Power at your fingertips: Latest tech devices creating buzz with shocking size, capabilities
But during a recent visit to Salt Lake City, the spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association toted nine devices, including a pair of computers and two camcorders, all in one bag.
Digital technology has allowed Barry, and consumers worldwide, to do more with less.
"It's giving the capability of having smaller, lighter, more-mobile and less-expensive stuff," he said. "Notebook computers for under 400 bucks? I mean, come on."
In a goodie bag that would make even the Wizard of Oz feel inferior, Barry toted not just individual techno gizmos, but representatives of consumer electronics trends.
For example, the Digital Foci Pocket Album OLED 1.5, is a $50 keychain photo display with a 1.5-inch color LCD screen able to show 120 snapshots. It's just one way for folks to show off all their digital photos.
"The typical household now takes about 60 pictures a month with digital cameras and has about a thousand stored on computers, so you want to get those out — print them, put them on photo frames to put on the desktop, and from keychains to desktop ones that you can update regularly hooked up to the Internet or wirelessly," Barry said. "You've got a million ways to do that."
Five hours of video can be stored on a $99 version, 10 hours on a $149 model.
"What that represents is the merger of the Internet and television. And it's kind of a 'sneaker' way of doing it, carrying it from one place to the other," Barry said. "You take your TV from the computer. Say you want to download your favorite TV programs or YouTube clips. Instead of watching them on your small computer screen, you can watch it on your big-screen TV.
"An increasing number of people watch clips of 'American Idol' or old TV shows — old shows on the Web now or this week's 'Desperate Housewives' — and it's getting better all the time. It won't be long before they'll be indistinguishable. You'll be able to do high-definition over the Web, and there will be no real difference. Web sites are looking more like TV, and TV is looking more like Web sites. Look at CNN or ESPN, and they have stuff scrolling on the bottom and on the side. With this merger, they will be indistinct media sometime in the not-too-distant future."
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