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CES has officially begun and we discuss a slew of offerings from the show floor, as well as the Steve Ballmer keynote. Also, Tom is offered the chance to record his voice for TomTom GPS devices. That's a lot of Tom!

Ballmer Keynote http://ces.cnet.com/8301-19167_1-10131585-100.html http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/ces2009-microsoft-keynote.ars

Windows 7 goes Beta this Friday http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10135791-56.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10136418-75.html

Windows 7 might not come in '09 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10135943-56.html

CES Press conference roundup: … Read more

This year's CES will bring the usual array of extremely large, easy-to-blog HDTVs, although we're not sure anybody will top the 150-inch Panasonic plasma from last year. More interesting is a group of new trends that, compared with items like "1080p" and "HDMI 1.3" from previous years, could actually prove exciting. OK fine, they're nothing compared with Macworld, but they're as exciting as HDTVs get.

Eco-friendly: Oil prices might be falling with the financial crisis, but with a new, more environmentally conscious president and general belt-tightening, the American public may finally … Read more

A Taiwanese display maker just one-upped Sony on the Japanese electronics giant's home turf.

At the FPD International Exhibition in Japan Wednesday, Chi Mei EL, or CMEL, unveiled its OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display that measures less than a millimeter thick and 25 inches diagonal. Sony has a prototype of the same thinness, but it's just 11 inches diagonal.

CMEL's prototype display resolution is WXGA, or 1,366x768 pixels, and shows 16.7 million colors. While it's not yet an actual product, it shows that the race for OLED supremacy is heating up.

Samsung has shown … Read more

Anyone who knows my television viewing habits knows that the only program I have my DVR automatically record for me is Charlie Rose, the long-running PBS talk show (OK, there was a season of Prison Break in there somewhere, too, but let's not talk about that).

Last night's episode, featuring a long, candid conversation with Sir Howard Stringer, chairman and CEO of Sony, should be required viewing for anyone interested in consumer electronics.

During the course of the show, Stringer talks, fairly knowledgeably, about the PlayStation 3, how Sony lost the portable music player market, how Blu-ray vs. HD DVD played out differently than the Betamax vs. VHS battle, the future importance (and current impracticality) of OLED displays, and the painfully low margin on PC hardware (even expensive Vaios). He also makes a surprisingly spirited pitch for the PlayStation Network as a delivery system for all kinds of content (check out his ideas about using the PS3 and PlayStation Network as a platform capable of sharing content with the iPhone). … Read more

CHIBA, Japan--Sony has an entire wall of its 11-inch XEL-1 OLED TVs set up here at Ceatec 2008, but in contrast with past gadget shows, it's not the only company showing off OLED prototypes.

Panasonic may have said earlier this week that OLED is still far from becoming a mass-produced mainstream technology for use in big-screen TVs, but other electronics makers are plowing ahead with their own research on the organic, thin film technology: NEC, Sony, and KDDI showed off what they've been doing with OLED in their research labs.

Sony, of course, continues to press ahead its … Read more

CHIBA, Japan--Already skeptical about the ability of OLED to uproot the TV technology dominance of plasma and LCD in the next few years, Panasonic cast even more doubt on the opening day of Ceatec 2008.

Speaking to a group of reporters, Panasonic AVC Networks President Toshihiro Sakamoto reiterated that OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TVs will not be made in sizes of 30 inches or greater for now, and it's still not suitable for mass manufacturing. Currently, Panasonic does not have an OLED product on the market, but Sony does: it makes and 11-inch OLED TV, and is working on a 27-inch model. … Read more

Most aftermarket receivers with iPod capabilities include a USB or dock connector dongle, but they leave it to you to figure out where to stow your MP3 player while driving. Fusion Electronics thinks it has solved the problem with the announcement of an internal docking CA-IP500 iPod Receiver. Essentially, what Fusion has done is put an iPod-size slot behind the faceplate that will allow you to slide the digital audio player inside of the receiver.

Looking at the specifications on the company Web site and the images supplied, it looks like making room for the iPod slot meant sacrificing the … Read more

Convergence is the key to staying ahead in the technology game, so it's no surprise that printer vendors are offering more and more printers that do quadruple duty as scanner, copier, and fax machine. Today, Lexmark caters to the back-to-school shoppers with a handful of new All-in-Ones that are competitively priced but include all the features you'd find in their larger counterparts.

The $99 X5650 AiO is a printer, scanner, copier, and fax machine with an auto-document feeder for scanning/copying stacks of paper. It can reportedly print up to 25 black pages per minute and 18 color. … Read more

After navigating some rough seas, Sony's Electronics division has been starting to right the ship.

Over the past year, the company has been forced to rethink its product lineup and catch up to competitors in some cases, but now the Japanese electronics giant's U.S. division is looking ahead and betting big on the future of flat-panel televisions and high-definition media.

CNET News.com sat down with the head of Sony Electronics' U.S. operation, Stan Glasgow, to talk OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) TVs, Blu-ray Disc, the importance of the PlayStation 3, consumer electronics, and the dwindling margins … Read more