CES 2012 - Day 1: Big TVs, big queues and Ultrabooks

CES is an exercise in two things; queuing and hyperbole. Today, set in the artifice of the endless Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, is all about speeches. From 8am to 8pm, companies try to persuade and suggest that they have 'the next big thing' - or at the very least something close.

Unsurprisingly given the surroundings, bigger has meant better for some. LG and Sharp both showed off colossal televisions with the latter shoving their new 80" beast on the top of a car to further illustrate the point. Samsung and Panasonic did similar things - big TVs and big claims. 

Yet amongst the recycled air of the endless meeting rooms, there is something that grabs the interest: the Ultrabook. Like the majority of the 140,000 attendees for CES 2012, I'm lugging around a fair bit of kit and my chiropractic complaints are increasing by the hour. So while the TVs might be getting bigger, the laptops are - thankfully - getting smaller.

The ill-advised foray into netbooks didn't do the industry a great deal of good - while they were small, for the most part netbooks were under-equipped for the majority of practical uses. Ultrabooks, however, are a whole different beast/kettle of fish/ball game.

I'll stick my neck out and say that the developments in processor technology by Intel and the proliferation of Ultrabooks (75 or so are currently in development from all the big names) will make them the story of CES 2012 and beyond.

And yes, the waterfall (pictured above) outside The Mirage explodes into flames every so often.