There's a lot I learned about attending CES, with a press badge...

The high-points/hits: Seeing Seagate, Synology, Sony, Microsoft, Intel, Buffalo, HighPoint, Fractal Design, Belkin, Ooma, Lutron, Philips, iStarUSA, NVIDIA, Verizon, and many many more. Getting somewhat embarrassing preferential treatment, once the press badge was spotted. This allowed me…

Jan 18 2012

Fractal Design at CES 2012: overview by Ryan Heimbuch, Technical Support Manager

I have two videos to share, from the guy who is responsible for supporting those Fractal Design USB 3.0 upgrade kits. Actually, just last week, I installed the USB 3.0 upgrade kit in vZilla, which took all of 10 minutes, and was quite straight forward. These cases all have a lot of drive bays, and a…

Jan 16 2012

Synology at CES 2012: VMware compatibility explained by Franklin Hua, Technical Marketing Manager

CES gave me the opportunity to ask Synology for a product overview, right there in their booth. Franklin Hua did a wonderful job talking not only VMware compatibility, but also IOPS and other actual speed measurements, as also seen at his excellent technical blog here:…

Jan 15 2012

Samsung at CES 2012: Ultimate TV Super OLED Sensation

This short 1080p video says it all. While my Canon Vixia HF S200 camcorder cannot do justice to the real-life experience of eyeballing this 55" beauty, at least you'll get some idea. In a nutshell, they looked great, better than anything currently available. I used the Canon stabilization…

Jan 15 2012

Microsoft Photosynth, next best thing to being at CES?

Took this photo Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 12:40pm local time, right in front of CES 2012 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The above version is viewable on any device, but is 4MB in size. The below version is SilverLight only, but I thought you might enjoy trying a more immersive photo…

Jan 15 2012

HighPoint at CES 2012: New USB 3.0 bundles shown by May Hwang, Director of Product Marketing

I visited HighPoint's booth at CES 2012 on Thursday, January 12th, and had the opportunity to speak to May Hwang, HighPoint Technologies Sales Manager. In these brief, informal interviews, you'll hear May and I discuss HighPoint's latest USB 3.0 + HDD dock combos, and SSD caching, and RocketU USB…

Jan 15 2012

CES Coverage Preview

A lot of the press swooped in and scooped the latest announcements at CES on Sunday and Monday. So by the time I arrived Tuesday, it seemed the press was done with walking around and visiting booths, and more intent on pounding out story after story on their laptops, in solitude. I saw this first…

Jan 15 2012

CES 2012 Day 3

Another fantastic day, packed in a lot of visits, and squeezed in a lot of questions, and actually got a lot of on-the-spot answers. Also got some more informal interview videos at Seagate and Ooma and others, will post details and pics and videos when I get back home, where the internet actually…

Jan 13 2012

CES 2012 Day 2

Had a great day, visiting many of the companies I wanted to, talking tech at some length. I'm impressed so far, with the quality of the staffing at the booths, and with the insane variety of stuff to see. I did get to record some brief video interviews that focused on virtualization and…

Jan 12 2012

Some exhibitors I plan to visit Jan. 11th at CES, any suggestions?

This is a list of some of the exhibitors I plan to visit: and here's the list of all exhibitors: ces12.mapyourshow.com/5_0/search.cfm If you make a comment below, those comments will show up immediately on my phone, and on the main TinkerTry.com site along the right-hand-edge, automatically.…

Jan 11 2012

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 t…

Jan 11 2012

Going to CES 2012! -- along with 2,700 exhibitors, 5,000 press/analysts, and 140,000 attendees)

On the recent BYOB Podcast, I announced that I'm going to CES 2012! Something I've wanted to do for about 20 years now. I'm also very happy I'll have the opportunity to meet David McCabe of homeservershow.com in person, and others from the tight-knit home server community like Mike Faucher, of the B…

Dec 19 2011