CES 2011, Las Vegas - CES is in full swing and all sorts of announcements and gear is being seen for the first time at the show. Some of the announcements aren't things that will happen right away, but are cool nonetheless. One of the announcements that will happen down the road came from Skype. Skype has announced that its video calling service will be coming to two new HDTV brands.

The new brands that will offer Skype video calling include Vizio and Sony. Vizio is the largest TV brand in the US and the company has a lot of web connected TVs in the market so that will mean Skype will find a lot of new homes. Skype isn't giving a specific date for the service to be offered only stating that it will happen "later this year."

If you don't have a web connected TV, but the thought of video calls in your living room is appealing Skype also announced a new tie in with Panasonic and Sony that will bring Skype video calling to dumb TVs. Skype will also be coming to Blu-ray players made by Panasonic and Sony. The players will need a webcam for the service to work naturally.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - We caught up with Bryan from NVIDIA during Digital Experience here in Las Vegas last night. We didn't see any Tegra 2 devices, but of course NVIDIA didn't forget to add some 3D action to it's booth.

One thing they did have on display was a 3D keg. No, I mean the kegputer, as the graphics firm is calling it. One of their case modding friends took a beer keg, greenafied it, added in a bunch of NVIDIA parts and create a full a fully working PC and keg in one. Get a close up look at it in the video above.

While the keg was empty at the time, we are told that it can hold 40 beers at a time. The perfect PC for LAN gamers? Most likely. I just need to put in an order for the show nexr year with something big enough that dispenses whiskey and I will be all set.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - Few companies know how to really start CES off like ioSafe. ioSafe has already shown their products in simulated house fires, under water in the pool and even being ran over by heavy machinery. This year ioSafe had to do something different and they did it this year with a bang!

That's right, CES this year started out with live fire on the shooting range.

Here is a shot of the new ioSafe Rugged Portable after a single blast of steel shot.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - The enterprise SSD market is really heating up. Just yesterday we showed a Toshiba enterprise SSD that will ship with a claimed 515MB/s read speed. If 515MB/s doesn't impress you then maybe this will, 535MB/s! Hitachi and Intel have teamed up to take on SandForce and Toshiba in the enterprise market, no surprise there, the announcement went out back in November.

The Hitachi / Intel drive was on display here in Las Vegas and we were able to snap a few pics. Most of us don't get all that excited about enterprise drives but what is exciting is how close Intel's enterprise drives are to their consumer product line. Intel has been fairly quite about their upcoming consumer SSD but the new Hitachi Ultrastar SSD400S gives us a glimpse of what to expect.

The Hitachi Ultrastart SSD400S is currently in validation with several OEM partners, just like the Toshiba and SandForce 2K Series. The Hitachi model we saw today comes with a SAS interface running at 6Gbit/s.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - Today NVIDIA announced the birth of a new generation of personal computing devices. Co-Founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang took the stage in a conference room in the Venetian and told the packed room that he was as excited about this year's CES as he was about the birth of DirectX and the Launch of Windows 95. Although by todays measure neither of these is a big deal and to many would seem comical Jen-Hsun went on to explain that with that single step the whole concept of the PC changed.

The reason he is this excited is because he feels the computing world is going to change again. After leading us through a few slides (mostly numbers and growth charts) he told us that he was not going to do an actual product launch (but he did a little later). He casually mentioned Tegra 2 and that there would be some announcements about it throughout CES. Instead he said he was going to introduce to us a new product family. He called this "The Super Phone".

Huang went on to explain that The Super Phone was the next evolution in the smart phone. It was first and foremost a personal computing device and a phone second. He said that this distinction was important as most of today's smart phones are a phone first. The new generation of Super Phones would have unparalleled multitasking capabilities, (when compared to mobile devices) be able to run in HD and also be a very personal device. He then introduced Yongseok Jang, VP of Business Strategy, Mobile Communications Company from LG. Jang took the stage and presented to Huang his own Tegra 2 based Super Phone the LG Optimus X2. This new phone is based off of the Tegra 2 SOC that we have been waiting to break the surface for almost a year now. Tegra 2 was announced back at CES last year and it is only now that we are seeing it.

