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After our first day of CES we discuss what tech is making waves in Vegas. What grabbed your attention and which products will never see the store shelves. Molly breaks down her interview with Google's Eric Schmidt and Brian Tong reflects on his time with LL Cool J live on the CNET stage.

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PC shipments came in 1.4 percent lower in the fourth quarter of 2011 than in 2010 with a total of 92.2 million PC shipments worldwide, Gartner announced today.

The research company said that even though PC market growth is healthy, the fourth quarter had unusually weak holiday demand.

"While economic uncertainty in Western Europe had an effect on consumer PC shipments, expectations of a healthier economic outlook in North America could not stimulate consumer PC demand in that region," said Gartner principal analyst Gartner Mikako Kitagawa in a statement. "The healthy professional PC market as … Read more

Intel is making a big push into smartphones and tablets, Polaroid has the first Android phone, and Asus hands out four cores for the price of two with the game-changing Asus Memo 370T.

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded, from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

Dell is planning to re-enter the tablet market later this year with a consumer-oriented device, according to Reuters.

The company previously tested the tablet waters with its enterprise-focused Dell Streak, an Android-powered device that was met with mixed reviews and that met its demise last month.

But the once-dominant PC maker has learned from the mistakes of other tablet makers and has a better understanding of what consumers want in a tablet, Steve Felice, Dell's chief financial officer, said in an interview at CES.

"We have been taking our time. The general failure of everyone that's tried … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Dell's got a new ultrabook on the way, and it's making use of aluminum and carbon fiber to get the job done.

During Intel's keynote here tonight, the vice chairman of Dell, Jeff Clarke, brought out the freshly-announced XPS 13, the new 13-inch model in Dell's XPS line that falls into the ultrabook category.

The sub-three-pound notebook is 6mm at its thinnest point and made out of machined aluminum. The base of the machine is made out of carbon fiber.

The machine, which the company will begin taking orders for in February, supports Intel's … Read more

LAS VEGAS--For all the attention ultrabook laptops have gotten over the past several months, a few big players have been conspicuously absent from the party.

Dell stood on the sidelines during the holiday 2011 ultrabook rush, but is now jumping in with the new XPS 13.

Using Dell's high-end XPS brand, the XPS 13 is an impressive entry in the ultrabook race, at least from our brief hands-on time with it. The system goes from 6mm-18mm thick and weighs under 3 pounds (but just a hair under, at 2.99 pounds, according to Dell). It has a backlit keyboard, and an Intel Core i7 CPU, but only integrated Intel HD3000 graphics. Storage options are 128GB or 256GB SSD drives.

At first glance, the XPS 13 isn't as flashy as some of Dell's other consumer laptops, but not without reason. Dell's pitch is that the XPS 13 is part of the Consumerization Ecosystem, which means that the lines between a company's consumer and professional laptop lines are blurring, a point we largely agree with. The XPS 13 is meant to be the kind of consumer laptop that business users ask their IT departments for, and Dell is eager to accommodate, with a nearly identical IT version offering TPM and other IT-friendly technology.

After playing briefly with a sample system, we liked the overall design. Its footprint is smaller than most 13-inch laptops', leading Dell to claim it's a 13-inch laptop in a 12-inch body (that's a bit of a trend these days: X-inch laptop in a Y-inch body, but being as laptop sizes aren't set in stone, it's also a hard claim to disprove). The look reminds us more of Dell's corporate Latitude line than anything else from the outside, but inside it has edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass over the screen and a large clickpad. … Read more

Ultrabooks will come in two basic varieties at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas: present and future. The latter will incorporate Intel's Ivy Bridge processor, destined to populate all of the ultrabooks and hybrids coming out in the second half of the year.

Ivy Bridge follows the Sandy Bridge chip shipping in current and ultrabooks. While SB should be the chip of choice in ultrabooks until this summer, expect PC makers (and Apple) to make the switcheroo to Ivy Bridge after that.

PC manufacturing titans like Foxconn and Inventec were already hawking their Ivy Bridge wares in September. … Read more

2012 promises to be a watershed year for laptops. Really thin will be in and internal optical drives out, while some designs venture into hybrid territory.

Apple: Apple is expected to incorporate the MacBook Air design theme into more models, including a 15-incher sans optical drive. And since Apple popularized the really-thin aesthetic with the January 2008 introduction of the MacBook Air, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the company will continue to be a trendsetter.

Trendsetting may include a rumored 2,880-by-1,800-pixel display. That would be a remarkable feat as workstation-class 15-inch Windows laptops, such as … Read more

Dell is longer interested in selling Netbooks--that category of 10-inch class laptops that saw mild success for a couple of years but is now facing a serious existential crisis.

Rather, Dell is now concentrating on laptops that deliver real performance--a major failing of the Netbook.

"We sold through the Dell Mini some time ago. We're committed to the highly portable space and have focused on delivering thin + powerful solutions, for which we've seen strong success, particularly in our XPS line," Matthew Hutchison, director of Dell Global Consumer PR, said in a statement sent to CNET. … Read more