CES Day 3 - It Was Suite

Today we spent more time in the suites of the Bellagio, Wynn, and the Mirage.  Although we did spend some quality time on the show floor, we spent more time in a few suits or riding in the Viewsonic Hummer and Lexus Hybrid.  A couple of interesting things we saw on the floor that are worth mentioning right away is the Titan.  This unit was perched over at CoolIT, and consisted of six (6) 8800GTS graphics cards and a Dual, Quad Core Xenon setup.  It was a wonder to behold and will be capable of multi-terraflop operations when it hits production.

We also saw a row of Blackbirds perched over at the HP booth.  These were available for playing your favourite games and while they don't have the raw computing power of the Titan, they are still powerful and look as sweet as they are fast.

Blackbirds

Corsair:

We popped up into the Corsair suite at the Wynn and got a tour of their products.  They didn't really announce anything super exciting at the show (officially), but they did show us their new 1000W PSU that should be available in March.  They are committed to their line of PSU's and demand better-than-the-competition performance and stability from them.  We will be getting some of these PSU units in the future and this will be really interesting to see how they compare to our growing PSU database.

RAM Lineup

PSU Lineup

ViewSonic:

Off to the Bellagio we ran and met up with ViewSonic.  Last year we met them in a small suite that was not setup for product displays and demos.  This year they rented a ballroom and we had tones of space to peruse their large lineup of products.  They were showcasing a 52" 1080p LCD TV as well as several smaller SKU's such as the 16" TV with HDTV Tuner and regular DVI-D and VGA inputs.  This little widescreen unit has a cult-like following with the RV crowd as it is both a very capable TV as well as a second computer monitor for hooking to a laptop while on the road.

42" LCD TV

Great Angle

Everyone and their mother seems to be into digital photo frames this year and ViewSonic has a lot of different ideas kicking around and in prototype stage.  They have everything from 32" frames to 8" frames with built-in thermal dye sublimation printers.

The one item that caught our eye was their new 1080p projector.  This unit is bigger than a portable Bar-B-Q.  It's ridiculously massive and apparently is fantastic.  It will have to be professionally installed due to its size.

Massive Projector

Axiom Audio:

We met with a Canadian company that specializes in loud speakers.  Axiom Audio invited us up to their suite in the Mirage.  They are a loudspeaker company that has recently branched out into high-end computer speakers.  While these aren't exactly geared for the gamer, they are geared for people with good taste and want to really enjoy the music on their computer.  A 2.0 set of these speakers starts from $349 shipped, but can cost as much as $738 if you order a subwoofer to make them 2.1.

Axiom  Audiobytes

While many may think these speakers are way overpriced, after spending almost an hour listening to them, our initial impression is that they are priced about right for the market they are geared toward.  These are not designed to sell to the Walmart discount-bin consumer.  They are marketed toward an audiophile that spends a fair bit of time at his or her computer and has an iPod or other media player handy.  These speakers have an mini stereo jack as well as a iPod dock connector for your convenience.  The AMP can handle either the Axiom Audio subwoofer or any subwoofer than has a straight line-out.

I have never been more impressed with the quality of sound coming from such a small set of speakers.  These were pretty incredible.

Thursday, we've got a bit of house cleaning to do around the LVCC Central hall, and won't be able to put up an update until the weekend.  Make sure you stay tuned as we wrap up our CES 2008 coverage then.  In the meantime, please check out the CES 2008 Gallery and our Daily CES Coverage section.