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The Cost

First, I’m not sure if they do this every year, but for the 2010 CES, if you signed up before October, you could get in for free (provided you are in some industry that uses electronics). Second, if you shop around, and are willing to stay at one of the lower end hotel/casino’s, you get get your plane and hotel stay for around $450. We stayed at the Stratosphere, and to be honest we really enjoyed our stay there. The rooms were clean and the beds were comfy. They had a bar that has live bands every Thursday thru Saturday, and a dueling piano bar, which was fun. Third, everything in Vegas is expensive. Yes you can find cheap buffet’s, but if you are a foodie like me, you won’t be able to eat lunch for less that $20 and dinner for less than $50. The one really great meal we had, at Gallagher’s (in NY NY), cost around $160 with a bottle of wine.

The Show

The Consumer Electronics Show, held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, had over 2500 vendors and 120,000 attendees. The convention center is split into three halls, the North, Center, and South halls, all of which were packed to the brim with booths. In the North hall, a third of the floor was small booths, most of which had Chinese names, so we took to calling that end Chinatown. While we were still in the North hall we also swung by the Griffin booth, which I’m now convinced makes the best auto/audio/electronics adapters. I bought a Griffin adapter for my car/iPhone a week before CES, so we’ll how it holds up. A bit further in the North hall was the Ford booth, and I stopped to ask them about the new Ford Sync stuff, now called My Ford. Some really exciting stuff coming out of Ford, exciting vehicles, and exciting technology. Last note on the North hall, there were a ton of iPhone/iPod case vendors, at least 40.

The Central hall was HUGE. Most of the major tv vendors were there, and 3D is all the rave for 2010. Its the same technology they use in the theater for 3D, just brought to your living room. I’m not sure if they are all supporting the same storage format, or if its going to be another hddvd/bluray style battle for who’s 3D format gets wide spread adoption. All I know is, you still have to wear special glasses, and none of the vendors were showing off clip-on’s. Microsoft had a huge presence in the Central hall, showing off their OS on lots of different machines, and their Microsoft Auto stuff as well. I’m thinking they are going to be partnering with more than just Ford quite soon. While in the Central hall I saw some some booths about home automation, which started getting me thinking. Home automation ended up being the thing I kept seeking out as I travelled around CES, learning as much as I could. Again, there were TONS of iPhone/iPod case vendors, over 100 in Central hall, enough to really get annoying.

Day 2 at CES I walked the South hall, which ended up being two stories, so another couple miles of walking. There were some neat vendors there, including a lot of home automation stuff, networking equipment vendors, and of course, iPhone/iPod case vendors. Control4 had a giant booth, and an affiliates booth, and their take on home automation was really cool. If you are interested in the next wave of technology coming to regular consumers, check out http://control4.com/. Home automation and control has been in higher end homes for 10+ years now, but with electronics prices going down, and more focus on energy efficiency (and green initiatives), we’re about to see some really cool tech in everyone’s home. Also in the South hall was my tech pundit hero Leo Laporte and his TWIT (This Week in Tech) crew. I got to watch a little bit of their live recording, but didn’t get to meet Leo.

The Conclusion

CES was great, it was fun seeing all the cool gadgets and it was fun to see what the big trends are going to be for the next year. However, Vegas was expensive and I can’t imagine going once a year for the show. Too many lights, too many sounds (stinkin slot machines), and too many guys peddling cards for “dancers”. While I now personally despise iPhone/iPod cases, I’m glad the vendors were there because Natalie loved looking at all of them. Should you go to CES? I’ll try almost anything at least once, so I say yeah, go geek out and have some fun!