Wireless wows 'em at crowded Vegas show

LAS VEGAS - "It was very overwhelming."

That was how Andrew Hintz, Internet technology director for the California Democratic Party, summed up Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' razzle-dazzle digital lifestyle presentation at last week's sprawling, hyperkinetic International Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

He pretty well summed up the entire event (see all our coverage from the show), which spread from the massive Las Vegas Convention Center to the merely big Sands Convention Center, to accommodate 2,500 exhibitors and an estimated 100,000 daily visitors, including Hollywood types such as singer Justin Timberlake and actor Morgan Freeman. The event pulsed with music and lights, and featured an astonishing number of companies whose sole reason for being seems to be creating accessories for Apple's iPod music player.

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LAS VEGAS - "It was very overwhelming."

That was how Andrew Hintz, Internet technology director for the California Democratic Party, summed up Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' razzle-dazzle digital lifestyle presentation at last week's sprawling, hyperkinetic International Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

He pretty well summed up the entire event (see all our coverage from the show), which spread from the massive Las Vegas Convention Center to the merely big Sands Convention Center, to accommodate 2,500 exhibitors and an estimated 100,000 daily visitors, including Hollywood types such as singer Justin Timberlake and actor Morgan Freeman. The event pulsed with music and lights, and featured an astonishing number of companies whose sole reason for being seems to be creating accessories for Apple's iPod music player.

But digging deeper into CES announcements and demonstrations shows why the event has become such a draw, particularly in the areas of wireless and mobile computing.

Solid advances were evident at the show, though conflicts over standardizing some technologies and complex user interfaces and configuration schemes remain stubborn obstacles.

The biggest name in chips, Intel, formally unveiled two systems based on its latest processors and chipsets: notebooks based on the Centrino Duo technology, formerly known as Napa, and Viiv (rhymes with "five") home entertainment PCs.

Intel's first dual-core version of the Pentium M processor, is now known as Core Duo. This chip will provide the basis for all of Intel's processors starting later this year. The Centrino Duo package will feature the Core Duo processor, a mobile-optimized chipset, and an upgraded wireless chipset that supports 802.11a/b/g.

Atheros Communications demonstrated a new MIMO chipset that delivers data at rates as high as 300Mbps, with enough range to blanket a typical home. Broadcom unveiled what it says is the first Wi-Fi chipset designed for video phones. It's aimed at mobile and desktop phones. The chipset packages a Broadcom VoIP processor, its 802.11b/g wireless LAN (WLAN) chip and a chip designed for video processing.

Broadband wireless

Samsung demonstrated notebooks and smartphones communicating over its WiBro wireless broadband network, based on the mobile WiMAX standard, IEEE 802.16e. Korea's leading telco, KT, plans to go live with a WiBro net this spring, using Samsung's base stations, network core gear and handsets carrying a 802.16e radio.

The demo showed a laptop receiving streaming video, three others doing videoconferencing and a handful of Samsung smartphones doing messaging and sharing pictures over the WiMAX connection. With everything running full-bore, the demo network had 800Kbps for the downlink and 550Kbps for the uplink. KT expects to see vastly higher rates: 5.8Mbps upstream and 2.3Mbps downstream, Samsung says.

Also, HP announced a notebook computer with built-in support for Verizon Wireless' EV-DO network in the United States. This is the latest example of a trend toward such connectivity, as Dell has announced plans to embed EV-DO and High Speed Downlink Packet Access chips into its notebooks, and Lenovo announced a High-Speed Downlink Packet Access notebook in partnership with Cingular Wireless.