we hear that there’s no creative name for this new device except for “4G LTE Mobile Hotspot,” but that could easily change. Whatever the name, it’s good to know we’ll have some super fast 4G Wi-Fi waiting for us wherever we go.

No word yet on pricing for the device and the data plans or when it’ll be available, but it shouldn’t be long.

[Press Release]

Shocking the gaming industry, Razer announced a new project of theirs at CES. The project is titled Switchblade, and is still in conceptual stages, but details are promising. It’s still a “concept design,” so details are bound to change (including the name, according to Razer) before we see any more solid information or pricing. You can read Razer’s FAQ on the project, but we’ll summarize some features below.

• Tactile keyboard with full-color LCD backing for each key, allowing completely dynamic buttons images that change based on what game is running
• Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity
• Running Windows 7 OS
• Mini HDMI and USB 3.0
• Dimensions: 172mm x 115mm x 25 mm

via [Big Download]

Microsoft has unveiled their next generation Microsoft Surface and guess what? It still won’t be available to consumers. Nonetheless, the company demoed a few features of the new tabletop slab, which is being manufactured by Samsung and will actually be called the Samsung SUR40, not the Microsoft Surface. One interesting factoid is that it includes Microsoft’s own PixelSense technology, which gives an LCD display the power to recognize fingers, hands and objects that are placed on the screen. Individual pixels in the display can see what’s touching the screen and that information is immediately processed and interpreted.

The Surface 2.0 (as it’s called on Microsoft’s website) is only 4-inches thick and uses Gorilla glass (a very strong, durable type of glass) for the surface. It’ll also cost a whopping $7,600, which is actually less than what the 1st gen Surface costs ($12,000).

via [ZDNet]

Asus has finally officially unveiled it’s Eee Slate EP121, and for a tablet, it’s more than quite impressive. While the device has been teased in the past by the company, details and pricing are finally available for the looking over. On top of running Windows 7, it’s got a Core i5-470M processor, 2GB of RAM (upgradeable to 4GB), a 64GB SSD, and a 12.1-inch IPS capacitive display at 1280 x 800. It’s also sporting HDMI-out, Bluetooth 3.0, USB 2.0, 802.11n, and a front-facing camera.

The Eee Slate EP121 will be available later this month starting at $1,000.

UPDATE: The tablet just showed up on Amazon for pre-order starting at $999 for the 32GB model and $1,099 for the 64GB model. Who’s breaking out the plastic?

via [Engadget]