Articles about CES 2016

Dell has announced an expanded lineup of Latitude laptops, 2-in-1 devices and monitors at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. The new Latitude products are: Latitude 13 7000, Latitude 12 7000 and Latitude 11 5000.

The Latitude 3000, 5000 and 7000 Series have been completely refreshed with thin and light designs, excellent efficiency and powerful processing options.

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While Wi-Fi is ubiquitous nowadays, it is still a miraculous technology. If you grew up with it, you may take it for granted. Me? My early computing involved chatting on IRC using unreliable dial-up connections. Connecting to the Internet without wires is magic as far as I am concerned.

The technologies behind Wi-Fi and networking has improved dramatically throughout the years -- faster, longer range and, more reliable. If you just bought an 802.11ac router, please know that it is no longer cutting-edge. Why? Well, today, TP-LINK announces the Talon AD7200 -- the world's first 802.11ad Multi-band Wi-Fi Router, and with eight antennas, it looks absolutely wild. It offers a mind-boggling 4.6Gbps using 60GHz bands!

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USB is one of the most important inventions in the history of computing. You young folks don't know how good you have it -- before USB, installing hardware was a huge headache. Over time, the standard has become faster and ubiquitous, but always had one huge issue -- knowing which way to connect it! A rectangle is a stupid port design; that was one way the now-dead FireWire was superior.

The invention of USB Type-C, however, remedied that large user pain point. This new connector can now be inserted in any direction, making USB even better. Some companies, like Google and Apple, were early to adopt it, but now, it is starting to explode in popularity. Today, Toshiba announces some good-looking USB Type-C drives, with its new Canvio Premium HDD and the TransMemory EX Dual flash drive.

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Whole-home audio has become popular recently thanks to products like Sonos making it easy. In the old days speaker wires had to be fished through walls, but those days of cables and intense labor are gone. Now it can be done via a wireless means and almost everyone has a home network -- something else that was once the domain of geeks and experts.

Now one of the top-tier makers of home audio equipment is getting in on the act as Harman Kardon announces its newest offering at the Consumer Electronics Show taking place this week in Las Vegas.

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Most people may not know this, but Intel is no stranger to the smartphone world. It develops mobile processors that power a wide range of Android devices, like ASUS' ZenFone 2 line. But the company is not stopping there as at CES 2016, it just unveiled a smartphone equipped with a RealSense camera.

Virtually every smartphone has cameras on the front and rear, so what makes Intel's device special? Well, the RealSense camera allows the handset to recognize 3D objects and gestures, similar to Microsoft's Kinect.

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Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has revealed his company’s entry into the burgeoning drone market during a keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Yuneec's Typhoon H drone utilizes Intel’s RealSense camera and infrared lasers to instinctively avoid collisions, making it the world’s first "intelligent consumer drone" according to Krzanich.

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Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced new details today at CES 2016 in Las Vegas regarding the button-sized wearable hardware module, Curie. The Intel Curie module features 32-bit Intel Quark SE SoC, (system on a Chip) and runs for extended periods on a coin-sized battery.

Intel unveiled the Curie SoC module a year ago, and demonstrated it through a partnership with BMX to develop the first smart BMX bike. Curie was able to measure through sensors on the seat and handlebars of the bike the speed and movement metrics. However, now the button sized SoC module is being used on athletic sports clothing to bring the same analytical capabilities to all athletes. "We believe it will change how athletes are judged, how they train", Krzanich said.

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Amazon Echo continues to add features of all sorts. There's now integration with IFTTT, sports news and a growing number of home automation capabilities. The latest company to announce its plans with the Amazon device is Nexia.

The company is unveiling its latest products and integrations this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

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In 2015, AMD owned the PC gaming world. Its brilliant cards were not only powerful, but reasonably priced too. Hell, they were downright beautiful; the Fury X and R9 Nano specifically, were engineering marvels and works of art.

