CES 2007 Wrap-Up: Best of the Show

I'm headed out of Vegas at last, with blistered feet and down-right exhausted. But while I'm not hitting the show floor for yet another day, this gives me time to reflect on the best that CES 2007 had to offer.

As with every CES, televisions were the biggest news, with Sharp's 108-inch LCD now reigning as the undisputed largest flat-panel display ever made. Prices are plummeting as discount manufacturers get in on the game, and many of their sets are surprisingly handsome, too (at least on the show floor). But as I noted earlier, size is no longer the most critical facet of a television, as focus shifts toward ultra-high-resolution televisions and wireless transmission of high-res content.

Speaking of high-res content, two new approaches to soothing wounds in the format war of high-definition DVD were introduced, with LG's Super Multi Blue player and Warner Brothers' Total Hi-Def Disc both taking innovative solutions to the problem. Are these solid solutions or just Band-Aids on the wound? We'll see in 2007.

Windows Vista was everywhere, with Microsoft owning an enormous booth showing off everything from Office 2007 to Zune connectivity through Vista. One of the more interesting Vista technologies is Windows Home Server, which will offer average users a plug-and-play way to back up files and store data centrally.

Speaking of Zune, it's already got serious competition in the wireless MP3 player market. The SanDisk Sansa Connect can download songs from Internet music services and share them with other subscribers. Outside of the Apple iPhone, it's probably the most talked-about product at the show.

Ultra-portable notebooks are really starting to show promise. Many vendors are entering this space with new products or updated ones with substantial power upgrades.

Of course, there were thousands of smaller, sexier, and stranger products on display. Check our full CES coverage for additional posts, and watch the coming weeks as we digest some of the products we didn't get a chance to write about during the show itself.