Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011 | 3:04 a.m.
New products from Pure, sure to amaze, and yet soothe, at the same time.
Mitsubishi's 3D DLP home cinema TV. A lot of visual overload with this baby.
A new LePad and IdeaPad U1 Hybrid from Lenovo. Party.
A paper shredder. Retro tech-ro.
Metaphorically speaking, paper communication is being shredded at CES.
Guy and Gadget Guy walk into CES Unveiled at The Venetian, the official press event debuting the most captivating electronic products from across the globe featured at the Consumer Electronics Show. Gadget Guy, who has coerced Guy to attend the session for the first time, sets the pace as they enter a ballroom packed with about 800 CES media reps of all ilk covering the annual convention …
Gadget Guy: “Oh, wow! I’m getting chills!”
Guy: “Me, too -- open bar!”
Gadget Guy: “No, look, over there …”
Guy: “I am looking! There is a full, open bar in the corner there, next to the band, and nobody in line? What’s going on?”
Gadget Guy: “You can’t text and drink. You shouldn’t tweet drunk. Know your audience, Guy.”
Guy: “Not a lot of eye contact happening. This doesn’t seem the place to, as the kids say, ‘hook up.’ ”
Gadget Guy: “You can hook up anywhere. There’s free Wi-Fi, power strips all over the place …”
Guy:“No, I mean, hook up, as in, romantically.”
Gadget Guy: “What?”
Guy: “Forget it. You were going to show me something.”
Gadget Guy: “Yeah! The Mitsubishi 3D DLP home cinema TV. It’s 82 inches!”
Guy: “I love it!”
Gadget Guy: “But you haven’t seen it yet!”
Guy: “Oh, I just like the idea of owning a ‘home cinema’ so I can charge my friends to watch stuff at my house. Enjoy the ‘home cinema’ experience of watching the NFC Divisional Playoffs, for only $15!”
Gadget Guy: “Here, try on the glasses. You’ll see that 3D is the most lifelike form of visual entertainment.”
Guy: “What I am seeing is Jack Black in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ looking a little larger than lifelike. And I am getting dizzy.”
Gadget Guy: “Great, ain’t it?”
Guy: “It’s fully immersive.”
Gadget Guy: “Great description!”
Guy: “I just overheard a guy from Mitsubishi say that.”
Gadget Guy: “For $4,500, you will never need another TV!”
Guy: “It’ll pay for itself in a month.”
Gadget Guy: “Oooh, what’s happening at Pure?”
Guy: “I’d love to know, but we are nowhere near Pure. Unless you’ve somehow spotted a computer-generated Pussycat Doll, at which point I will give this event my full endorsement.”
Gadget Guy: “No, Pure, the company from the U.K. that specializes in digital and Internet-connected radios.
Guy: “Would this be an inopportune time to mention that I still listen to CDs on a JVC boombox I bought in 1996? Which, of course, still cranks.”
Gadget Guy: “Pure has three new products out this year at CES, the Contour, ONE Flow and i-20. The Contour is an Internet-connected digital radio and media streamer with a retractable iPod and iPhone dock. The One Flow is a digital device that plays Internet radio. The i-20 is a digital iPod and iPhone dock that supports all the popular analog video formats. The video outputs allow you to view videos from iPods or iPhones on TV. Also, Pure is offering FlowSongs, which gives you the ability to hear a song playing on any FM or Internet station and buy it instantly. You can download these songs in an MP3 format to a PC or Mac, or upload them onto an iPod, or another MP3 player, whatever.”
Guy “You lost me at Contour, which I thought was a double-bladed razor. Hey, I hear this is the year of tablets at CES.”
Gadget Guy: “That’s right.”
Guy: “Are we talking, like, Moses?”
Gadget Guy: “Funny. No, like the iPad. Apple has sold 13 million iPads. A bunch of companies have announced, or are expected to announce, their own iPad-type tablets. Microsoft, LG, Hewlett Packard, Vizio are all here.”
Guy: “But, no Apple?”
Gadget Guy: “Doesn’t take part in these trade shows.”
Guy: “They don’t pack the Macs, eh? Hey, I have my own handheld communication implement right in my back pocket.”
Gadget Guy: “Oh? What is it?”
Guy: “I call it ‘NotePad.’ Haha!”
Gadget Guy: “Very cost-efficient. You see anything at all that you like here?”
Guy: “The Black & Decker booth.”
Gadget Guy “Black & Decker? Are you looking at ...”
Guy: “Paper shredders! Now, this model here is lightweight, balanced, and a little red light comes on when it’s overfed. And it’s only $99! This other one can make short work of 20 pieces of junk mail at once, credit cards, anything! Eighty bucks!”
Gadget Guy: “Yeah, but how’s it handle spam? I’m heading over to the Lenovo display. They’ve announced three new netbooks.”
Guy: “To each his own. I’m really still a pen-and-paper kind of guy, y’know?”
Gadget Guy: “Well, you can’t shred the fascination with gadgets, right?”
Guy: “We can agree on that.”
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats.
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