CES - Computers and hardware

Dell made a concerted push into the consumer space today, targeting Generation Y as its "new brand advocates" of devices optimized for gaming, Facebooking, and other activities that apparently characterize the hoodied hipsters displayed on huge screens at the company's CES press conference.

"Dell is in the middle of a major transformation," said Paul Henri Ferrand, Dell's chief marketing officer. "Some companies just sell to one set of Gen Y, but we're in a position to make technology affordable."

Taking center stage was the now-official Dell Streak 7, a 7-inch Android tablet that Dell dubbed "the ultimate social-networking device."

The bigger version of the Dell Streak will be powered by a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra T2 processor and have support for T-Mobile's 4G network. It runs Android 2.2 (upgradeable to Honeycomb) and has a 5-megapixel rear camera and 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video calling.

The Dell Streak 7 is expected to become available through T-Mobile retail stores and T-Mobile.com and through Dell in the weeks to come, though pricing has yet to be announced.

"This is an impressive device," T-Mobile's Jeremy Korst said of the Streak 7, which will be sold globally. "Tablets are category revolutionizers. Smarter than a smartphone, more personal than a PC."

The company's press conference kicked off with colored lights and loud music, which, noted Dell Vice President Steve Felice, emanated from a Dell laptop--specifically the new XPS 17.

That machine, like many announced at CES, will feature dual-core and quad-core Sandy Bridge CPUs. It will be available on February 1 (in some regions at least) starting at $1,449. For entertainment types, the i7 version supports 3D. The company's XPS 8300 desktop is also 3D-ready. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--At CES 2011, Epson adds two new all-in-one devices to its WorkForce line of multifunction printers. The WorkForce 840 and the WorkForce 60 are aimed directly at the consumer with a small business at home who needs a device to handle high-output printing, scanning, and fax functions.

First up is the Epson WorkForce 840. Carrying design details over from previous models like the WorkForce 610, the 840 has an impressive 7.8-inch touch-panel display, a two-sided 30-page auto-document feeder for scanning large stacks of paper, a built-in memory card reader on the front with USB-key support, and a 500-sheet … Read more

LAS VEGAS--If there's one name everyone knows for high-end gaming PCs, it's Alienware. The Dell sub-brand offers the latest components, imaginative designs, and often prices to match.

For CES 2011, Alienware has a new version of its 17-inch M17x laptop. It's called the M17x R3 (we assume it's the third revision of the M17x), and it has several GPU options, such as the 1.5GB GDDR5 Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M, the 1GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 6870M, and the 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 6970M.

Besides HDMI-out, it also supports HDMI-in, which means you can hook … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Media streaming, both locally and online, has been getting more and more popular. It doesn't matter what service you use or what player you have, what you see on the TV or computer screen has to go through your home router.

D-Link has that in mind and announced at CES 2011 HD media routers that it claims offer much better audio and video streaming, even when dealing with huge files of 1080p content.

These routers are all DLNA certified and incorporate a Quality of Service (QoS) engine, called HD Fuel technology, that prioritizes high-definition video streaming with services … Read more

LAS VEGAS--In the world of wireless display technology, so far we have WHDI with the Asus Wavi, and Intel's WiDi with the Netgear Push2TV or the D-Link MainStage. All of these devices allow for displaying high-quality audio and video from your laptop, desktop, or even a media player to a TV, wirelessly.

Now, however, if you want the devices to share more than just an audio and a video signal, but also data or the connection to the Internet, you'll want to consider a third technology, called WirelessHD, which uses the 60GHz frequency band.

Unlike WHDI or WiDI, … Read more

LAS VEGAS--At CES 2011, Verbatim introduces a series of peripherals to arm travelers with digital tools to complement a digital lifestyle. The first two products are hard drives: the Titan XS SuperSpeed 3.0 external hard drive wrapped in a shock-proof rubber enclosure for twice the toughness and 10 times the transfer speed of traditional USB 2.0.

The other HDD is the Store 'n" Go SuperSpeed that has onboard connections for USB 3.0 and FireWire 800. It's also compatible with Macs right out of the box thanks to the HFS+ formatting. Unfortunately, the capacity for both … Read more

Editor's note: This live event has concluded. For a brief rundown of what was announced, including the 7-inch Streak tablet, the new all-in-one Inspiron One, Venue smartphone, and gaming PCs from Alienware, check out our summary post here. You can also replay our live blog in the Cover It Live module below.

LAS VEGAS--Dell had an eclectic product line in 2010, branching out from its comfort zone of PCs and laptops to Android tablets, convertible notebooks, and even cell phones. The company wowed us at CES 2010 with the Alienware M11X gaming laptop. We hope to see something just … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Fujitsu is decidedly one of the odder ducks among laptop manufacturers, and their CES 2011 lineup of laptops unveiled last evening runs an interesting range of ideas, some better than others. To be honest, however, we're not sure we'd buy any of them. Still, here's the rundown for the curious.

Lifebook AH572: Of all Fujitsu laptops, this led the pack in oddness--a 3D laptop with polarized glasses instead of the far better-functioning active-shutter solution, the AH572 also comes with its own 3D Webcam capable of recording 3D video. The demo produced was far from compelling, however--yes, … Read more

LAS VEGAS--We thought we had seen everything Lenovo was ready to throw at us at CES 2011 in the laptop/tablet universe, but a surprise new addition was unveiled late last night: a Windows version of the LePad slate coming later this year, tentatively called the IdeaPad Slate.

The 10-inch tablet has nearly the same hardware design as the LePad, with different internal components: the same flash storage, but a next-gen Intel Atom CPU instead of the LePad's Qualcomm Snapdragon. The Windows tablet, at this point not officially named, has a stylus for pen input as well as multitouch, … Read more