CES 2007

(Credit: Slashgear)

Some of us at Crave have managed to resist our adolescent urges to collect toy robots, in a rare example of self-restraint. Our willpower met its match, however, when we saw photos of WowWee's "Roboboa."

It had been mentioned earlier along with the FlyTech Dragonfly and other bots at CES, but actually seeing a robotic snake in action is something to behold. In a video clip, it's reminiscent of Pixar's seminal "Luxo Jr." lamp.

The bionic serpent's 40 movements can be controlled by its remote, according to Slashgear, or it can just be left to boogie to the beat of your music. Not just a plaything, the Roboboa reportedly serves as an alarm clock, an iPod speaker and even a "room sentry that can track motion." If the rumored $119 price turns out to be true, we'll be the first in line.

(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET Networks)

Many people spend the entire week at CES trolling the three main halls occupied by such companies as Samsung, LG and Sony. They all have huge booths--Samsung took the cake with 2,500 square feet--and tons of products to fill them.

But the international hall in the Hilton is far more interesting. It's populated by hundreds of small companies grouped by nationality. Most are from Asia, but there are also sections for Denmark and Australia.

First, there is the sheer variety of names: Best Rainbow Technology (appliances), Billionton Systems (LCD panels), Nice Fountain Industrial (cables), Millionway International Industrial (GPS parts, I think), Harmonious Key Classic, Evermore Technology (no ravens in booth), and Chiefdom Electronics are some of the names.

In the Taiwan Area, Good Way Technology Co. Limited is just a few booths away from Good Man Corp. (Zippy Technology separates them). Nearby is Action Star Enterprises (batteries).

(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET Networks)

Second, it's here where you see the aggressiveness to leap on a new trend. Nintendo put out the Wii only a few months ago, and Esel, a Canadian-Chinese company, has already developed a line of paddles. On display at the show, the company has a light gun, a golf club, a tennis racket and a steering wheel.

Third, you get to see deals get made. Nearly every one of these booths has a card table, and any hour of the day you can walk by and see people negotiating for passive capacitors or cable housings.

Fourth, even though you've probably never heard of most of these companies, you probably own a bunch of their products.

So what happens the day after Windows Vista is available to consumers? Will you still be able to buy a laptop or desktop with Windows XP, or are you going to be forced to upgrade with a new computer purchase? We polled system vendors, including Gateway, HP, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and Lenovo, and the answer is unanimous across the board.

According to every system builder we talked to, starting with Vista's January 30 launch, systems aimed at consumers will include only the new operating system, with no option for sticking with XP.

On the other hand, business users (or consumers who buy from a vendor's small business or corporate lines) will have a choice between XP and Vista. Most corporate users will want to stick with the older OS for now, at least until they come up with a rollout plan for installing Vista across their networks, which could include hundreds or thousands of PCs. Microsoft will continue to support XP sales to business users, at least through 2008.

Laptop docking stations have always been a bit on the awkward side, requiring you to slide your laptop into the dock, properly lining up the connectors. Usually, we end up banging the pieces together for a few seconds until they fit.

Toshiba showed us a new docking station for the company's Portege R400 Windows Vista convertible tablet that takes care of a lot of the limitations of traditional laptop docks. The wireless Ultra Wide Band Toshiba Wireless Port Replicator connects to the R400 automatically whenever it's within a few feet. It's not the first wireless dock we've seen, but with the bandwidth for streaming video clips with no problem to an external monitor and a DVI connection, it seems like a must-have accessory for the buzz-heavy Portege R400.

While the R400 itself will be available at the end of January, the Wireless Port Replicator, price to be determined, won't hit stores until the second quarter of 2007.

Some of the coolest products at CES are destined never to make it onto store shelves or into homes. They're prototypes and mock-ups, designed to test new features or solicit industry feedback.

Fujitsu had a series of mobile PC prototypes on the show floor, each highlighting some interesting technology that may eventually trickle into mainstream consumer products.

