The best (and worst) of CeBit 2010

The annual tech jamboree in Hannover, CeBIT, kicked off yesterday. As tech trade shows go, it's an odd one: physically it dwarves competitors, because it covers everything from MP3 players to hospital equipment, via cash registers and military hardware, and the exhibition complex is the size of a small town.

But that didn’t stop us flying round the shop floor on a Segway to bring you the best, worst and downright bizarre launches at this year’s show:



There’s no escaping the 3D theme this year, and MSI's stand is full of 3D laptops and screens. It's also launched a 3D version of its all-in-one, the WindTop. It looks very nice but since it requires powered rather than passive glasses, we're not sure it'll catch on.

The AE2400, on the other hand, is a quad-core all-in-one with DX11 graphics, which sounds a lot more promising.



Best of all, though, there's a working prototype of MSI's twin screen netbook-type device. It's book size format looks like the shape of the future to us.



Asus stand is definitely one of the highlights of the show. Its centrepiece is the new NX90 laptop, which has been co-created by Bang&Olufsen's lead designer, David Lewis.

Its unusual shape means you can finally do away with external laptop speakers for listening to music, and it has two mousepads for an interestingly quirky new desktop interface.

Asus also showed off its shiny-shelled fourth generation EeePC, the 1018P. The DDR3 RAM should make it more responsive than most netbooks, but the real improvement is in the screen depth. The lid is barely as thick as a heavy piece of card.

A new brushed aluminium look for the PC-in-a-QWERTY case the Eee Keyboard doesn't make it any more practical, but does make it more desirable.

It may be too late to save the netbook, though. Taiwanese OEM Delux is showing 11inch lappies powered by Intel's dual-core CULV processor, and reckons wholesale prices will be as low as $260 (£175) a pop. Why would you choose an Atom-machine over that?



With the unstoppable rise of on demand cloud services, home media servers are starting to feel a bit old-fashioned. But until Spotify starts running video this ultra quiet machine from Cablecom sits unobtrusively by your TV and holds up to four hard drives worth of movies.



Before your living room turns into a giant video cocoon, though, you might want to head off into the great outdoors for a bit. And if you do, take one of these ruggedised hard drives from ADATA with you. You'll be saving it from being drowned like a kitten by its corporate overlords at any rate.



To keep it extra safe, you could pack it in one of Onlink's lightweight canvas pouches. They may look uninspiring, but they unfold into a portable solar charger with a selection of phone and laptop plugs.



Size is a big issue too, with both MSI and Shuttle apparently competing for the tiniest PC prize. MSI wins it, but Shuttle's look is better.

Hopping on the back of a passing milkfloat for a free ride home at 6am is going to get tougher in the future. Not because we buy all of our dairy produce in Tesco now, but because the modern electric truck is capable of 75km/h. Like this one, from EcoCarrier.




And the unworldly wrongness of this half mannequin, half screen sales talking digital sales assistant from Prisma. The most un-nerving thing about him isn't the bluntly hacked out ears or his uncanny resemblance to Barack Obama. It's the 2D chest and head on 3D legs. Brr.

Top news of the show, though? Binatone is launching an Android powered web-pad. Sadly there's no actual prototype on its stand at CeBIT, but we're hoping for a large orange controller with a wheel in the middle, and some sort of Pong variant installed by default.