With an estimated 140,000 industry professionals coming to Vegas for CES there is no doubt that it can get a little crazy. As a member of the press especially we find ourselves running from booth to booth and even going from hotel to hotel for meetings. If you have never been to Vegas the only thing I can say is that no matter how close everything looks together, EVERYTHING is a long walk. With all of that walking not only are you left hungry, but also with very little time to find something to eat. As our resident fat guy, I decided to talk about a few of the places I have found over the past few years that have made my food experience at CES a little easier.

It woudn't be a trade show without some of the company's hiring models and local women to help attract a little more attention to their booths. You can call it whatever you want but when you are fighting for attention from 140,000 visiters to CES, any advantage helps. While covering the show, we tried to get a few photos to give you an idea of what we saw, good and bad. Let me introduce you to the wonderful Booth Babes of CES 2011.

There's certainly quite a bit to take in during the four days of the International Consumer Electronics show. With thousands of exhibitors and hundred thousands in attendance, a lot of opinions leave the convention center. Hopefully we've aided in your quest to sift through all that information, and now we are proud to give you our thoughts on the best and the worst we, as gamers, saw during CES 2011.

Everyone knows that CES is filled with cool gadgets and electronics, tons of booth babes, and cool swag. What you may not know is you can also spot a whole collection of hot cars if you walk the floor enough. This year we set out to capture as many as we could as we wondered around. We saw everything from modded to stock and from both foreign and domestic manufactures. CES is nothing short of a car show with the cars spread out.

So with all 5 of your writers wandering around the show floor there was bound to be some free stuff that we picked up. Here is a pick of all of the stuff that we picked up. 

Turn three gamers loose at CES 2011, and among the plethora of hardware and software booths, naturally we will be drawn to anything and everything related to video games. Sunday was the final day of the Consumer Electronics Show 2011, as Cory, Skyler, and myself hit the floor for some free coverage. Having little time for games the past four days resulted in a thorough scouring of the convention center for demos, trailers, and announcements.

A company that many of you may have not heard about, Fractal Design, invited me to their suite at the Venetian for a private showing of their products. Fractal Design is a Swedish company that focuses on unique and innovative cases. They are not the craziest cases but with growing older I have strayed away from really flashy cases with fans everywhere and crazy lights all over. I for one like a sleek case with a sleek, sexy exterior. With Fractal Design it’s all about clean, sexy lines and useful features that you never knew you needed.

LG this year was showing off their expansive line up of TVs, mobile devices, and smart home appliances. Among the mix is this impresive 84" Ultra Definition 3DTV.  Using a 4K panel display and passive 3D glasses, its display is nothing short of perfection.

Earlier in the week we made it to the Corsair press conference and I wrote about what they introduced at the press conference. I did also have a booth tour scheduled to get a closer look at their new products, a much better look than we saw in the press conference. We took a look at their headphone and speaker offerings and spent a lot of time checking out what Corsair Link is capable of. Click below to read more about it.

I couldn’t visit CES without dropping by the Playseat’s booth to drool over their products and to see if they had anything new or upcoming to offer. I know Cory fell in love with the PlaySeat office chair that I have been drooling over for two years now. With it available now the real question is who will be the first to get one! I did track down Justin, our friend at Playseats and he was able to give me a quick look at a few more things.

We met Kim Rom, Chief Marketing Office of SteelSeries and avid professional gamer in the SteelSeries suite to talk about the latest from the pro gaming gear giant. SteelSeries is a company dedicated to fulfilling the needs of gamers, particularly the professional players, and one of the few that maintain a solid reputation for being the best. Kim has a strong background in gaming, a trait that translates very well for the company.

My days at CES are almost all filled with meetings that have been running all over the strip from hotel to hotel making my time at the convention itself is limited to the last day. That means that if I want to see most of the show I have to almost run as I go through the LVCC. Almost nothing can make me break my focus as I run through on Sunday but I did run by a book that caught my eye and pulled me in. A company called Atlantic was showing off their home organization and gaming solutions.

My visit to the Mushkin suite was more about reconnecting and discussing the future more than covering what is new but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have anything new to show off. I did get to take a look at their latest power supply variations and a few of their Ridgeback DDR3 kits.

After our meeting with Cooler Master Adam ran off to his next meeting at the LVCC and I made my way up to talk with the nice folks at Patriot about what they are working on. Our meeting was informal and quick because I needed to run to eat; my last meal was yesterday before meeting with Gigabyte. Mary over at Patriot was nice enough to give me a cookie and a muffin to hold me off though, thanks Mary!!

Ricky was nice enough to have me over to their suite to show me their new products and returning products for 2011. The more and more I see with boutique builders, the more it’s growing on me. For someone that doesn’t want to go through the hassle of picking out parts, this is the way to go. Plus it’s always good to see what kind of “Monster” computer they can come up with.

 

 

Westinghouse, although not decked out with features, will blow your socks off with exceptional quality for a budget price. Just about all of their line up of TVs is 1080p at 120Hz refresh rate, bringing you the clarity you desire.

Xi3 may not have a wide variety of products available, but the product they do have is a specific design, one aimed at improving on the traditional computer. Xi3 is actually a formula representing Variable, Information, and Cubed. Seeking a little more information, we headed to their booth on South Hall.

The definition of concurrent is happening at the same time as something else. When such a thing as a Dual-band Wireless N router came about we knew the possibilities and got one. The problem was that the secondary band is well under the 300Mbps specifications. Introducing the first true wireless 450Mbps concurrent Dual-band router from TRENDnet; The TEW-692GR will be the envy for all wireless gamers.

On Friday morning I was up early for a private showing at the Bellagio. Normally you wouldn’t think of DVD/Blu-Ray drives of being something that you would really talk about. We very rarely use our drives anymore. Loading Windows or ripping a DVD is about all I use my drive for. The thing is, when I had my netbook and it didn’t have a drive I felt like I was missing out on something. Along with installing Windows, ripping your DVD’s, Blu-Ray and CD’s there is not much else we can do with them.