The 2012 Consumer Electronics Show is over, but so many tech news stories, product showcases and software announcements came from the convention that you’re almost guaranteed to have missed something. If you take a look at our wrap up guides, you just might catch up on something you overlooked. Here’s everything we saw — and loved — at CES 2012.

CES 2012: Best in Show

The Annual Best of CES Awards
Here are the show’s standout products in 13 categories including the best smartphone, laptop, tablet, auto technology and accessory to surface in an unending swell of new gadgets.

Reader’s Choice Award 
The Best of CES Awards spotlights our editors’ top picks from the annual convention, but this year our readers had a decidedly different take on the single hottest piece of new tech.  

CES 2012: The Hottest Products

Best Laptops of CES 2012
Seven of these 8 clamshells fell short of a Best of CES Award, but they certainly garnered their fair share of time in the spotlight. Check out the laptops we eagerly look forward to reviewing this year.  

Best Smart Phones of CES 2012
The show’s smartphone announcements include a big step forward for Windows Phone, larger-than-ever screen sizes and phone cameras with the best specs we’ve encountered.

Best Tablets of CES 2012
This year’s tablets will offer longer battery life, lower prices and clearer screen resolutions.

CES 2012: The Biggest News Stories, Our Commentary and Live Video Coverage

Top 10 Videos of CES 2012
Some tech you have to see for yourself, like the Tobii Gaze Interface which, someday, will take hands-free to a whole new level by allowing you to navigate a computer screen just by looking at it. 

CES 2012: Biggest News Stories
CES doubles as a town hall for the world’s most successful tech companies to make huge announcements. This year, Microsoft embarked on its last CES keynote address and Intel announced partnerships to build smart phones with Lenova and Motorola.

SpoonFed: Top 5 Things I Learned at CES 2012
CES is too big to leave without thoughts on the long-view of tech. LAPTOP Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer learned that despite Ultrabooks’  lionshare of limelight at the show, hybrid Android tablets that connect to keyboard docks could be a bigger trend. 

CES 2012: How Our Staff’s Mobile Gear Performed
We armed ourselves with some of the best gadgets of 2011 and tested them in the fast-paced halls of North American’s largest tech show. Check above to see how the MacBook Air 13, ASUS Zenbook UX31 Ultrabook, Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone and other favorite gadgets performed in action. 

LAS VEGAS — Want to put an SSD in your pocket? Victorinox wants to help you. The company’s recently announced fleet of Swiss Army-flavored solid state drives are eager to climb into your pockets, with or without complementary implements like a small blade, scissors, a nail file or a screw driver. We paid Victorinox a visit to learn about these creative solid state drive form factors.

First things first, be ready to pay for that fast-searching, durable storage on a swiveling clasp though. A 128GB version of the SSD starts at $570. The terabyte model will cost more than $2000.

The remain capacities include 256Gb for $920 and 512GB for $1700. Each drive offers 256-bit encryption and a 96 x 48 pixel monochrome e-ink display that serves as a label, content list and available storage indicator. 

Design-wise, a lot of thought went into how the SSDs will be used. In the packaging for each drive are two cases, a red one with the Swiss Army tools and travel-friendly black case that holds just the drive. Speaking of the drive, it can be clipped from the surrounding Swiss Army case. Once it’s removed, the male end of the USB/Sata port is covered with a removable plastic cab. Smooth move there. Users can carry the device without the outside case but still protect the vulnerable port end while it rides shotgun in a pocket or buried deep in a notebook bag.

As far as internal specs, Victorinox told us the drives offer read speeds as high as 220 megabytes per second and write speeds up to 120MB/s. The device supports USB 2.0 and 3.0 as well as SATA I and SATA II, so the speed of the connection depends on which port is being used and the speed of the connected system.

