CES is Over-rated

1. It's the king of tech shows and yet the king of tech toys is, once again, a no-show: Apple!

2. The major product announcements that come out of CES are actually pre-announced before the show, so there are never any big surprises.

3. Products get announced and then we never actually see them again. Anyone remember that HP Slate that Ballmer showed off last year?

4. Products get announced long before they are ready to be launched, just to make sure they are shown at CES. By the time they come out in the second half of the year (or even later), we've forgotten all about them.

5. Speaking of Steve Ballmer; why does he still give the opening keynote? When you think visionary, when you ask yourself who are the real game changers in tech these days; does Microsoft really come to mind anymore?

6. CES has a credibility gap with me. It over-hypes trends for a week of interesting headlines and then, lo and behold, the trend tends to not pan out the rest of the year. Last year, 3-D television for the home was the big trend to watch in 2010.

ARM in talks with Google

Arm is apparently in talks with search engine Google to replace the Intel Atom chips on its Google television with something more armful.

Brown said Arm latest processors are less expensive and require less power than Intel's Atom processor. "If Google TV is to be mainstream, it must be built on a lower power system... on lower cost technology," he said.

Toys r US nebtook

Toys R Us appears to be selling a 7″ $139 Sylvania tablet running Android 2.1.  You may want to be cautious of this one though as the ad is a little misleading.

It says “thousands of apps available” but we all know this thing won’t have the market on it.  Google has only approved the Galaxy Tab running Android 2.2 for market access, so unless you plan on side-loading everything, think again.  Oh, and it also says that it includes “Flash”, but we’re pretty sure that almost any version of 2.1 especially Sylvania’s hackjobbed one isn’t going to run Flash on anything.