CES 2010: The Worst CES Experience I’ve Ever Had

CES: it’s the geek Mecca. This year, for me, it was a train-wrecka (har har!). Join me on my journey of unpacking the frustrations and tribulations of a CES I’d rather forget. I need some catharsis from the five days I spent in Vegas, so this is more for me than you, but perhaps you’ll find it entertaining in a “driving past a car wreck” sort of way.

When I went to CES 2009, I posted quite a few videos of what I saw there. Producing those videos in 1080p h.264 on my Dell XPS M1330 took a long time, so on December 9th I placed an order for a pimped-out Core i7-based Dell Studio 17. Plenty of time before CES, right? Wrong. Despite calling in a favour with a contact I have in Dell’s CTO office, as of December 30th I still didn’t have the laptop – the estimated ship date was January 8th, three days after I left for CES. Switching to plan “B”, I went out and purchased an HP dv7, a $2000 Core i7-based laptop with a 17.3″ screen and a weight of seven pounds. I was planning on bringing this beast of a laptop with me to CES to leave in my hotel room for video production, and I’d carry a netbook me me for day to day CES reporting. Then I started to hear about the security restrictions after the December 25th “underwear bomber” was foiled, and my already rocky start to CES prep got worse. Continue reading CES 2010: The Worst CES Experience I’ve Ever Had

Hello From Las Vegas

p1020054

In Las Vegas for CES 2009. Feet are sore. Too tired to type in complete sentences. Wore a pedometre today, walked 12,888 steps. Might not seem like a lot, but my feet are yelling at me. So tired. Hardly slept at all last night, woke up at 5:15 AM to fly to Vegas. Staying at the Wynn Encore. Got great coupon, only $20 more than staying at the Sahara. Wynn Encore is nice, but like all Vegas hotels it takes 20 minutes of walking to get anywhere, all routed through the casinos. Staying in Vegas for the longest time ever for CES: five days, leaving Sunday. Seems like an eternity already. Did Pepcom Digital Experience tonight, brought video camera, didn’t use it as much as I should have. Going to sleep now…