Gadgetory

hello everyone I am Hollywood welcome to Cena live at CES we're here on our scene at stage in the South Hall right above the Starbucks if you're watching this live on your phone somewhere in Vegas get over here we have a great audience out here and I'm very excited because right now we have Dan Ackerman and Scott Stein on stage for what we're now calling the laptop talk show are now annual our second Adam yes our second annual laptop talk show and the best thing about this is that the drool factor on our stage right now is extreme every kind of cool sexy gorgeous Ultrabook that you've been hearing about being announced at the show in blog form is here live on the stage you guys are basically just gonna run through them emcee and we'll see what sticks I feel like that will just take the sort of Ultrabook approach right yes this is a great Ultrabook showdown book shootout so let's talk a little bit about that category for the few people who don't know there may be people watching at home who having kind of I mean it's actually slightly it's hard it's hard to explain and getting harder to explain right what an ultrabook is yeah the categories have blurred a bit so before it was you know you it was like a MacBook Air you know you've got the flash storage it's thin 13-inch laptop but then you have 11 inches and now you have 14 and 15 inches and some of those have full hard drives no longer SSDs some of optical drives some have graphics what's the difference a lot of them are thinner and sexier kind of cooler they're gonna be running those new processors later in the year eventually time to Windows 8 so the revolution of laptops really well the real question for me is why ultrabooks why do you think Intel decide because Intel decided right let's create this category let's give it a name let's everybody get just behind a set of general principles cuz they got to create fads and the last kind of fad that they were behind was sort of the netbook we're gonna have those Intel Atom netbooks those sold well for a while but then they kind of tapered off they gotta come up with something else and you know the term ultra doesn't really mean anything it means like super thin they could have made me come up with something more descriptive but if they can get a fan going behind it everyone goes I want a MacBook Air but I wanted to run Windows then everybody gets behind it and makes it you know you can't buy a thick laptop anymore which is actually actually I don't know anybody who did get the memo I have one manufacturer in mind but it seems like you know we're seeing announcements or at least promises from almost anybody anyone who's not getting the memo about some people are a little later than others Dell for example has their first ultra book here this week even though everyone else has had them for a couple of months now at least we're getting into it I was in their booth yesterday thinking particularly Reagan Square yeah so is it about design what's that or what is the single most important factor in terms of the the product the value proposition for me the buyer what is it that makes an ultrabook something I need I think we're so spoiled by carrying things that are thin and light and easy to take with you to work to home to the coffee shop I think that's the key differentiator and maybe you want to look at price too because one of the things that you unless you're do something really super cool and you're gonna beat something like the MacBook Air if you can get a little under that price and offer something where you say wow for $8.99 I'm I'm beating it out on specs and there's some like that I think it's another thing to look to that was that was one of the problems of the first ultrabooks is that they were $12.99 $13.99 same times the MacBook Air we've it a little bit less but you can't make something that's just about as good as a MacBook Air and just about as extensive the thing for me to that I think has the most promise for consumers is the solid-state drives I think you know not everyone has had that it's that life-changing experience of realizing that when you open your laptop lid it wakes right up and you can start doing things immediately I feel like when people see that happen they realize that it means you can just have a laptop anywhere in the house open it up start going I mean I think there's a huge benefit while it's hard to make it more reliable you have let's movie parts the breakdown but Scott always points out that I like having a lot of storage and maybe I'm old-fashioned but you know sometimes you under store a lot of stuff so I appreciate the movement now that you see a lot of these ultra books that are going to the old-fashioned magnetic hard drives you're getting up to 500 gigabytes maybe even a terabyte I know it's maybe not waiting anymore so waiting i bridged a little bit SSD a little faster starting but yeah if you can if you can deal with the 128 or you want to pay for the 256 but yeah a lot of people can get a lot of stuff done on those and keep things on how long is it gonna be before those solid state drives start to come up and at affordable prices we'd like that should be happening waiting a couple years we were like a law about that working of Moore's law now I know maybe I feel like next year should be this year seems like 128 I'm hoping that next year will be maybe a 256 and this year you can get a 128 for like $7.99 one of these 13 Ultrabook right that's a pretty good price well and let's be honest you can get like a an external terabyte for sure 70 bucks these days you know or even not storage for a hundred bucks for its paradise the heck of I have been I've been okay with that and my little backup exactly yeah all right let's enough enough chatting enough philosophizing let's get to the pogroms and stuff let's get to the gadget porn all right what do we have we're gonna go kind of in order it looks like you've got three and Scott's got three I'm gonna start with the Dell XPS 13 now Dell was of course a little