2008 CES Las Vegas

The 2008 International CES is now finished, and while the exhibitors are using this weekend to tear-down their booths there are just as many writers like myself who are trying to feverishly extol the numerous technology displays we viewed over the past week. Benchmark Reviews had no intention of taking notes on every single product that was on display, but instead we were after the most notable computer technology highlights and announcements of the show. This article reveals what we believe to be the biggest innovations of Q1 and Q2 for 2008.

During my visit to CES'08, there were far too many sights and sounds to rehash here in just one article; and that's not something you would want to read anyway. There were however many short but important announcements, and a few important pieces of information that were never meant to be announced.

For example, a major mission for me while at CES was to hunt down new SSD development. I have been in discussion with Joe James at Super Talent since we met at the SuperComputing Conference SC07 about their own solid state disks, and the message I get each time is about the new SATA-II platform they are developing.

Since Crucial is the biggest name in the North American memory market, I made certain to visit Sam Harmer and Terry Groth about their own upcoming SSD. As it turns out, there is a SATA-II rated SSD due out later in Q1 2008. This is great news for Benchmark Reviews, which has only seen SATA-I platforms from manufacturers such as Mtron and Fujitsu.

While I was witnessing a "paint mixer" demo that shook the hell out of a running SSD with no effect on performance, I learned of something ever more shocking: Crucial is now going to be a Lexar product brand name. Not long ago Micron, the parent company to Crucial, purchased Lexar. According to both marketing representatives, our recent review of the Crucial Ballistix DDR3 really could have been named Lexar instead. Apparently Crucial wasn't as well known as Lexar, according to my contacts.

Joining the race in 2008, OCZ will introduce its own new series of high-capacity SATA-I and SATA-II Solid State Drives offering consumers a faster, more reliable and power efficient alternative to standard hard disk drives for laptops (and desktops). As Benchmark Reviews witnessed at CES, the new SSD from OCZ looks like it can take a beating. This should make for an interesting year, since BiTMICRO launched a 832GB E-Disk Altima SATA SSD just in time for CES.

Previous Page - Next Page >>