Three Gadgets from CES You Will Hardly Want to Pay for
by
on January 09, 2009,
Of course the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that is currently underway in Las Vegas is something very close to the notion of heaven to any real geek with dozens upon dozens of shiny new gadgets and miraculous devices introduced by exhibitors and discussed in mainstream media and the blogosphere throughout the events and for weeks after it is closed. But this year’s CES was supposed to be different as all trade shows now have to think more about trade, actual deals that are supposed to happen instead of just entertaining the visitors.
True, we have only officially been in the recession for a few months now but many people have already been hit by the financial crisis with many more anticipating to experience it fully - and pretty soon at that. So of course it is no wonder that our perception of many things has already been changed a lot with people often thinking of practical value for just about anything - be it a new startup launched or a new gadget introduced to the market. So it is no wonder that the tone of our reviews often changes when we speak about new things as we try to see how a web application will generate money and how a gadget will be actually useful and how it will hopefully enable its owner to cut some costs - be it with lower energy consumption or with use of recycled materials.
But while consumers have already grown to be more critical when viewing the new gadgets, the manufacturers obviously could not adapt to the changed attitude this quickly - hence they still launch things that can make us wonder why the manufacturers believe anyone will buy their products now, in the middle of the heavy financial crisis. And CES was no exception: I have found three gadgets introduced at the show that seem not to offer enough value for the money they cost and wanted to share them with you here. To me these ones certainly don’t look like worth spending your money on in these hard times.
Half-keyboard - half-laptop
Asus Eee Keyboard is not exactly a keyboard - it is a keyboard with a built-in computer. And the computer is not that bad as it includes WiFi, Ethernet, speaker, microphone, and 5-inch interactive display and touch mini screen on the right side where we usually expect to see the numeric keyboard. It can be connected to existing displays so you can drag it between places where you happen to have displays available and waiting for you to plug your 2-pounds keyboard in to do some work.
In fact, it looks like half of a laptop to me but Asus actually positions it as a multimedia center where the keyboard is intended to be connected (possibly via a wireless connection) to your home TV. So you are probably not supposed to carry it around a lot after setting it in your living room.
But still this device looks like they took a laptop and cut half of it so it is pretty ridiculous. And while the price have not been confirmed by Asus yet, I have a feeling this one will be pretty expensive, I suspect it will be more expensive than your typical $300 TV topbox like TiVo. Besides, anyone who knows how to type really fast will know that a keyboard is the part of the computer that you have to replace the most frequently so this is another disadvantage that I see here - unless it is not even intended to type with it. So no, this looks amazing but it is too strange device to buy one.
Sewing machine for $9,000
This is something of a paradox to me: Brother introduced its Quattro 6000D sewing machine at CES. I myself have not sewed for at least 10 years now, probably since the last housekeeping class back at school so I certainly would not want to judge the performance and specifications of this sewing machine - I suspect both are perfect. And I can assure you that Brother Quattro does look way much better than the machine that I still have at home with its 50 square inch workspace, the 4.5 x 7-inch Sharp HD LCD and 3 USB ports. I have no idea why a sewing machine may need USB ports at all, probably to upload some patterns from flash drives, but I am quite disappointed my laptop only has 2 USB ports and I’m quite fine with this number - often having both of them free.
So of course there’s no doubt it looks amazing and it can be described as a spaceship in the world of sewing machines but I still can hardly imagine how much you are supposed to make sewing to be able to afford a $9,000 machine to work on. After all, the vast majority of people making all their money online I know still use laptops that are much cheaper than this sewing machine.
Picture frame for $1,000
A new OLED picture frame by Kodak is a pretty interesting device: despite being called a picture frame, it also features HD video playback and the quality is told to be great - be it for pictures or for video. And while this new gadget may look pretty appealing and may actually be something many geeks will want to have at home, the price of $1,000 sounds like way too much to pay for a photo frame - even as great as this one is.
So feel free to think of me as an old-fashioned boring non-geek who just does not know anything about gadgets but I feel like right now wasting a thousand dollars on a picture frame is not supposed to sound exactly reasonable to many. So the majority of manufacturers will probably have to rethink their R&D strategies to see if they can offer something shiny and new on condition that this shiny thing will also offer adequate value for its price instead of scaring people away as soon as we see the price tag.