late to the Ultrabook party they took their time but they've got a 13-inch system right here that's part of that high-end XPS live you know it's super thin it's not quite as super fancy of some of the other ones but that's because it sort of meant to be that consumer business hybrid crossover system where you can get it and take it home but you can also ask your IT department together because they have an IT version with like a TPM chip and other stuff like that and it's got the rubberized bottom if you feel bad that's kind of cool yeah that's nice and it's super thin and what I like is the footprint is a little bit smaller than some of the other 13-inch ultrabooks it's closer to what you'd find a 12-inch screen system in so so it's a little bit it's a little bit more petite and still super thin I gotta say - right off the back I am really struck by the similarity to the MacBook Air they're just really they're not even pretending not to be making a MacBook Air clone it really looks like it and frankly I consider that a plus I think everyone stopped pretending and then the last couple my kinda - okay fine here it is it's you know it's the perfect size it's the perfect shape get it done nice machine and then we have something a little bit more extravagant yeah now something that does not look like a MacBook Air per se but no better timing with all the Gorilla Glass talked yes this is the HP Envy Spectre 14 and it is covered in glass this gorilla glass on the front it's on the back also on the palm rest and on the trackpad and it has a very I phone for type look on that profile on the lid and it's you see it's heavier it's heavier it's thicker it's heavy it's a 14-inch and so that's the beginning of the blurring of the line it's thinner than other envies though and it has the Beats Audio in that little audio analog wheel on the side like on the new envy revisions that came out in December and now a nice screen turn that back to the keyboard and it's expensive this is one of those top-end ones is $13.99 it's coming out February 8th and so this is kind of in that beginning to blur that line in the Ultrabook category it looks sleek I mean I've heard some people ask about the glass what's gonna happen if you are confident having glass on the back of your laptop layer I don't know if someone came out with a lance or something like a sharp object but I mean if you drop it that happens right he has an exciting life home joust a lot of jousting if I mean if I dropped it I'd be worried but honestly if you dropped any laptop there would be problems so I didn't know I haven't gone through like dropping laptops on the floor to find out but I mean it feels nice and sturdy and sleek and it's very different than the HP photo 13 there other ultrabook which is in that small business type category it's kind of the no-nonsense sensible one it's and it's also like $8.99 so it's right in that sort of you know a lot of specs for your for your bang for your buck category and this is that sleeker kind of a design I think it's a probably the single best looking laptop I figure this week it's really it comes with cotton gloves there you go it's gonna support NFC to action but yeah I know cool all right that's beautiful you mentioned our friends over at Toshiba I did it's like ready ready to buy just yet this is a 14 inch ultrabook prototype that they have so you'll see this later in the year hopefully and hopefully they'll look just like this and again it's got the bigger screen it's still pretty thin it's not as soon as those 13 inches but what they're trying to do is they're trying to say we can take that 13 inch Ultrabook and give it a 14 inch screen later almost even 15 inch screens and those become machines that you can use it were called a a 13 inch great for traveling great for that you know couple hours of the coffee shop airport lounge whatever but all day every day you're not gonna use a 13 you need a 14 or a 15 so once you get up to this size then you have something that's almost as thin and light that you actually just use as your full-time machine and that's what ultrabooks up until now I think our degree you have not been able to do I feel like I'm skeptical of that though the idea that you have to have a 14 or 15 inch machine to work on because oh then you got to get like a docking station and plug stuff in yes that's true I agree it's clunky it's a clunkier solution but it'll at least for me it allows me to have a tiny laptop that I don't know if it's I don't know necessarily where it's going to slide I'm left to see I think right now there's not also it maybe just go - everybody knows what the MacBook Air is doing and it's just as simple as that Apple doesn't have a type of product the moment that fits into that category so oh wait I don't you know what is that exactly and there definitely are people who want the keyboard I think is it probably that is in that reel this is a very Toshiba design sensibility that seems to be what they you know you have the differentiating cues right the HP Envy line very design century machines always have been really beautiful Toshiba it really does this brushed aluminum we've seen that on some of their tablets and some of their other laptops and then of course Dell just looking like a MacBook Air no one's one of the bigger older books and we also have one of the heavy smaller ultra books right here to go in the complete opposite direction yeah so the Acer Aspire s5 which had made a lot of waves 1011 flame a sir upped its game with this this says I mean I feel like with the samsung series nine last year this is kind of like inheriting that direction as opposed to the s3 that was last year that was a you know a little more in that grayish silver not a sexy this is I mean we're much more razor thin design 15 millimeters onyx black and it's got that this is the sports car feature of the show okay I love is that this is the magic flip port or you press the button here and it it's like a spoiler that comes up automatically