My favorite trend of the year, however, was the acceptance of AMD's FreeSync technology -- which reduces lag and tearing -- by monitor manufacturers. Unlike Nvidia's G-SYNC, it is an open technology, and better for both consumers and the gaming industry alike. Today, Samsung announces three curved gaming monitors that all feature AMD FreeSync over HDMI.

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The economy may be better for some, but for many, it is still bad, leading to downsized homes or moving in with relatives. Of course, this means smaller work spaces; the idea of having a dedicated computer room with large desk and PC is slowly disappearing. While consumers' bank accounts continue to shrink, luckily, so too do computers.

The Intel Compute Stick, for instance, takes up very little space, while historically being affordable too. Unfortunately, even though the tiny stick could run full Windows, it was a bit under-powered. Today, however, this changes. The Compute Stick receives a Skylake Core M processor refresh, making it a much more powerful -- and expensive -- affair. For more conservative budgets, however, Intel announces an upgraded Atom model too.

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This morning I asked someone stomping around the Consumer Electronics Show: "Will your team survive CES? Will anyone?" She answered: "Survival rates still TBD". True that. Today is officially Day 1, but that's a meaningless designation. Major announcements started Day -1, and there were even more on what I call Day 0 because the opening keynote is that evening. Acer shot its wad on January 4th, for example. The 5th brought major announcements from Casio, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, and, among many, many, many, many more vendors.

CES is such a cacophony of product announcements early is the only way to assure news coverage. Hehe, if any. With so many of vendor mini-events already completed, one could contend that the Consumer Electronics Show is over before the first day ends.

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At CES 2016, NVIDIA has announced the release of its Drive PX2 which is the company’s latest offering in the autonomous vehicle hardware market. NVIDIA hopes that the Drive PX2 will provide the ability to train, optimize and develop the neural networks which will be the foundation of self-driving cars in the future.

Several earlier NVIDIA components combine to form the Drive PX2 such as DIGITS and DriveWorks. However, Drive PX 2 hardware is also the successor to the Tegra-powered Drive PX released last year with the new Drive PX 2 representing  a major computational power jump with 12 CPU cores and two discrete "Pascal"-based GPUs.

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Here's the deal, folks; I eat meat. Cows, fish, chickens, lamb -- I do not discriminate. With that said, me having to kill these poor creatures would break my heart. Does it make me a hypocrite that I can eat something, while simultaneously caring for it? Probably. Unless my life depended on it, however, I could never hunt. That is not an attack on hunters -- if you eat what you kill, more power to you.

While I understand the need to hunt for food, I do frown on enjoying the kill. So I am a bit upset by the Bracketron Xventure hunting mounts. These products let you mount an iPhone or other camera on your rifle or bow so you can record video of your kill. Why does this upset me? Well, I struggle to understand someone actually wanting to replay and relive the memory of taking an animal's life. Am I off-base here?

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Hey, bro -- ready to do some extreme sports? Yeah, me too. I'm about to do some naked skydiving and then surf during a hurricane. Of course, I will capture all of my gnarly adventures with my camera, so I can show-off how extreme my life is on social media, bro.

Obviously, I am joking, dear BetaNews readers. As you know by now, the most extreme I get is getting a venti blonde roast from Starbucks rather than a tall. Still, despite my boring life, I like rugged technology. This is especially true when it comes to backing up files. My family photos are precious to me -- the more durable the storage drive, the better. Today, Sandisk announces such a hardcore external drive -- the Extreme 510 Portable SSD.

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Fitbit's stock has taken a dive after the company announced a smartwatch at CES 2016, sending shares from $30.21 at the stock market's opening yesterday, to just $23.73 at the time of writing this article. It would seem that investors were not too keen on Fitbit going after the likes of Apple Watch with its upcoming Blaze.

Fitbit is focused on fitness trackers, and is actually the largest vendor in the wearables market, having shipped 4.7 million units in Q3 2015. The smartwatch market is dominated by Apple Watch; although there are no official sales numbers, IDC says that Apple sold 3.9 million units in the same time frame.

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