CES 2012 Day 1

Our day started at 4am, as we made our way efficiently and uneventfully to the direct Virgin America 9:30am flight to Las Vegas. Found myself seated next to a nice guy from Intel, also headed to CES. We quickly started discussing the Core i7 2600K versus 2600, VT-d, WiDi, and more. Hadn't even left the ground yet, already having a good time.

While cruising at 36,000 feet, in our leather seats with gadgets plugged in, I connected to the Gogo WiFi. I was greeted by a Ford video with host Patrick Norton. Turns out watching this brief video, and providing Ford with my (spam infested) email addresses, was the small price to pay for 30 minutes of free internet. Or so it claimed. Turns out it lasted the entire flight, free. So even though it was slow, it was free, this was good. Also noticed power outlet turned off if I cranked the W520 to full power, but turned back on again when I chose a more efficient setting. Such hardship!

So we landed at McCarran, and amazingly, welchwerks was there at baggage claim to pick us up. He's a Las Vegas local, and a good friend of the Home Server Show, and kindly offered that ride live on last night's Google+ Hangout, great making new friends this way! Thank you so much Greg, I owe you. And thank you Jim Collison for the great fun we had on that hangout you arranged.

We left our luggage at the hotel, walked to CES, and struggled to find where to get press badges.  After 3 mis-routings from various well-meaning staff, we finally got our red press badge holders, our press bag, and we were now inside, all by 2pm. Pretty amazing stuff, everywhere, walking right in near the Microsoft and Intel areas, ultrabooks galore (but crowded).

So we hurried off to the CNET Next Big Think Super Show was pretty interesting, with Eric Schmidt, but since we found the room only 10 minutes before it started, it was sitting-on-the-floor room only, in the overflow room. In other words, we didn't see Molly Wood or Eric Schmidt live, instead watching on a live video feed, from 100ft away from the room they were in. So lesson learned, get there early for the big stuff, and don't trust the "Ask me" people for instructions. No problem, now we know the layout of things, sort of. Also used some of the lulls to do some brief video streaming over Verizon 4G/LTE for TinkerTry.com/live, with mixed results. Great speed for the first stream, horrible for the second, done just minutes later. No idea why, given I was stationary between the tests.

Next we headed to Bringing the Cloud Down to Earth, and the comments by Stu Elby, Ph.D., Vice President - Corporate Technology & Chief Technologist, Verizon Digital Media Services were the most fun for me.  He was asked something along the lines of how increased demand for cloud services can be reconciled with the wireless and wired providers recently seeming to be intent on removing unlimited plans. It was awkward, and fun, watching this go down from the fifth row, good stuff.

Then a quick visit to the North Exhibit hall just as things were closing for the night. Got to enjoy a hysterical moment when somebody flew a toy helicopter into the rafters, stuck there for all eternity, an abrupt ending to a fun demonstration.

I was particularly fond of the Ford concept car area, which made for some colorful pictures I quite enjoyed. The Ford Sync demos were turned off for the night anyway. Then, on our way out to find some food fast, we saw a live recording of Tim Stevens and the Engadget crew. Just seeing all the equipment, behind-the-scenes, was interesting.

Tomorrow is a much longer day, with more actual gadgets to see, so time to call it a night. I know I'm very much looking forward to meeting more of the homeservershow.com folks in the morning, hopefully!