You saw it first in Vegas

, IN the annual round of junkets, jamborees and techfests that bedevil the intrepid writer after the snappiest, glitziest, new kit, there is one overriding principle: if it's January, it must be the Vegas CES (Consumer Electronics Show). If it's powered by electricity and hasn't been launched yet, this is the place you'll see it first. Like Tom Jones before him, Bill Gates headlined this year, with the X- Box, Microsoft's answer to the PlayStation 2 (see below). But with computer sales dropping off, this was more the year of the personal gizmo. Here are the highlights.

Mobile phones: Surprisingly little in the way of new phones, but the Fellowes Cellular Phone-Charger (below) looks like a hit for those worried about mobile-related health scares. Available for many Nokia, Motorola and Samsung phones, it also functions as a hands- free speakerphone kit for home use.

Expect to pay around 50 when it arrives here next month. www.

fellowes.com

MP3: The internetfriendly music format has gone a step further (maybe too far): introducing the first MP3 sunglasses from Thomson- RCA.

Due to go on sale in the second half of 2001 the rather, er, idiosyncratic looking RD2208 connects up to your PC via a fast USB (univer sal serial bus) link and will cost in the region of $179. Supplied with 32mb of memory (enough to store half an hour of tunes), the musical shades will be joined by three other MP3 players this spring, plus an MP3/personal CD player and two five-disc CD systems that also play back MP3-encoded CDs.

www.rca.com

Internet radio: Up to now, listening to streaming radio via a PC hasn't seemed appealing, despite there being more than 21,000 channels. The $300 Thomson-RCA RIR111 internet radio is is a standalone device, linked directly to your internet service provider, with no PC required. It's coming to Europe this year, but you'll need to have a broadband connection to use it.

www.rca.com

PCs: Fed up with your bulky old laptop running out of battery power at critical moments? Casio's 35oz slimline Mobile PC - supplied with 128mb of memory and a 20gb hard drive - is a slinky little number (priced under $2,000), which will run for a whopping nine hours on an extended battery. The key? A new 600mhz Transmeta processor. www.

casio.com

TV: First there were TVs with built-in DVD.

This year Panasonic takes the minimal-clutter telly concept further by launching two flatscreen TVs with builtin DVD players and VCRs (below), though it's unlikely the concept will make it to the UK much before 2002.

www.panasonic.com

DVD: The good news: you will be able to buy a DVD recorder (in the States, initially) this autumn: massive space on the disk long- lasting picture quality. The bad news? The one you get could soon be as redundant as Beta-max. Because the manufacturers have refused to agree on a single format, models using three largely incompatible systems will go on sale this year: DVD-RAM (Panasonic and Samsung), DVD+RW (Sony and Philips) and DVD-RW (Pioneer and Sharp).

www.news.philips.com; www.samsung.com; www.sony.com/ces; www.pioneer.com; www.sharp-usa.com

Games: And what about that X-Box? The game demonstrations for Microsoft's new console were impressive, with the video quality of the games almost being of Toy Story standard. The only downer was the look of the box itself.

Several cynics said it looked suspiciously like a bulky PC stuffed into a rather utilitarian black case. In the style stakes, the PS2 wins every time.

www.microsoft.com

Watches: Casio is claiming that its new watch, with satellite navigation (right), is the smallest and lightest of its kind in the world (reasonable, since nobody else apparently makes 'em). The $500 Satellite NAVI PAT-2GP - no jokes about lost Irish navvies, please - taps into 12 GPS satellites to help you figure out where you are.

If you hook it up to your PC, it's possible to transfer the coordinates for use in route-mapping. And it tells the time. Mercy! www.casio.com Digital radio: While Britain is sticking to terrestrial Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), the Americans are heading for space. XM Satellite Radio services will be delivered via satellite across the nation later this summer, with hundreds of channels on offer. Pioneer, Alpine, Clarion and Kenwood are all launching hardware, but Sony will probably beat them all to launch with its snappily handled DRN-XM01, a tuner that can be used both at home and in the car.

www.sony.com/ces

Copyright 2001
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.