CES 2011: Best New Technology Takeaways for Electronics Consumers

This week here at the Yasar and Guy Show, we take a look at last week's CES International 2011 show. We've picked some of the hottest upcoming gadgets and games that will be vying for your hard-earned dollars this year. What's hot, what's not and what's just okay... We have your answers right here. One small disclosure before we get started. Yasar and I were not able to attend this year's show, but we did watch multiple live streams and read various favorite sites that covered the event in full detail.

So the following is our dual opinion on what looks to be the best of 2011.

Guy: The Motorola Atrix - High praise comes in the form of a description on CrunchGear explaining that it is "a dual-core Android phone with a twist. The phone itself is fairly unremarkable but when paired with a keyboard and HDTV or the Atrix "laptop dock" the device becomes a netbook. The phone becomes the processor and everything is driven from the Atrix's on-board storage. Although you're not going to be running "real" applications, the built-in Webtop interface allows access to most mobile apps and, barring that, you can always run Android apps on a larger screen, adding offline and online productivity."

The release date and price are as yet unknown. I would think it would be on par price wise with the HTC EVO 4G and the iPhone or even the iPad.

Yasar: Toshiba Glasses-free 3D Laptop - Toshiba showed off a prototype (it doesn't even have a name yet) for a 3D laptop that required no glasses.  Even though it's just a prototype, it's still something to be excited about.  When Nintendo unveiled the Nintendo 3DS, I read up about why they were able to have a 3D portable gaming system without glasses but not a TV.  The answer was the the technology was there, but it only worked on small screens.  Toshiba put 2 and 2 together (laptops have smaller screens than TVs) and created this awesome prototype.  The screen is designed to work for a single user and tracks the users eye movement to adjust the screen keep the 3D working right.  According to CNET:

"The effects worked, but they weren't perfect. The 120Hz screen flashed images at a rapid clip, producing a convincing result. A scene from "Avatar" demonstrated good depth effects, but the overall video quality did seem to suffer compared with a 3D Blu-ray experience."

The laptop isn't coming out soon, but it's in development and is a promising start to a glasses-free 3D future.

Guy: The Switchblade - Razer's new laptop PC boasts full touch-screen capability and is designed to be a portable gaming PC.  According to CNET:

"The Switchblade is Intel Atom-based, with a touch screen and a dynamic tactile keyboard that adjusts its layout and configurations on the fly based on the game being played."

The proposed PC will utilize an Intel Atom processor, have hi-def video and 3D graphics.

No price is set yet as the machine is a ways off from a certified street date. Heck it might never hit the market, but the demo videos sure have us jonesing for a chance to get our hands on a system "that will change the future of gaming"  according to Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan.

Yasar:  On the video game front, many have reported on the fact that Waterloo labs demoed a few simple video games controlled solely by eye movement.  Like the glasses-free Toshiba 3D laptop, it's still in the early stages of development but provides us with something to look forward to in the future.  According to Sizlopedia: "[T]he motion control with your eyes, relies on the fact that your eyes are polarized, said Smith. "With positive in the front and negative in the back, so your eyes actually create voltages," he said."  Who knows what kinds of applications we'll see with this in the future.

Guy: Alienware M17x - Dell presented possibly the best gift to gamers looking for that killer PC gaming laptop when it unveiled this behemoth at CES 2011. The Alienware M17x will start at $1,499 and, depending on what added features you select, could cost upwards of $4,700 and beyond. Yes, it is really expensive and that could turn away many die-hard PC gamers. It has a retail street date of February 1st, 2011, and will include an HDMI-in port which according to PCMag "can be used to connect any gaming console, Blu-Ray player, or device that has HDMI-Out."

Other features include: NVIDIA 3D Vision technology, Blu-ray player, 2.53-GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX9300 processor, Windows Vista Home OS, 8GB RAM, a 1TB hard drive with a speed of 7200 rpms and 2GB of video memory.

So what news came out of CES 2011 that had you most psyched for tech in the new year? The Verizon iPhone doesn't count as that was confirmed pre-CES...

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