One prototype was called the Ultra Mobile 2007. It's about the size of Mac Mini and is a handheld touch screen UMPC. Fujitsu describes it as, "A futuristic interpretation of an ultraportable tablet PC, fully operable via touch screen, a stylus pen, and operation buttons. Like the Ultra Mobile 2005, this is designed to be almost the same size as a CD jacket."

A second item we saw was a folding UMPC with a full keyboard. It folds up into a small blue square, then you can flip up the screen and watch media files using a few media control buttons or flip the keyboard open for typing (as pictured).

Like flashy concept cars, these exact models will most likely never see the light of day, but the hope is that some features or design elements will make it into the next generation of mobile devices.

Looking to upgrade the weak graphics of your otherwise rockin' laptop? Before you rip apart the machine to get to its innards in what will most likely result in a failed attempt for more frames per second, take a peek at the Asus XG Station. That's X for external, and G for graphics--the world's first external graphics-card solution for laptops. The XG Station connects via an ExpressCard slot and houses a x16 PCI Express graphics card and a sound card that supplies 5.1 Dolby audio. Asus will ship the XG Station with a GeForce 7900GS card, and there's no reason why you couldn't swap in an 8800 GTS. An 8800 GTX card, however, is too long to fit inside the unit.

The XG Station's control panel provides a variety of system information, from GPU clockspeed, fan speed, and temperature to volume and frames per second. The large dial to the left of the display lets you adjust the settings, including cranking up the GPU's clock speed. With a couple of USB 2.0 ports onboard, you can leave your game keyboard and mouse connected to the XG Station for an instant game docking station--just add laptop.

Asus gave a quick demo of the XG Station, which we mentioned briefly over the weekend. While a laptop without an XG Station chugged through a game, the same laptop connected to an XG Station provided very smooth gameplay on a huge LCD hooked up to the GeForce card's DVI port. Asus told us it's still working out the pricing details, but expects a 7900GS-equipped XG Station to go for roughly $599 when it's released in April.

We really liked the recent 15.4-inch Gateway NX570 laptop. It was a highly configurable system that could run anywhere from $699 to almost $2,000, but the brushed metal accents and fingerprint-resistant design made it seem like a much more expensive system than you'd expect based on its low starting price.

The sequel keeps a lot of what we liked about the original but shrinks it down to a 14-inch package. The more-portable Gateway NX270 (replacing the NX260) should be available February 1, right after the Windows Vista launch and will have a similarly affordable starting price--$699--and much of the same configuration flexibility.

(Credit: Zyxel)

Zyxel's new NSA-220 NAS drive plus media server offers two empty drive bays so that you can bring your own SATA drives, up to 1.5TB. The drives can be arranged in a RAID-0 or RAID-1 array, and the included Memeo software lets you set up autobackup of your data. Two USB ports let you connect additional hard drives or thumbdrives, and a "copy" button allows you to quickly duplicate the contents of an external drive (or an MP3 player or digital camera) to the NAS-220 without touching your PC.

Aside from acting as a repository for your data and multimedia files, the NAS-220 serves up your entertainment content to your home entertainment system via its built-in DLNA server. Because it's DLNA certified, it plays nicely with other DLNA devices, including Zyxel's own digital media adapter, the DMA-1000.

The NSA-220 will be available in the first quarter for $250.

(Credit: Zyxel)

At CES 2007, Zyxel announced the DMA-1000, a digital media adapter for serving up multimedia files from the PCs in your home to your home entertainment system. The small adapter resembles a wireless router and, in fact, supports both wired and wireless connections via Ethernet and 802.11g Wi-Fi. In addition, it offers a USB port so that you can play files from any USB-based storage device, such as a flash thumbdrive or an MP3 player.

The DMA-1000 supports high-def streaming (1080i) and includes an HDMI connector, as well as S-Video. Unfortunately, 802.11g throughput is insufficient for HD streams, so you're probably better off using a wired PowerLine HD adapter for smooth video play. The DMA-1000 is UPnP and DLNA compliant, so it should play nicely with other UPnP and DLNA devices.

Zyxel expects to ship the $200 DMA-1000 in the first quarter of the year.