Some more details of Battlefield 3 on PC are emerging and it is becoming quite the love fest for PC gamers. Lead Designer at DICE, David Goldfarb, is laying rumors to rest of Battlefield 3 being a console port.

He says that while the game is not an exclusive to PC, the PC version is getting 'extra attention'. Battlefield 3 is designed to run with DirectX 11 and will not work on Windows XP at all - while this is not new as there are some games that already won't work on XP, it's a step in the right direction.

Goldfarb also responded to questions on Twitter, talking about BF3 on PC he said "will not be exclusive. We are putting special effort into the pc version, even for us, it's extraordinary." Johann Andersson, another DICE developer, also chimed in with some details on system specs that are required to run the game.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - Most people want big and powerful hardware when they are building up a gaming or enthusiast system with big cases and lots of room for components. When it comes to building up an HTPC for the living room the opposite is true, most of us want small and compact gear that won't take up much room. Gigabyte has unveiled a new mini-ITX mainboard at CES this week that is aimed directly at HTPC fans.

The board is called the GA-E350N-USB3 and it is the first SFF HTPC mainboard from Gigabyte to use AMD Fusion technology inside. The board supports DirectX 11, SuperSpeed USB 3.0, SATA 6Gbps ports and has HDMI output. The board also has special 3x power USB ports for charging devices like the iPad faster than a normal USB port can.

The board has the AMD E-350 dual-core processor on board and has HD 6310 graphics that support Blu-ray and more. The board also supports 7.1 surround sound with S/PDIF output. The USB 3.0 port on the mainboard uses the Renasas controller from NEC. Pricing on the board is unknown at this time.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - January 5, 2011 last night the Consumer Electronics Association held its first big event of their annual Consumer Electronics Show; CES Unveiled. This show is typically one that highlights all of the top products with many of the companies having won at least one products award during the year. However, this year seemed to be a rehash of last year with many of the same people showing the same stuff we talked about during CES 2010. After walking the overcrowded floor of the event for an hour we were able to find a few items that showed pretty good promise.

One of the first companies that caught our eye was one called TechnoCel. This group makes battery packs for mobile devices. Now there is no shortage of products like this on the market so you might be wondering why we feel this is worth talking about. Well their latest one is capable of not only keeping your device charged on the go for about four hours, but also can charge it directly from the wall. The battery is contained inside the same pack as the power connector.

As you can see the PowerpakXT becomes a complete charging system while reducing the number of cables you have to carry around with you. We grabbed one and will be carrying it around with us for the rest of the show.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - If you need any proof that Android is going into all sorts of products, this one is the proof you need. The OS is finding its way into all sorts of gadgets and tech for cars and lots more. The latest product to surface from Parrot has Android inside and is one place that I never considered seeing Android land. The product is called the Asteroid and it is a car stereo or head unit.

The device runs the Android OS and comes with a GPS dongle. When you connect the head unit with your own 3G dongle, you can get access to Parrot Maps for navigation, those maps can get traffic, and construction alerts on them. Parrot says that it will also be offering more apps for the Asteroid device later.

The head unit can play music and files from all sorts of inputs included SD cards, USB, iPhone, iPods, and Bluetooth devices. The radio also works as a hands free device for calls on the road. The coolest feature is voice search for music while you drive and if you have the Asteroid on a 3G network it will search the web for you as well. It has integrated AM and FM tuners with RDS support. Pricing is unknown and the device will hit the US in Q2 2011.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - Trendnet has been at CES as long as I can recall and this year the company is pulling some really cool gear out of its hat for wireless fans. Trendnet has a new wireless gaming adapter that console users will like. The new adapter is called the 450Mbps Wireless N Gaming Adapter model TEW-687GA.

The adapter promises blazing fast 802.11n wireless speeds and Trendnet says that it will break the 150Mbps perforce barrier and in testing the adapter has reached 200Mbps bursts transmissions. The adapter has MIMO technology integrated with three spatial streams per antenna for more bandwidth and better connectivity.

