Consumer Electronics Show 2002 Report

An anonymous reader writes "I've noticed that Target PC posted their report on this year's Consumer Eletronics Show in Las Vegas. Looks like 2002 will be the year of wireless networking and recordable DVD. In the same article they cover Samsung's upcoming portable computer based on the StrongARM 206MHz processor that will be available in 2Q." Many wireless products (including 802.11a), huge LCD displays, and more -- I hope people who were at the show can comment on the things missed in this report, or in The Washington Posts's report.

Comments

This is the year of wireless networking?

[tony_gardner]

The last five years have all been the year of wireless networking. How about a surprise?

The year of realising that wireless networking is at best a niche market.

or maybe

The year of realising that most people want their old broadband connection back, more than any low speed network.

Or have these businesses already forgotten the dot com problem of basing your business model on niche markets: there is no room for expansion.

side note - "for optimal performance..."

[sammy baby]

I found the following quote pretty amusing:

For optimal performance we did not compress the pictures, loading times might be longer for some and click the picture to enlarge.

Translation: we wanted to tell all our friends we'd been Slashdotted, so we made sure to include an assload of moderate-to-high resolution pics right in the page. We did, however, mess with the aspect ratio of some of the pics to make people think they were looking at super-long TVs displaying female dwarf powerlifters.

Apple at the forefront...

[Mac Nazgul]

And how long has Apple had high-end solutions (they work) for both Wireless connectivity and DVD recording capabilities?
The PC side is only just getting around to it in consumer machines...

Gadget confusion

[michaeljs]

This may yet be the year of wireless gadgets and DVD burners - but standards are a problem. Until things converge, or someone is boldly declared the winner (DVD-R, DVD+RW or whatever the bloody acronymns are) I'm not sure I'd want to invest in a piece of soon-to-be obsolete equipment. DVD players took ages to take off (years longer than predicted) because of differing DVD disc standards. The same thing could happen with burners.

RE: Wireless. 3G is still ages away and given that GPRS is only a temporary fixup, I'm not sure how great this year will be.

Nevertheless, bring on the gadgets.

Extreme Tech's Report

[asv108]

You can check out ExtremeTech's report here

Blame marketing

[freeweed]

Why the hell is everything called a "solution" these days?!

Let's face it, the majority of consumer electronics never really take off, and manufacturers know this. In many cases (Commodore Amiga) it's because there IS no market for the product at present. Calling something a 'solution' immediately makes management think that 'well, if there's a solution, there MUST be a problem!'. And the buying spree commences...

Of course, the honest route of 'our goods are useless and can't sell themselves solely on their own merit' went the way of the Dodo several decades ago. LCD monitors are some of the worst offenders here: sure, some people need every available square inch of desk space. But guess what? Most offices do not. That extra space just ends up turning into a mess of unorganized filing space. So what does every 'modern' secretary have on his/her 3x5(ish) desk? A nice new LCD monitor, to save that precious square foot or so of space! All because we've become convinced that monitors are somehow 'space-wasting'. I guess that explains the slow adoption of PC hardware over the past 20 years :)