CES 2002 Picks and Pans

LAS VEGAS -- The cabbies in Vegas are happy again. After the disastrously low attendance at Comdex last November, the Consumer Electronics Show was a major success. It wasn't hard to understand why. Unlike Comdex, CES was loaded with the kind of innovative and interesting products that were once a Comdex hallmark. Our crack team of editors found an astonishing variety of noteworthy items at the show, some brilliant, some bizarre, and some just plain dumb.

Our Fave

Danger, the makers of the snazzy HipTop, managed two impressive feats during a gadget session here: They wowed the normally unmovable CES crowd, and they destroyed a pricey prototype just for kicks. Good show! Danger's cell phone/PDA/instant messenger/Web browser/camera (with accessories) will ship this spring for about $200 from a still unannounced service provider. Best of all, the tiny device has a cleverly concealed keypad for easy input, and it stores all your data on a server, just in case some idiot drops a bowling ball on your phone. The device won a Best of Show award. (For a complete list of other winners, check out TechTV's Best of CES Winners.) --Tom Mainelli

Body Solutions

How Did We Miss The First One? The ButtKicker 2. Kinda speaks for itself, doesn't it? The tagline: "Feel what you've been missing." In case you're wondering, The ButtKicker from Guitammer is a low-frequency, compact subwoofer-type device that you install into a chair to shake your seat during movies. --Eric Dahl

For the Boys: The Guy's Keyboard tries to reinvent the wheel but merely sends everybody in circles with its newly laid-out keys on an otherwise traditional Windows keyboard. Created by architect Daryl Fazekas, the EZ Type layout, as opposed the standard QWERTY keyboard, puts the most commonly used letters in the middle of the keyboard. Does he really expect people to ditch their familiar QWERTY keyboards? Probably not, judging from the Guy's Keyboard ads, which proclaim it's "for the hunt and pecker." --Michael Lasky