The adapter has a Gigabit wired Ethernet port and supports Wi-Fi Protected Setup for easy construction for secure networks and more. The adapter works best when paired with the Trendnet TEW-691GR router, but it should work with any brand router. The adapter will ship this month for $149.99.

ioSafe has today announced the ioSafe Rugged Portable plus Data Recovery Service. The device is available in HDD, SSD and titanium SSD versions with capacities ranging from 250GB to 1T for the HDD versions, with SSD available in 256 or 512GB.

All versions are USB 3.0 with USBO 2.0 backwards compatibility. March 2011 will bring a Firewire version to include in the array of bundles available.

The device provides unparalleled physical security for mobile data while being backed by the industry's best warranty and ioSafe's unique Data Recovery service which includes up to $5000 toward the cost of third-party forensic data recovery services.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - Storage Visions allowed us to take an early look at the second generation SATA 6G SSD from Micron/Crucial. It seems Micron has plans to split the naming scheme and Micron, the parent company is keeping the RealSSD name while Crucial is taking another path. The Crucial M4 is the same physical drive as the Micron RealSSD C400.

Most of our readers know the RealSSD C300 is the fastest SSD available on the planet. The new C400/M4 will soon take that title as long as Micron/Crucial gets their drive to market before SandForce challenges for king of the hill status. 2011 is going to be another great year for all storage enthusiasts since both drives will be faster than present drives and both are claiming superiority.

The drives gets new 25nm NAND flash memory and the fastest drive claims a super fast read speed of 415MB/s and comes in a totally impressive capacity of 512GB.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - You just got done seeing the new ASUS Eee Slate and one of the other products announced by the Taiwanese company today was the Eee Pad Transformer. Yes, yet another tablet to hit the market, but this one you want.

As you can see in the video above, it comes with a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor for full 1080p video playback and ASUS claims it offers the fastest web browsing experience in this class as well as the best multi-tasking performance. Not only that, but ASUS also went on to say that it offers the fastest flash video performance. I am not sure exactly what that means and why it is important - but what is important is that you can watch 1080p YouTube content without dropping frames and / or bring the system to a halt.

Besides the performance and while it is all good on that front and NVIDIA get some much needed love in this section of the market, the big thing with the Eee Pad Transformer is that comes with a dock. And not just any dock, it includes a full size QWERTY keyboard with extra USB ports and a card reader.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - ASUS have finally unveiled their Tegra 2-powered 10.1-inch tablets that are unique because they include physical keyboards.

The Eee Pad Slider (in the above picture, on the left) is poised to run Google's Honeycomb, includes an IPS display with a 1280x800 resolution, mini-HDMI and mini-USB ports as well as a microSD card slot. It weighs 2.2-pounds and comes in at .5-inch thick. The Eee Pad Slider also includes dual cameras (1.2 megapixel front-facing and 5 megapixel with an LED flash on the back).

The Transformer is a 10.1-inch tablet that comes with a laptop dock with a full sized keyboard and touchpad. It is too poised to run Google's Honeycomb and includes a dual-core Tegra 2 processor, two cameras and the same IPS 1280x800 display.

Here's an announcement that hardware fans have been looking forward to for some time. Samsung, one of the leaders in memory manufacturing, has announced today the development of a DDR4 DRAM stick that performs reads and writes with up to 40 percent more power efficiency than DDR3.

Samsung's DDR4 currently has a bandwidth max of 2.13Gbps at 1.2V, but these modules are expected to eventually be able to hit speeds of 4Gbps. This memory will be a godsend to mobile devices like laptops which will be able to use Samsung's Pseudo Open Drain technology to minimize battery drain by the modules. Samsung is also working with server manufacturers to acquire the JEDEC certification necessary for server implementation.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - Anyone that types a lot knows that too much typing can lead to repetitive stress injuries for some folks like carpal tunnel if you are prone to that sort of condition or have it already an ergonomic keyboard can help you to get rid of that pain. Smartfish is showing off a new keyboard at CES 2011 that is a first for ergonomic offerings called the Smartfish Engage Keyboard.

