Small-Business Tech Makes a Big Showing at CES

CES may have “consumer” right in its name, but this year’s show featured plenty of hot new products aimed squarely at small and midsized businesses.

One of the coolest business-grade devices to debut in Las Vegas this week is the HP Mini 5102, a 10-inch netbook with a capacitive multitouch display. The machine comes with an Intel Atom processor, a 2-megapixel webcam with face-recognition security, and the option of a fast SSD drive. Prices start at $399.

For more up-to-the-minute blogs, stories, photos, and video from the nation’s largest consumer electronics show, check out PCWorld’s complete coverage of CES 2010.

Long known for its enterprise-class laptops, Lenovo is specifically targeting small businesses with its ThinkPad Edge line. These 13.3-inch laptops combine with AMD processors starting at $579, or Intel processors starting at $799. They also sport LED widescreen displays, come with Windows 7 Professional installed, and give you a variety of wireless options, including 3G and WiMax.

When disaster strikes, many small businesses find themselves unprepared for the harsh realities of significant data loss. But the ioSafe Solo SSD drive lets you store up to 256GB of data in its fireproof, waterproof, shockproof vault. To prove it, ioSafe took me out to the desert and torched it, blasted it with a firehose, dropped it from a great height, and then ran over it with a tractor. Then they pulled the little SSD out from its protective shell and retrieved its data right before my eyes.

Of course, we’ve done a little testing our own with ioSafe’s products, so we knew they were pretty tough.

Sprint has unveiled a new way to share its WiMax network with your laptop with the Sierra Wireless Overdrive. This WiMax-to-Wi-Fi bridge sells for $149 with a two-year contract, and lets you connect any Wi-Fi device over Sprint’s 4G network.

Giving presentations on the go doesn’t have to mean lugging a ton of gear along with you. With the $199 BlackBerry Presenter, you can deliver PowerPoint presentations straight from your BlackBerry phone. However, you’ll still need a monitor or projector to attach to the device. (Hopefully they’ll have one of those on-hand when you arrive to give your presentation.)

Taking a more all-in-one approach to mobile presentations, the LG eXpo phone allows you to plug an optional pico projector right into it. So you can shine your show on any flat surface that happens to be nearby. It could take elevator pitches to a whole new level. The phone itself sells for $250 with a two-year contract from AT&T, and the optional projector costs $180.

Want an even more robust all-in-one presentation tool? 3M’s MPro150 is a handheld, battery-operated projector with 1GB of storage built in. Load it up with your presentations and hit the road.

Pico projectors are great for lightweight presenting, but they usually provide images only 50 inches across. But the Microvision Showwx pico projector uses lasers to blast a clear image 200 inches across. The device will debut in March for $500.

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For more up-to-the-minute blogs, stories, photos, and video from the nation’s largest consumer electronics show, check out PCWorld’s complete coverage of CES 2010.