One of the press-only events we attended at CES is PEPCOM's Digital Experience. We've already posted countless Spotlight articles from this event, but in this article we will discuss some of the products that we didn't feel warranted their own article. The companies featured in this article include Olympus, Lexmark, Parrot, SanDisk, Kingston, Samsung, and Fujitsu.
Olympus
At the Olympus table, there wasn’t anything really new except for a nice voice recorder, but we did play with one of their water-proof digital cameras for the first time. They actually had a fish tank with a couple of cameras in it, so we decided to go fishing. The camera did in fact function after being reeled in, or out…whatever. Not easily satisfied, we turned the camera on under the water just to make certain it still functions while underwater. As you can see in the photo, it still worked. By now, we were determined to break the thing, and apparently it rubbed off on the Olympus rep because she took it from Max’s hand and threw it on the ground. Seriously. The thing still turned on and seemed to work properly when we picked it up. Granted, we were on carpet, but it was still an impressive display of Olympus’ confidence.
Lexmark
Continuing with the underwater theme, we saw some underwater photos at Lexmark’s table. On the left was a photo that was giving up the ink in its watery grave and on the right was a photo with super powers of the waterproof kind. The idea was that Lexmark has a new ink system (and new paper) which is smudgeproof. And as I already mentioned it’s waterproof too, because let’s face it, who doesn’t like to take a swim with their family photo albums.
I suppose I should also mention their Innovations award-winning X5470 All-in-One printer at a $99 pricepoint and an awesome next day replacement warranty. Should anything go wrong with it, they will have a replacement at your door by 6am the next day if you call by 6pm the previous day. Pretty impressive for just $99.
Parrot
For a while now I’ve wanted to check out some digital photo frames to see the quality of the image and features. It’s not exactly mind-boggling technology we’re talking about here, but I don’t think it will be long before these are really mainstream, and I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the 7” frame I was looking at. The controls and GUI are very user-friendly and you can easily select specific photos and create multiple slideshows with optional transitions and linear or random playback. As soon as these start dropping to prices I deem reasonable you can bet I’ll buy some for myself and family. Maybe all we need is for Samsung or Dell to start making them to drive the cost of production down.
http://www.thetechlounge.com/article/375/Digital+Experience/
