CES 2011: CES Winners and Losers

As Geeks everywhere head home from Las Vegas sporting CES swag including Monster Power Outlet’s to Go and about a dozen small USB sticks, the Vegas strip breaths a sign of relief as CES draws to a close. These Geeks know how to party with their laptops, er tablets!

So, when CES 2011 is in the books, who were the winners and who were the losers?

Of course Motorola Mobility provided CES with some of the hottest technology including the Xoom and the Atrix 4G phone/computer in a pocket. On the other hand, Verizon seriously disappointed with its keynote and had to invite other companies including Time Warner Cable, Motorola Mobility and Google to talk about anything innovative.

Another tablet winner, this time from Samsung, excited crowds as the device’s screen slides over the keyboard to look like a tablet but could also be used similar to a netbook. The VibaBody Slimmer, on the other hand, was the most joked upon gadget at the show. Seriously, you just stand on a vibrating platform to lose weight… right.

Another winner was “Honeycomb” which is Google’s upcoming tablet-optimized version of Android which was greeted with enthusiasm unlike the long and boring keynote speeches which provided very little flash substance and talked about larger technology trends.

3D technology without 3D glasses was a hit with the Nintendo 3DS and Toshiba sporting both TVs and Laptops with the new technology. While not flawless, the technology is cool enough to score a win while Casio Tryx just seemed lame. The Tryx is built for young picture-taking revelers and one of the features includes a built-in kickstand. Perhaps I’m just too old!

Finally, the new Intel Sandy Bridge chip is expected to fuel $125B PC sales with refreshes as this new chipset provides that jump in performance that most consumers look for before refreshing their computer inventory. VP Mooly Eden stated that Sandy Bridge “processor graphics is outperforming 40% to 50% of the discrete (stand-alone) graphics chips in the market today.” That’s hot. What’s not? Celebrity driven gadgets are on my naughty list from CES. Do you real want a T-Pain mic or Lady Gaga’s huge Polaroid camera that feels like you’re back in the 70s? I guess Polaroid missed the standard gadget trends of smaller is better.