CES 2006 Main Show Floor

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CES 2006 Main Show Floor - Part I

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Bradford Day
Kurtis

Jan. 12, 2006

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Creative

Creative was hosting the heavily market "celebrity" gamer, Fatal1ty. More and more gamer-specific products seem to be popping up with his face on them. Creative Labs has commissioned his gaming expertise to design two new mice, dubbed the Fatal1ty 1010 Mouse and Fatal1ty 2020 Mouse. We had a chance to fiddle with the 1010 for a bit and found that Creative has included 4 buttons, Teflon feet, 3 interchangeable weight packs (3.5, 11, and 25 grams) and a 1600 CPI laser engine.

It was interesting that Creative refers to the removable weights as an "ingenious G-Weight modular weight system," and the cable connecting the mouse to the PC is called the "SpeedWire cable" because it enables the fastest possible connection to your PC ensuring every move and motion is executed flawlessly! you know, because other corded mice don't have that special feature. There was also a "RapidRes" feature which lets you instantly switch between 400/800/1600 CPI which was a little surprising since Fatal1ty products are supposed to be for the elite gamers, I would think they'd want to compete with Logitech, Razer and Microsoft and offer up to 2000 DPI, or CPI! By the way, we're not sure why they call it CPI instead of DPI; we're thinking "clocks per inch" or maybe something cooler sounding like "casualties per inch," though it would make more sense to call it FPI, "Fatal1ties per inch."

One of the most interesting things about this new mouse is that the ergonomic design deviates far from the norm. Apparently when Fatal1ty grips his mouse, his hand is in a weird claw-like orientation and his palm doesn't actually touch the mouse, and the mouse was designed to his liking. Interesting idea, but I have a feeling users aren't going to like the ergonomics of it because let's face it, very few people besides Fatal1ty hold their mouse like that, and I don't think that's the special something that makes him so good at fraggin' baddies. Anyways, the mouse is interesting if nothing else, and we're hoping to get our hands on one to include in our laser mouse round-up in the near future.

Also bearing the FATAL1TY signature is a set of gaming headphones with an attached "military grade" microphone. What makes it military grade? We hope not the price. The rather subdued design features a virtual 9 speaker surround sound system and you can pair it up with a Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card...another FATAL1TY endorsed product, of course.

Creative's keystone personal music player, the Zen, has undergone an upgrade to include video and photo viewing. The Zen Vision:M is a direct competitor for the iPod Video and is available in 5 case colors with a 20GB capacity. FM tuning/recording and 4 hours of movie viewing between charges help to round out the features. Pay-per-download subscription services are available for movies and music.

Sennheiser

No visit to CES would be complete without a visit to Sennheiser's booth to play with their high-end headphones that we would never buy for ourselves. In addition to the DJ quality headsets, Sennheiser was gearing up for the VoIP revolution with a line of Skype Certified microphone equipped headsets, many of which also double as high quality gaming headphones. For you frequent airline travelers, Sennheiser is refining their line of noise canceling headphones into even smaller sizes that still pack a punch while erasing background noise. We gave them a quick try and they did transform the show floor into less of a swirling cacophony of sound. Exercise fanatics can take comfort in a line of lightweight and compact headphones as well. And, like most other audio companies, there was a full regimen of Bluetooth earpieces so you never have to be disconnected from your precious cell phone.

Klipsch

Klipsch was looking quite distinguished in their wood veneered booth with black trimmings. Speakers ranging from the smallest iPod accessories to 4 foot tall home theater units decorated the floor. Klipsch snagged a CES Innovations award for their whole house digital music distribution center, the ZON ZAS-430. The ZON system allows consumers to distribute up to four unique audio sources to six different zones within their home and is due out this spring. The system can be expanded to meet demands above six listening zones. Klipsch has been busy this year with a planned launch of 20 all new Reference Series speaker models, 5 floorstanding models, 3 bookshelf models, 3 center channel speakers, 3 WDST surround speakers and 6 powered subwoofers.

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Page 1: Creative / Sennheiser / Klipsch
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Page 3: AMD / Intel / Samsung
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1 - Posted by HVyIlTYDWxVzwVXKguD on March 18, 2008 - 1:33 pm

Nice site!

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