The Engage has a cool automated adjustment function that adjusts the keyboard subtly over time to keep the users hands from being in the same position for too long. This helps to reduce pain associated with carpal tunnel and other injuries and helps to prevent the injuries from happening. The keyboard has a standard split QWERTY ergonomic design.

Each hand gets its own keyboard section and the halves of the keyboard feature distance adjustment for comfort and the keyboard can be tilted up and down for angle. The keyboard is on display at CES and will sell for $149.99. You can get one right now directly from Smartfish.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - MiLi has been creating some really cool power devices for all sorts of gadgets like external battery packs that will keep your favorite gadgets all charged up and ready to use. The company is on hand at CES 2011 in Las Vegas and is unveiling a new docking station that will work with any dockable Apple device from the iPad to the iPhone and can shoot content out to your TV.

The device is called the MiLi HD and it is a charging dock with HDMI output for your big screen that supports up to 1080i resolution. The device also has an integrated speaker and a mini USB connection. The dock will charge your device while it streams the content to your TV. Using the dock you can stream anything your iPad plays to your TV like Hulu Plus and Netflix. The device will sell for $99.99.

"No longer does your mobile entertainment have to be just mobile," says MiLi Power's Executive VP, Robert Grossman. "MiLi HD provides the most reliable option to connect your mobile device to your home entertainment systems. 2011 marks a rebirth of MiLi Power, with a new management team and a slew of new innovative products to hit the market, it's sure to be an exciting year!"

CES 2011, Las Vegas - Lenovo's adding quite a few new laptops to their line just in time for CES, and the three that are first off the line are the ThinkPad Edge E220 and E420 as well as the ThinkPad X120e.

The ThinkPad Edge series give you premium design options like a matte finish with metal accents and an infinity screen. The 12.5" E220 and 14" e420 feature the choice of Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors, optional mobile broadband and 4G/WiMAX in addition to regular WiFi, and the Lenovo Enhanced Experience 2.0 for Windows 7 to speed up boot time by 30 percent on select models with Rapid Drive technology. Models will start at $899 for the E220 and $749 for the E420 and will be available starting in April.

The 11.6" ThinkPad X120e is the ultraportable addition to the ThinkPad lineup and 1" think and starting at under 3lb in weight. This is the first commercial laptop to feature an AMD Fusion E-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU). The X120e prices will be starting at less than $400 and will be available in February. Check out more info and some demo videos at the Source Link.

Leaked video and pictures of Nintendo's upcoming 3DS have arrived. The media shows that Nintendo have tweaked the final hardware by flattening the Start, Home and Select buttons so that they are flush with the device.

Other than those changes, it is relatively unchanged from the DS. The above leaked video shows it includes a 1,300 mAh battery (compared to the DSi XL's 1,050 mAh battery, the DSi's 840 mAh, the DS Lite's 1,000 mAh, and the DS's 850mAh). The video also shows the differences in size between the 3DS, DSi and DS Lite.

A new feature that the 3DS includes is Virtual Console that allows a user to download Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games, a Tag Mod which lets 3DS owners locate nearby handsets to connect to and exchange data with, a Mii Studio that can automatically create Mii avatars from real photos and also Augmented Reality Games that come preloaded on the system.

We have talked about some of the cool BitFenix compute cases before here at Tweak. The company has some of the coolest cases that I have seen in a long time. I am particularly fond of the cool Colossus case with the green lights and black housing. That is a sweet case for my next computer. The big problem for geeks in the US has been that the cases weren't offered here.

All that will soon change. BitFenix has announced that staring at 11am on January 10, 2011 it will start taking pre-orders for an "extremely limited" number of computer cases through its new US online store. It's not clear, if the whole line will be offered in small numbers or if only one case will be offered. I would assume that after the initial batch is sold out the company would be trying to get more of the cases available for computer fans in the US.

"After receiving emails almost daily inquiring about BitFenix in the US, we are excited to finally say that both Colossus and Survivor will be available for pre-order," says David Jarlestedt, BitFenix Product Manager. "By bringing BitFenix products to North American shores, users in the US will finally be able to experience what BitFenix users in Europe and Asia have been raving about."