The Victorinox SSD will be available in the summer of this year, according to the company. The company head told us that there are still a few kinks to work out. For instance, when you plug the drive into a notebook, a small LED light on the drive lights up. The company feels the light is jarringly bright (and it was; pictured below is a version with a less intense LED), so it’s working on that. In addition, officials also shared that the plastic that permanently surrounds the drive isn’t ideal since it turns a yellowish color after time, and some of the clasps at the end of each chip don’t match up with their counterparts on the Swiss Army case. Come back this summer for the final release.

• CES 2012: Full Coverage 
• Which Solid State Drive is Fastest?
• Storage/SSD Guide

LAS VEGAS–For anyone with a sizable collection of movies and music, the limited storage capacity of smartphones and tablets can be a great disappointment. Verizon and Seagate have teamed up to fix this problem with the 4G LTE Mobile Wireless Storage Drive, the first wireless storage device with integrated 4G LTE technology, showcased at CES.

Taking advantage of the lightning-fast speeds of Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network, movies, music and photos can be downloaded directly to the Seagate 4G LTE Wireless Storage and then streamed over Wi-Fi to up to three mobile devices, similar to Seagate’s GoFlex Satellite. According to Seagate, the drive has enough storage capacity for more than 300 HD movies. It can also provide Internet connectivity for up to three Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices.

The Seagate 4G LTE Wireless Storage looks perfect for anyone who wants access to their entire multimedia library on the go — the drive boasts up to 5 hours of battery life and is compatible with all Wi-Fi- and browser-enabled iOS and Android phones and tablets via its 802.11b/g/n radio. 

Verizon and Seagate have yet to announce pricing or data plans for the drive, or when it will be released. 

• CES 2012: Full coverage
• Seagate GoFlex Satellite Review
• Top Tech Trends for 2012

We can’t think of a better place to put one of the world’s smallest solid state drives than a Swiss Army Knife. Of course, the market price for a solid state drive still makes for costly storage options, and this gadget is no exception.  Today Victorinox, which first showed off a solid state drive fit for a Swiss Army Knife last January, announced that the new multitasker’s gadget will be available in five memory capacities. The starting price: $470 for 64GB of high-speed 256 AES encrypted solid state action.

The remaining price points are as follows:

• 128GB for $570
• 256GB for $920
• 512GB for $1700
• a terabyte for upwards of $2000

What can we say? It costs a lot to put a solid state drive in your pocket. Once it’s nestled there though, users can take advantage of support for both USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports, and faster eSATA II port options as well. Plus, the tiny drive includes an LCD display for labeling, supports automatic backup, and comes in two configurations. The red option includes Swiss Army Knife staples like a blade, scissors, nail file, and screwdriver while a black option is designated “flight-friendly”, most likely with smaller TSA-friendly blades and other harmless implements. 

Look for more on the Victorinox SSD later this week at CES 2012. 

• CES 2012: Full Coverage 
• Which Solid State Drive is Fastest?
• Storage/SSD Guide

USB 3.0 is so 2011. During the last year, Intel partnered with Apple to develop Thunderbolt for high-speed data and video transfers. The new technology offers nearly 20 times the speeds of USB 2.0, but the benefits don’t stop there.

Essentially a combination of Mini DisplayPort and PCI Express, Thunderbolt can transfer data at a blistering 10 Gbps and port high-definition video simultaneously over the same cable. USB 3.0, found in today’s PCs, only supports 5 Gbps data transmissions.

Thunderbolt technology premiered in the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros. The first peripherals to work with this new port, such as the Promise Pegasus storage line (starting at $1,149), appeared shortly afterward. But more products are on the way. The technology will reportedly make its way to Windows PCs by April. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve got a fine hard drive, won’t you back dat data up? For security reasons, you really should. And when you do, you’re likely not going to want to lug around a clunky, unattractive external hard drive. So set yourself—or someone with worse style—up with one of these nifty, unique storage devices.

Next

Buffalo MiniStation Extreme ($94.99)

Thanks to shock protection bumpers, a ruggedized chassis, and other durability features, the Buffalo MiniStation Extreme will keep data secure. It also sports a curved design that’s both attractive and functional. A wraparound USB cable hugs the drive’s rounded edge, keeping things organized and ensuring it’s ready to connect on the fly. Other handy features include 256-bit AES hardware encryption and USB 3.0 support.

