2012

LAS VEGAS--Beginning bright and early Monday morning, it's going to be tech news insanity here at the Consumer Electronics Show. We've broken down all the main events and will add links to our ongoing coverage as we have them. Join us as we bring you live video streams, live blogs, photos, and critical news from nearly every press event at the show.

12:30 p.m., PT CES in Depth, live stream

1 p.m., PT The 404, live stream

LAS VEGAS - While most networking vendors intend to introduce the latest and greatest at CES, EnGenius this year focuses on something that as old as wireless networking itself: range.

Yet that might be the most important aspect of a wireless router. The company announced today at CES 2012 a new family, called Engenius XtraRange, of routers designed to offer significantly longer range and better coverage than competing products.

EnGenius says that on top of the extra range, its new routers will also provide top performance for the existing 802.11n standard, making them a good fit for "bandwidth-intensive … Read more

LAS VEGAS--It's always frustrating to find a dead spot in your wireless networking. Fortunately there's now an easy and affordable fix, the new 300Mbps Easy-N Range Extender, model TEW-736RE from Trendnet.

The company introduced the new device at CES 2012 and claims that it will help extend the range of your wireless network within minutes.

According to Trendnet, all you have to do is place the TEW-736RE in an area of low wireless coverage, then simply press the Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) button on your router or access point, then on the TEW-736RE and you're done: the … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Mobile Mac users now can finally say goodbye to their USB or FireWire portable drives.

Elgato showed off today at CES 2012 the first bus-powered Thunderbolt drive, the Elgato Thunderbolt SSD.

While bus-powered--a feature that allows storage devices to draw power directly from the peripheral port, negating the need for a separate power adapter--has been widely popular with USB portable drives, it has been a challenge for the Thunderbolt connection. The Thunderbolt port is slated to offer up to 10 volts of power, but because parts and pieces of the Thunderbolt interface, such as the cable itself, require energy … Read more

LAS VEGAS--If you've won at the casinos here and wonder how to spend your jackpot, I have a suggestion.

It's the Swiss Army solid-state drive (SSD) that Victorinox, the maker of Swiss Army branded products, unveiled today at CES 2012.

This is a tiny portable storage device about the size of the small-size popular Swiss Army tool set. In fact, the storage part can be pulled out and collapsed into its case just like you can do with a Swiss Army knife.

Victorinox claims that the Swiss Army SSD has a few unique attributes, including being the word'… Read more

LAS VEGAS--$399. Linux. Designed for the kitchen. The Qooq is one of the weirdest tablet computers we have seen in a while. It's selling respectably well in France, we are told, and it's coming to the United States soon.

Qooq (that's "cook," get it?) has unusual specs, sports a too-high price, and is an outlier in the app economy. But it's not a bad product and it may actually have a niche. A small one, though.

The hardware: a 10.1-inch display, powered by a Cortex A9 processor running at 1 GHz. The enclosure: splash-, spill-, and drop-resistant. It looks nice, with its modern-art corner spikes that will keep it elevated off the counter and with a flip-out easel stand on the back, too.

The real weird starts in the software. The Qooq runs Linux. Not Android, not Windows 8, not even Web OS. Just Linux, customized by Qooq for easy set-up and intuitive operation. In the quick demo I got, it appeared to deliver on that. … Read more

The first day at the Consumer Electronics Show was quiet but still yielded a few nuggets.

Acer today kicked off what will be a parade of press conferences by announcing a host of ultrabooks, including a new "world's thinnest ultrabook," but ultimately proved thin on what it had booked. The company's big disappointment was that it had its head in the cloud--finally. It announced its AcerCloud effort, and in doing so it looked like a late-to-the-party copycat.

OnStar followed up by announcing it was giving the green light to third-party developers and opening up its previously … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Now that OnStar is courting app developers, it's going to be needing a bigger data pipe to feed the new mobile apps it's expecting for the next generation of OnStar-equipped vehicles.

This is where Verizon comes in with its broadband wireless network. OnStar and Big Red have jointly unveiled what they call a "second-generation connected research vehicle" at CES 2012. Based on a Chevrolet Volt, the research vehicle is connected to the cloud via Verizon's 4G LTE network and will be used to help test and develop new capabilities for OnStar's Advanced Telematics … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Ford, BMW, and Toyota have them. Now, OnStar is the next in line to take a stab at the development of in-car apps.

At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, the General Motors-owned telematics provider announced that it is selecting developers to be given access to an OnStar API for the creation of vehicle-specific and vehicle-safe apps for future OnStar-equipped vehicles.

"We want to give people 1,001 reasons to keep their OnStar subscription active," said Eric Litt, chief information officer at OnStar. "We feel that opening up our proprietary API to developers will ensure that OnStar … Read more