Veni Vidi Vici. I believe that’s what Julius Caesar said when he did something or other so well that he was quite proud of himself afterwards. Today we walked into the Sands Expo and Convention Center part of the 2007 International CES, hit all of our targets, met up with some old friends, and just got a really good taste of the show. To draw a comparison between the Sands Expo floor as we saw it today and the Kentia hall as we saw it at E3 so many months ago would not be too far of a stretch. The two venues were very similar in that they were packed tight with exhibitors. Companies from the world over brought their goods to Sin City for four days of complete and utter chaos. The planning we did last night and this morning prepared us for what would, by the end of the day, have been quite the adventure. I am sure you can find the elaboration you are looking for in our daily blog, which is being written by my colleague as we speak.

It was not just small up and coming companies that pack the Sands this year; large electronics companies like Qimonda and Microstar International (MSI) are also calling the venue home for the week. We actually didn’t hit MSI because we got a call towards the end of the day that will lead us back to the Sands for a short stay tomorrow morning, at which point we will surely see what they have to offer. So then, on to what we DID see:

Power, Power, and Some RAM
Power supply companies were out in force on the Sands floor. The first one we wanted to check out was FSP Group, the company behind Fortron. We have been recommending Fortron power supplies for ages in our budget price guides and in the forums but have yet to actually test one out. To get a good idea of how a low-cost, high performance power supply stacks up the competition would surely have been a beneficial experience. Unfortunately, FSP Group was nowhere to be found. After following the map to their booth like pirates searching for buried treasure, we ended up stumbling onto a pretzel stand. Unless FSP Group has turned from a huge electronics conglomerate to a lowly pretzel manufacturer overnight, I think it is safe to say that either they did not show up, or the map was wrong. We may still bump into FSP Group before all is said and done, but today wasn’t the day. The next stop we hit was Tagan. We had been impressed with the build quality of Tagan power supplies after seeing them in person at various locations, and wanted to get a first hand account. Tagan’s reach in the power supply industry seems to be pretty far spread. From what we understand, there are actually several ingenious patents in Tagan’s name that are currently being implemented in many of their competitor’s products. For instance, many power supplies have a 20+4 pin motherboard connector. This allows the power supply to be compatible with more motherboards, and I am told Tagan holds the patent to the little clip-on groove things that hold the two connectors together. In any case, Tagan had their normal product lineup on display in addition to a couple of other new things.