pops up it reminds me of a DeLorean or something and then you have access to all the ports on the back including Thunderbolt this is going to be one of those next gen ultrabooks so so does that mean it seems like there's weird K genus around Ivy Bridge right didn't you say okay so it has Thunderbolt which means it must have Intel's Ivy Bridge right and then what happens um nobody wants to talk about it you say there's an Ivy Bridge laptop right in the gun is the chip we dare not speak its name right socially awkward they just walk away but it's a clear end up here it's a good thing I mean it's going I think the more you have thunderbolt in devices we talk about thunderbolt on on you know Apple products and how many peripherals you have but if it shows up across a ton of laptops I think you'll start seeing Thunderbolt peripherals that are kind of interesting yeah I love this sort of the curve and very samsung series 9 that's kind of curved closure there this is it feels good this little motorized thing here and that's how they get it so thin by hiding the ports and make it another mechanical part yeah that you know is they could get some continent or could read the more moving parts you had the more I get worried but Antony looks really cool yeah can you make it come down when the laptop is resting oh it does it brings it just sort of like apparently you see what happens I I've actually haven't seen this it's like this sport shocks Porsche Cayenne rising he'll raise it up you get a little clearance on your laptop there I don't know if everybody wants rear ports but maybe I'm wondering that's in the future for something like a dock I'm just guessing yeah but I you know some people do like to tuck that so we have a nice close up here it's totally not gonna do that with that but that's one of the one away not gonna be out until later in the year maybe with Windows 8 I don't know obviously with whatever the current generation at the time of Intel chips so a lot of the ultrabooks that we're seeing are things you won't be able to get right away they're gonna like second half of the year but not really a specified release date and some of them are right now which leads to Scott's excellent point that you know which altra books are the ultra books and and what exactly do you find the define them is I mean I think you've got the first generation and I think you're also seeing some of these laptops are a continuation of that first generation but it seems like by the end of the year you're already gonna get that second generation right so you're it's gonna kind of be a bleeding edge and some of the ones we're seeing here are kind of like first gen plus and other ones or second gen that everyone's not telling the full details something that's coming out soon but you know that ivory between Windows 8 are coming right out of date in six months yeah and yeah it's kind of the days like February 8th and then some of them are like towards the end of the year and now Microsoft tried to mitigate mitigate that a little bit at least if they're keynote they sent all of these devices that you see here are gonna be upgradeable to Windows they would nobody really right Intel though I felt like at least in their press conference they were helping nobody out they were just like everything good is happening at the end of 2012 maybe later yeah if you trailer if you're Dell right and you've got this coming out near the HP you're thinking like thanks a lot solution for you the problem is answered just by one now and then also by one later right they would like you to do stuff you know are they're gonna redesign some of the ultra books in the future to be a little more touch compliant gesture-based is that gonna manifest and will change designs a little bit touch ultra books yeah if only we had one here had one right here and this is probably one of the more buzz about products of the show this is the Lenovo IdeaPad yoga and of course idea pad is Lenovo's consumer product line and they actually do some really interesting creative stuff there you may be used to like think pants which are very kind of button-down and sort of businesslike but I really like the idea pads and as you can see this guy's already we're running Windows 8 right and there's a kind of funny type system that we have here looks like a laptop ok and you know what we've seen convertible laptops they turn into tablets the screen swivels around and folds down this guy you take the screen you fold it bad you keep folding you keep folding you keep all is hard to watch right because you just think you see that hinge breaking but it's the first time you open its ok and there it is right ok now I've got myself into fruit and engine I don't know how that happened but you can hold it like this like a tablet and then you if you're worried about the keyboard when you fold it in the keyboard the activates so you're not gonna hit any of these by doing that you just get all the on-screen stuff here give that a feel ok that's heavy also so that's your touchscreen that T I'm gonna no this is too distracting I don't want to play but that's not it can also do it can have other configurations I don't know why you would ever do this yeah yeah if you have like a little like narrow edge of your table you want to display like photos or something I don't know I'll nd I know exactly why recipes in the kitchen yes or this kind of like this mode this sort of what makes it like an all-in-one where you can kind of stand it up like that that's nice to either of them yards for you keyboard and sort of set it up like that that is very nice you're right yeah I mean convertible laptops always come off a bit gimmick you know although this one definitely seems to have potential for a variety of situations that center hinge that rotates it's like a weak point so here you just have to regular hinges so it's not gonna wobble back and forth and the thing that I think is probably the most interesting sort of design element is if you look right here there's