InformationWeek

After a week of anticipation, I finally got Microsoft on the phone to discuss these so-called "craplets," crappy applets that an unidentified Microsoft official told a reporter at last week's Consumer Electronics Show would interfere with Vista if they were loaded by PC makers and system builders onto computers running the new operating system. At first I thought this was a refreshing bit of honesty from Microsoft. It was unhappy that someone else in the PC ecosystem was interfering with its biggest OS launch ever. But the fact that Microsoft's PR firm strung me along for a week without an interview should have told me something. It was in spin mode, trying to figure out how to step over the craplets problem.

LAS VEGAS -- Three things I learned at the Consumer Electronics Show: (1) IT is irrelevant. It used to be that innovations in computing flowed from big business down to the small-office and home markets. Now it flows in the other direction. (2) Hardware is no longer the bottleneck for anything. And (3) universal connectivity is still a long way off.

With all the gadgets and devices that are being shown at CES (a large portion of them mobile) something has to power them. This can be really apparent during a big trade show, where the use of notebooks, PDAs, and especially phones is constant -- and you really don't want to drag around a power cord along with the hundreds of product info brochures and CDs that you've piled into your bag.

LAS VEGAS – The second-biggest problem at the Consumer Electronics Show, the World’s Most Exhausting Tradeshow, is apparently the Content Crisis. (The biggest problem, as always, is the wait to get a cab.) I hadn’t been aware of the Content Crisis or its effect on consumers, but in every aisle of the exhibit halls vendors are anxious to tell me that they have the solution to the Content Crisis – a way to give me more media, more audio and video to play on my iPod, my HD TV, my home theater. And some of them are surprisingly interesting.

Underneath the casual-Friday dress code that predominates at CES beat the hearts of many a mad scientist. Digital photography seems to attract a disproportionate number of tinkerers and garage inventors, for some reason, and as I've wandered around the exhibit halls I've run into several products from some of them that make me want to reach for my wallet or scratch my head in disbelief, often at the same time.

It's been a long two days, and at 6 p.m., closing time at the Las Vegas Convention Center, everyone is either on line for a bus, on line for a cab, trudging wearily back to their hotel -- or, as I am, sitting in Starbucks doing some last minute work and just letting their feet rest.

Cisco says it's been negotiating with Apple for years about using the name, and that those negotiations continued into last night. Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn't seem too concerned while making his blockbuster announcement about Apple's iPhone.

LAS VEGAS – While I’m at the Consumer Electronics Show, product announcements coming from MacWorld in San Francisco are proving where the real center of the consumer electronics industry is – wherever Apple’s Steve Jobs is standing. Even here it feels like every third or fourth vendor you see is pitching something that works with an iPod.

Microsoft has a tent at CES just outside the Las Vegas Convention Center where, among other things, they are offering interviews with families were were part of their beta testing program (excuse me: their Life With Windows Vista program). These families were given a computer loaded with an early version of Vista about two years ago and were asked to use it as their main computer while giving constant feedback.

LAS VEGAS -- The show floor opened Monday. I walked it. Here's what it looked like.

For somebody who has spent most of her professional life writing about computers and associated technologies, the crowds at the Consumer Electronics Show are a revelation. Not just the vast number of companies shouting for the attention of the buyers and media -- even though classifying some of the products here as "consumer" can be a stretch -- but the attention it's getting in the popular media. It's been front-page news in the New York Times, and I'm told that CES was the focus of attention on a recent Today Show.

LAS VEGAS -- While there are rumors floating around that Microsoft may use the Bill Gates keynote at CES here today to launch its Origami ultra-mobile PC, there are far more interesting super-small PCs floating around the corridors of the tradeshow -- little wonders so they're unreal. The only downside, of course, is that some of them literally are unreal -- they're prototypes -- but they're signposts to the future of PC design.

At CES, everybody's middle name is entertainment -- even at the news announcements. As a result, Panasonic is going to have to learn how to present itself properly if it's going to get the better of, say, Sony. The former started its Sunday press conference with a canned question-and-answer session between two top executives in a seemingly desperate attempt to uphold the honor of their plasma displays (and eventually announcing two new HD video camcorders). Sony opened its event with violinist Joshua Bell.

The Consumer Electronics Show and Las Vegas are made for each other. They are both built out of flash and dazzle, and rest on a solid foundation of bullpucky that must reach all the way to the center of the earth. But they reach out their tentacles to ensnare your mind. Why else, a mere four hours after I got to town, would I wait in line with 500 other press people on a Saturday night to take a picture of an iPod in a plastic box with built-in speakers floating in a fish tank?

The year kicks off with two big tech events this week. All the latest electronic toys and gadgets are on display at CES 2007 in Las Vegas, and Apple Computer struts its stuff in San Francisco at the Macworld Conference & Expo. In past years, those two conferences saw the introduction of pretty much every electronic gadget in your house: The iPod, MacBook, iMac, Mac Pro, Mac Mini, VCR, and DVD -- all introduced at either CES or Macworld.

I've always been warned that CES would be chaotic, and it looks like they weren't kidding. On Saturday, at the opening of CES Unveiled, the first press event of CES, the line of journalists waiting to get their first glimpse of new tech (and their first free meal of the day) was down the hallway and around the corner. And this was before most of the attendees had shown up.

The Business Journal of Phoenix pun-ishes its readers with its CES coverage: "Taser International Inc. is hoping for a stunning debut appearance when it introduces its new personal protection device Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas."

Macworld takes a look at how vendors did fulfilling promises at last year's CES. The upshot: Microsoft mostly delivered on its promises for Vista and for the Xbox 360. On the other hand, big promises for Blu-ray and HD-DVD fizzled.

Vendors at CES 2007 will roll out electronics to spice up your wheels, including the next generation in iPod FM adapters, in-car high-definition streaming video, and technology to turn your rental car into a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Consumers concerned that HD DVD vs. Blu-ray will be the Betamax vs. VHS of the decade will get some relief from vendors at the 2007 International CES.

Power is the dirty secret of portable electronics. You unwrap your new mobile gadget, and it's sleek and sexy as Seven of Nine -- but it comes with a power-supply brick as ugly and lumpy as Neelix. And the battery supply has a lifespan as short as a tribble. Some vendors at 2007 International CES are looking to change that.