what happens in vegas / gadget heaven

I just got back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was my first visit to the show and the first time I've spent more than a few hours in Las Vegas. The impressions I had of Vegas from my youth were always negative: it was cheesy, dirty and people smoked everywhere. Some of that it still the same, particularly the smoking, but a lot of other things have changed. Many of the hotels are very elegant and have amazing decor and works of art in them. I thought the hotel I stayed in, the MGM Grand, was pretty nice, but I was blown away by what I saw in other hotels, like the Wynn and The Venetian. The Venetian, in particular, had impression reproductions of Italian art all over the place, and my favorite part of it was the shopping mall that looked like an Venice street: canal running down the middle, the sky painted on the ceiling, etc.

I had a couple of great dinners, too. On my first night, I ate at Gallagher's, a steakhouse inside New York New York. Their specialty is a dry-aged sirloin steak, and while I'm not typically a fan of sirloin, I decided to go for it. It turned out to be excellent. Also enjoyable was the dinner I had last night at Bouchon Bistro, a Thomas Keller restaurant inside The Venetian. The food was simple but very flavorful, and the service was impeccable. The little lady is a fan of Keller's recipes and methods, so she's quite jealous that I went. Maybe I'll take her there sometime.

The majority of my time was spent, of course, on the show and meetings with vendors. The show is pretty crazy with all the people and press that attend, and that part of it wasn't fun. What was fun, however, was seeing all the new gadgets and technology. Here are some things that I saw:

This Samsung display was one of the most impressive things that I saw. It was cool to just stand there and watch it.


OLED is the technology of the future for TVs. The colors are amazing and the panels can be made extremely thin. Watch as I move the camera so you can see the thickness of the panel.


Intel's been getting a fair amount of press with this four-sided 1980x1980 display. One Core i7 processor and an internet connection power the display of hundreds of photos on every side of this giant touch display.


Check out how thin this LG TV is. At 6.9mm thick, LG's claiming it's the thinnest LED TV in the world.


Few things can impress like a giant TV. I think this is the largest flat panel TV ever constructed.


My favorite piece of technology in the whole show was this 84" Panasonic Ultra HD TV. I forget the actual resolution, but it's something like 3980x2140. The photo slideshow they were playing on it was stunning.


This Asus quad SLI computer was really cool. Not literally, though. I've never seen a computer that gave off so much heat.


Leave it to Monster Cable to muck up a perfectly good Ferrari.



All in all, it was a good couple of days. I liked Vegas more than I thought I would, and I felt like my time was well spent. Maybe I'll go back for a short vacation sometime.