Having trouble finding space for speakers amidst the clutter on your desk? How about building them into the keyboard?

That's the theory behind TuneBoard, Verbatim's new product. The keyboard, which works with either Macs or PCs, features integrated dual stereo speakers that are angled towards the listener In addition, it includes a media console with seven multimedia keys for controlling iTunes or a Windows default music player.

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A little quality time with the Palm Pre (and some very happy, very tired Palm folk) reveals more of the details...but one crucial one goes unanswered.

It's still not released, which seems astonishing considering the amount of uproar the Palm Pre has caused since its unveiling Thursday morning.

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Never mind the tiny physical footprint of the Vaio P, if you ask Sony, they will tell you they have never made a netbook. If you ask me, however, I'll tell you they just did.

View images of the Sony Vaio P

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Eee, Adamo, Vaio P...None of them, it seems, have names that sound unlike yodels. But they're all catching on, as at long last, manufacturers may finally have found a low-cost functionality niche they can capitalize upon.

Three years ago at this time, Microsoft was urging more manufacturers to jump on-board a bandwagon named after paper folding, to sign on to a communal platform for small form-factor computing called UMPC. "What am I?" Microsoft literally asked, assuming the voice of "Origami," though to this day it never responded to its own question.

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Andy Parsons, who chairs promotions for the Blu-ray Disc Association, said during the Blu-ray press conference Thursday that only 21 Blu-ray titles included bonus features using BD-Live technology.

[ME's note: Correction made above to Mr. Parson's title.]

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If you go down the list of what you've been dazzled by so far from CES this week, just how many of those items have any association with the Windows Mobile operating system? Don't think we haven't noticed, either.

Let's be honest: What attendees expect to see from the Consumer Electronics Show every year is what's new -- what they hadn't seen before. If they wanted to know a status report of what's existing, or what's 30% further down the road than it was last month, they'd stay home and read Betanews.

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"Who would have thought three years ago that we'd be one of the top players in consumer electronics?" asked John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, a company barely heard of until lately outside of enterprise computing circles.

In a keynote speech this afternoon at CES, Chambers outlined how Cisco now plans to provide "connected homes" with network management and security, along with multimedia storage and distribution.

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This morning, Hewlett-Packard's elite division began direct sales of its two newest Firebird enthusiast desktop models, though the top-of-the-line edition sold out right away.

HP's Web site revealed complete specifications and, for the first time, prices for the two slim form-factor enthusiast desktop systems introduced at CES on Tuesday. The lower-end model 802, which features Intel's 2.66 GHz Core 2 Quad 9400 with dual Nvidia 9800S GPUs, is still selling for $1,800 as of Friday evening. However, HP has sold out of the model 803, with the 2.83 GHz Core 2 Quad 9550 and the same dual Nvidias, priced at $2,100.

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The headquarters of AsusTek Computer Inc., and Micro-Star International (MSI) are a mere 21 kilometers apart in Taiwan, and they seem as close as ever in the South hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Both companies are known for their motherboards, and both are bringing the consumer electronics market a product line with a heavy emphasis on a tiny physical and environmental footprint, Asus with Eee and MSI with Wind.

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A lively set of CES panelists tore into the current state of digital-rights management for movies, music and other content. Apple fans probably felt their ears burning for much of it.

You might expect that the announcement this week that Apple's dumping most DRM for iTunes-purchased tracks would have been the focus of much of "How Can Digital Rights Management Make Sense?" Not really. Ted Cohen, managing partner of TAG Strategies and a longtime music-industry figure, said, "Apple says jump and the labels say how high; they have been pretty monolithic in their approach to digital music. The quid-pro-quo was digital pricing; that 99-cents-one-size-fits-all doesn't work as well as you'd think." The labels have new artists that could benefit from lower per-track pricing; Apple's been catching real flak from users tired of DRM; this was, said Cohen, "a moment when both sides of the table had something to give."

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It is probably the story of this year's CES: A team that's down by several points, with time ticking away, coming back to within striking distance of winning the whole ball game.

That's Palm's circumstances this year at CES, as its Pre smartphone has clearly stolen the buzz in every topic of conversation. It's an important score, especially since Apple was perceived as not having a strong follow-up at Macworld this week, and since the other smartphone-related news from this year's show has not been major.

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