CES has Officially Kicked Off – Here Are the Highlights

Now that Steve Balmer has taken the stage CES can officially be considered underway! Even though the keynote marked the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the Notebooks.com team, along with GottaBeMobile have been in town looking for the coolest notebooks and electronics to share with you since Monday.

It was almost 24 hours ago that I made it into my hotel room and started sharing some of the new HP notebooks and netbooks that have been announced including one of my favorites the HP Mini 5102. After a short nap, which some of you might consider sleep; I joined up with Amy Zunk, Sumocat and Xavier to cover all of the new technology being announced as part of the show.

Personally, trying out the 3D HDTV from Samsung was a very cool moment and the Digital Experience event provided me with hands on time to a Novatel Mifi, Speck carrying case, Energizer Energi To Go, a Fujitsu color ebook reader and their cool new LifeBook UH900 Multi-Touch Mini-Notebook amongst many others. Amy Zunk and I have been recording videos of much of the new technology at the press events and Xavier has also been busy recording high quality video. In fact, I don’t recall seeing him without a video camera in his hands all day!

In addition to the Notebooks.com coverage Sumocat has been working alongside us on his tablet, looking for the cool news to share on GottaBeMobile including a liveblog of the Microsoft Steve Balmer Keynote.

Here are a few of the highlights so far from Press Day:

3D TV has arrived – No longer limited to movie theaters Samsung and Toshiba both announced new 3D HDTV sets that pack incredible power and can up-convert your 2D content including video games and home movies to 3D!

Steve Balmer briefly demoed the upcoming HP Slate using it as both an ebook reader and a video player running Windows 7.

MSI announced a 3D gaming notebook that will have you leaning to look around corners as you play through your favorite games in 3D.

NetGear announced Stora, a cloud storage device that offers 2 TB of online storage to consumers available to them on any device with an internet connection.

CES Day 1:

Forget finding the plug to charge your netbook a new adapter from Powermat will let you charge your netbook using a Powermat wirelessly – with a small cord. Not totally wireless but still convenient.

Intel announced a new line of Core processors that will speed up your computing as well as showed off the new AppUp Store, Digital home of the future and how an Intel powered concept device might control your home to shave dollars off your energy bill.

Best Buy announced the new Blue Label 2.0 notebooks which all include everything you need to wirelessly stream to your HDTV like Intel did at their keynote.

MSI announced new netbooks in the U series with new Intel Atom N450 processors and one with a cool chiclet style keypad.

MSI also showed us their dual-screen concept notebooks which use twin 10″ or twin 7″ displays.

Asus announced a Bring Your Own OS version of its new Eee PC 1201 series dubbed the 1201NL.

Fujitsu announced 8 new notebooks ranging from 5.6 inches up to 18.4 at several pricepoints.

TI-DLP showed off cell phones with integrated projectors and some new netbook companion projectors.

Xavier had, “the best gaming experience I’ve had on a truly mobile computer.” playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on the 11″ Alienware M11X.

Gateway announced new ultra portable models in its EC line of notebooks which stuff a DVD drive inside; something not too many ultra portable’s have.

There’s way more gadgets and notebooks to cover so stay tuned and we will update this post with new items and giveaways as CES presses on!