$94.99 (500GB), $124 (1TB); www.buffalotech.com

Yahoo today (Nov. 2) released Livestand, a free magazinelike news app that gathers your favorite Web-based sites into an attractive, easy-to-use interface.

Yahoo describes Livestand as a “digital newsstand that’s always fresh and effortlessly personalized.” This app is similar to Apple’s own Newsstand app, which also touts its ability to bring digital publications together in one interface. Where Livestand differs is that Apple’s Newsstand is largely built around paid subscriptions, while Yahoo’s contains free content from its own site and that of its partners. In that way, Livestand is more similar to apps such as Flipboard and Pulse.

[Full disclosure: TechmediaNetwork, parent company of this publication, is among the publishers featured in Livestand.]

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s no secret that replacing your notebook’s hard drive with a solid state disk can dramatically transform your computing experience. With even last year’s SSDs, tasks such as opening large files or starting bulky applications take mere moments to complete. And if you own a notebook powered by one of Intel’s 2nd Generation Core Series CPUs, you’re in for a whole new world of fast, courtesy of SATA III, a high-speed interface Intel included in its new chipsets starting in 2011.

While SATA II SSDs were often limited by the 3 GB/s cap imposed by their older interface, a new generation of SATA III drives takes full advantage of this increased bandwidth. For example, the SATA III-based Samsung 830 series was able to copy a 3.1GB file in just 13 seconds, nearly twice as fast as the SATA II-powered Samsung 430 series (24 seconds), which won our previous SSD round-up. That kind of data rate is also over three times as fast as a 7,200-rpm hard drive (71.7 seconds).

However, not all SATA III drives are created equal. We took four of the leading SSDs and put them through a battery of tests to determine which one belongs in your notebook. Read the rest of this entry »

SATA III SSD Showdown

• The Drives
• Synthetic Tests
• File Copy and Zip Tests
• Application Opens, Multitasking, and Verdict

Your typical solid state drive doesn’t get any bigger than 256GB, until now. OCZ, maker of fine SSDs such as the affordable and fast Vertex 2, announced pricing for its Colossus line of super-speedy flash storage lockers, one of which has a jaw-dropping memory capacity of 1TB.

According to the price details OCZ shared with Engadget, you’ll pay handsomely for the 1024GB SSD; $2,200 to be precise. But that much space could hold one massive library of music, music, documents, and photos, all without the hassle of plugging in external hardware (Electronista says the 400GB drive can fit into a notebook’s standard 3.5-inch drive bay). And don’t get us started on the performance boost to your system thanks to the SSD’s flashy read/write times. If 1TB and $2,200 dollars is overkill for you, there are three more options. The remainder of the OCZ Colossus line features 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB options for $300, $650, and $1,200 respectively.

OCZ tells Engadget that the new drives are “about three weeks” away from shipping. Counting down the days? So are we.

Via Engadget and Electronista 

• SSD Battle Royale: Which Drive Will Speed Up your Notebook the Most?
• How to Install an SSD in Your Notebook
• Samsung Announces 830 Series SSD, First with SATA 6Gb/s

New details are coming out about what is quite possibly the most anticipated tablet this side of the iPad 3. Last week, TechCrunch’s MG Siegler reported that he was able to spend some time with a 7-inch version of the tablet, which is reportedly named the Amazon Kindle. 

Although no images of the tablet have leaked out (yet), Siegler said the tablet looks a great deal like RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook and will run on a forked version of Android, meaning that it will use the Google OS as a base for Amazon’s own customized user interface. The Amazon Kindle is also expected to run off of a single-core processor. Siegler confirmed what that the device will feature a full complement of Amazon apps including the Amazon Android Appstore, Amazon Instant Video player, Amazon Cloud Drive, and of course the Amazon Kindle app. Read the rest of this entry »