(January 26, 2007) — When you think Las Vegas, you think showgirls, gambling and probably booze. But during the first week of January, it was all about gadgets, phones and high-tech toys; gather around geeks, it’s the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES). CES is the annual electronics show in Las Vegas that introduces new products at the forefront of the consumer electronics community. Usually CES starts on Friday and spills into Sunday, but this year they decided to mess with the schedule and make it during the workweek. Many geeks wept openly over this massive injustice. From the very fist video cassette player (VCR) introduced in 1970 all the way to the introduction of the Microsoft Xbox in 2001, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has been constantly introducing new and enhanced technologies throughout generations. Just as DVDs eventually replaced VCRs, a new generation of media has come. This change involves two notable products that were introduced at this year’s CES, the Blue-ray Disc and the HD-DVD. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that these products were the stars of the show. Both products are very similar in that the Blue-ray Disc, in comparison to HD-DVD, has far more information capacity per layer—up to 50 GB of memory than the HD-DVD, which can store only 30 GB at most. Clearly, the Blue-ray Disc may seem like a better choice when just the storage capacities are brought into consideration. Why, then, is there such a competition, you might be wondering. This is where price kicks in. To be able to make use of these discs, one would first need to purchase a player. The Xbox can be upgraded with an HD-DVD drive for $200, Blue-ray Disc consumers must buy a separate player. Although the Blue-ray Disc can store much more memory than HD-DVD, some consumers prefer the HD-DVD to the Blue-ray Disc. Consumers, specifically video gamers, are faced with a decision as to whether buy the Playstation 3, which in itself is a stand-alone Blue-ray player, or the Xbox 360 with an HD-DVD drive ad-on. Though the prices are similar, it is the general consensus that the Playstation 3 has the edge because it uses the Blue-Ray Disc for video games, thus allowing for more content. This year’s CES did feature many other high-tech toys as well aside from the Blue-ray Disc and the HD-DVD. The new MP3 players, for example, are smaller in size and have more focus on designs. They are mainly smaller in size due to their use of flash memory instead of hard drives. This means that although they may hold fewer songs, they are less prone to breaking. Last but not least, another notable product introduced were the UMPCS (Ultramobile Personal Computers) which are also very small in size, portable, and fully installed with the Windows VISTA.