CES kicks off in Vegas next week (the 10th through the 13th) and I've already got three browser tabs open just tracking rumors, which is probably two more than is healthy for a show that hasn't started yet. Every January I tell myself I'm not going to get sucked into the pre-show speculation cycle, and every January I fail immediately. So let's talk about it.
Ultrabooks, Ultrabooks, Ultrabooks
If you've read anything tech-related in the last month you already know the word. Intel's been pushing "Ultrabook" as hard as any brand name I can remember since, I don't know, "Centrino" maybe, and CES is where it's supposed to really land. The pitch is thin, light, fast-to-wake laptops that are basically Intel's answer to the MacBook Air, except now with a dozen manufacturers all racing to build one under a shared marketing umbrella instead of Apple just quietly doing its own thing for four years like usual.
Expect Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba, Samsung, basically everybody, to show up with a thin metal (or metal-ish) laptop under an inch thick and under $1,000, at least on the low end. Whether they actually ship at those prices or whether "starting at $999" turns into "the only configuration anyone can buy is $1,400" is a different question, and if I had to bet, I'd bet on the second one. I want to be wrong about this. I've been burned before by CES pricing that evaporates by the time review units show up in March.
The other thing I'll be watching is battery life claims, because "Ultrabook" doesn't actually guarantee good battery life, it guarantees a certain chassis thickness and an Intel processor inside. Companies are going to lean hard on the buzzword and I bet at least one or two of them ship something that's thin and pretty and dies at hour four. Call it now.
Microsoft's last CES keynote
This is the part I actually care about more, honestly. Microsoft's doing their CES keynote again this year, and from what's floating around, it's supposed to be their last one. After thirteen or fourteen years of Bill Gates and later Steve Ballmer doing the big Tuesday night keynote, they're apparently stepping back from CES going forward, which is a weirder thing to sit with than I expected. CES basically was Microsoft's stage for over a decade of my life, and now it's just... not going to be, after this week.
I don't know exactly what Ballmer's going to show. There's chatter about it being Windows-and-devices focused, maybe some Windows Phone talk, maybe a Kinect update given how big Kinect's been for them since it launched back in late 2010. What I'm actually curious about is whether they use the moment to talk at all about what's coming next on the Windows side, or whether they play it safe and keep it to a highlight reel of the past year. My gut says highlight reel, with a little bit of "look how well Kinect for Windows is doing" mixed in, because that's been the safe move for them the last couple of keynotes.
There's also the obvious tension of a company backing out of the biggest consumer tech stage right as tablets and phones are eating the room's attention anyway. Feels less like Microsoft abandoning CES and more like CES quietly stopped being the place where the biggest announcements happen. Apple hasn't shown up in years and does fine. Maybe Microsoft finally noticed.
What I don't expect much from
TVs. There's always a wall of "smart TV" announcements at CES and I always skim past them, because every year it's the same story: some half-baked app platform bolted onto a panel, a remote with too many buttons, and a UI nobody will use past the first week. I own a dumb TV with a Roku stick jammed in the back and that setup already does everything I need, so I'm bracing for a lot of noise here I'll mostly ignore.
Tablets will show up too, obviously, mostly Android ones trying to catch some of the attention the Kindle Fire's gotten since it launched in November at $199. I don't expect anyone to really threaten it on price. Amazon's willing to eat margin in a way most of these hardware manufacturers just aren't.
Anyway. I'll be following the keynote coverage live-ish next Monday night, probably refreshing a liveblog with a beer in hand like a normal person watching a hardware event unfold from a couch nine states away. If the Ultrabook prices come in decent I might actually be in the market for one this spring, my current laptop's fan has started making a sound like a dying moth.