a little bit of a leathery cover here over the palm rest it's just ever so slightly higher than the keys so when you put it down like this the keys don't actually touch the surface they're not gonna get scratched out they're not gonna get scuffed and they're I can accidentally get hit this is another one of the ultra books that's not gonna be out too later in the year as you can tell it has Windows 8 on it so we're gonna have to wait for that but and how confident are you in this one because we've seen some IdeaPad issues this this feels awfully sad I believe this I mean yeah this feels you know very functional yeah those are functional feels very real from looking at it as far as whether this type of idea takes off that's a question but it seems like Windows 8 if it's ever going to be a time to have that convertible tablet laptop that we keep seeing I feel like for years maybe Windows 8 and that and that UI that's finally more touch friendly like it's time to go we've been testing in their viewing windows tablets for years before the iPad came out and nobody was ever really able to make them work right now the windows interface just wasn't built for it now with Windows 8 at least I have the possibility that they have kind of a touch friendly interface that people will be able to get into and the hardware will work with now I am a believer in touchscreen laptops and I would be surprised if these ultrabooks and Windows 8 ended up leapfrogging Apple in that department what do you think they're gonna do see a touchscreen laptop coming from them anytime soon that's a good point I don't know the answer is continually no but the answer has been no on them on many fronts for products I am something a lot like iOS or certainly can it feels like they're moving in a direction where they could get there they already had that multi-touch interface and gesture interface built in and they keep experimenting I feel with bridging the gap between that and the language of the iPad they're different but I I feel like it's it seems like it's on but we beyond way to happen now my touch pads have been training people to use gestures in touch for years right and they just have to take that indoctrination they've been doing and transfer it up here I was using a MacBook Pro a couple weeks ago and I use my iPad a lot and I found myself absent mindedly just reaching up and trying to spoil my fingers I was like wait a minute that doesn't work like that my son does it all the time he's you know he's super attune to the iPad usage and every time he comes to my laptop he just starts pushing the but it that has become sort of a natural human interface motion especially with a small laptop you don't have the gorilla arm problem right like it's got a fuse at some point I mean it just seems like iOS and OS 10 are getting to that point maybe it's OS 11 you know is that juncture point and I feel like Windows 8 is already seeing that and see you know saying like let's just start getting that fusion going because the devices are gonna start bleeding hi it's surprising that they might get there first considering the Apple push behind touch screens yeah so it's interesting that we didn't plan it this way but all the laptops on our laptop talkshow are ultrabooks and that shows you that I think this is getting to be the super mainstream and I think by the end of the year if your laptop is not this thin you're just not gonna be in the game you're gonna be miserable is what you're gonna be like why am I the only one here with a backache you know we talked about the most important trend among ultra books which is the rise of the dusty pink color that's clear an orange red rose gold ultrabooks I noticed the ACE is so predictable x20 Wyman they and I feel like I'm Samsung Series nine has one that's all bejeweled as well they have but they also have that kind of yes Lee that is very elegant I really like that a lot and that's when they came out a couple months ago it's never anything new about it except for the color but right that counts for a lot Oh see that's like too far it looks flesh colored there I don't like that looks flesh colored yeah I look at their skin under there I don't know it puts the new flesh but the rose gold on the back is really pretty I like that yeah ooh I got better all right so this is an existing product that has now been renewed color if you will well these are silver maybe that's the next step you get all candy colored Ultrabook you know our editor-in-chief Lindsay Turrentine actually has been saying that that she is hoping that we will actually see a little bit more on the floor that that's an area of customizations a lot of conservatism is a lot of you know right now people do it with cases and black everything else is like shades of gunmetal I know Rosa is really standing out all right guys thank you very much for the parade of laptops we will of course be back next year with another edition of the laptop talk show and I'm pretty excited stay right here though because coming up Brian Cooley is taking the stage to talk in depth with a buyer that is a big part of this show that we often don't talk about that that electronics buyers come here to make long-term purchases for their stores so we have one of those buyers on stage I think it's going to be a really interesting conversation a lot of times we only frame CES in terms of what the media is interested in but this is going to be a great look at in fact what what the other function basically of CES the other function that show floor that's coming up fitty cent is gonna be on our stage at two o'clock and then we're continuing the celebrity parade with our women and tech panel at five o'clock we have Marissa Meyer from Google Padma warrior from Cisco and then we also have Caterina fake who is the co-founder of Flickr and a founder of plunge it's going to be a jam-packed day right here at the stage don't go anywhere either on the live stream or you know keep your butt's on our comfy seats we'll see a little bit