It’s interesting to see how a lot of people attend CES from Sunday through Tuesday, and leave on Wednesday - the show floors were certainly a lot calmer today, which was a welcome relief after the carnage of previous days.
A couple of highlights from Wednesday:
Medion MD90110 Home Server
Microsoft were showing off a range a home servers on the booth this week, and amongst them was the Medion MD 90110. This is a 4 bay multi-drive system, with easily accessible, hot swappable drives which hide behind a hinged front panel with a black piano finish. It’s footprint is pretty small - not too far away from the HP MediaSmart Server. Great to see it in the metal finally.
The NextGen Home Experience
The NextGen Home Experience showcased a wide range of home automation and digital entertainment equipment in a “real house” built in the Central Plaza of the show. Actors played the roles of family members in each room of the house and did a great job to illustrate how the various products on display integrated into their daily lives. Great fun. Ian Dixon has more.
So, in a couple of hours I’m leaving Las Vegas to return home, with a couple of thoughts in mind. Firstly, you’ll read all over the web that there was “nothing really new” or no “groundbreaking products” at CES this year. That’s true. What I did see, however, was a lot of connected devices for the home - DMRs, digital photo frames, networked storage devices, networked AV equipment etc. As you’ll hear me say in a future Digital Lifestyle show, this is the year that the connected home is really starting to look accessible and exciting to the guy in the street - products are getting simpler to configure and use, with prices more affordable than they’ve ever been.
But there’s still a very long way to go in educating consumers about the benefits of some of this equipment, and a huge gap in supporting their usage. Those companies that focus on simplicity of use with first class communication and support will be the ones that prosper in this space.
It was great to see WHS have a decent presence at the show, and the PP1 announcement has generated a buzz with the new features it will bring. Microsoft now need to focus on increasing the number of OEMs supporting the product, both some of the big guys and indeed smaller manufacturers and boutique home installation businesses to start to drive communication and presence of Windows Home Server in the marketplace.
I was asked by various people during the show as to my thoughts on when we’d see mass take-up of Windows Home Server in the market - I don’t have the complex demand curve tools that the analyst do, but right now, WHS is a wonderful product for enthusiast s- both server enthusiasts, and digital media enthusiasts. Going forward, both the platform and the hardware products it supports must continue to become simpler and more intuitive so they “just work” both at the home server level itself, and with products within the ecosystem they support and rely on - router configuration, anyone?
Personally, I’d love to see more development and communication partnerships between brands whose equipment works seamlessly together without frustrating the customer. My hunch is we’re 3 years and another two product releases away from seeing Microsoft and its partners start to penetrate into mainstream homes with any volume. But everything I’ve heard this week suggests that there’s a strong desire and commitment to do what’s required and I’m really looking forward to seeing where they are in this challenge next year at CES 2009.
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