CES 2004: Photo Gallery

By Daniel Dern

January 19, 2004

(CES 2004: Photo Gallery :  Page 1 of 1 )

After the past few years of increasingly smaller, glummer trade shows, CES 2004 was a refreshing megadose of cyber-deja vu: a crowded, even over-crowded trade show. I had the sense I was walking through the Best Buy store of tomorrow (or, sometimes, trapped in the world's largest and noisiest boom box).

"Consumer Electronics" takes in a lot of turf, everything from handheld, notebook and desktop computers twhopping-big plasma TVs, tiny MP3 players, toothbrushes, sterestands, and shades-of-a-country-fair multipurpose juicers. Including lots of ultra-high-end TV/stereo stuff, jarring in the face of a year or two of cries of "sorry, no IT budget" from business—what, no money for business infrastructure, but millions for home entertainment centers? I guess so.

As usual, there was lots of stuff that looked/sounded great, lots I'd happily take for free (if I had the room to put it and the time to use it), and some that seemed useful and fairly priced that I could relate to. Here's some of what I saw; how well these things actually work, only time and trial will tell.

ZyXel's ZyAir's B-4000 Turn-key Hotspot Gateway bundles a WiFi Access Point with a small printer for $649, intended for setting up hot spots at libraries, Internet cafes, coffeehouses, etc.—the printer, and billing/receipting software, lets you generate and sell on-the-fly account access, printing out a username and password set, and the number of minutes it's good for (presumably you can either sell access or give it away).

Also, ZyXel had a tiny WiFi USB module—other vendors have these too, I'm sure.

Did you know that your WiFi-enabled devices can communicate peer-to-peer, without an Access Point? BYTE.com > Features > 2004