All Eyes Were on Tablets at CES in Las Vegas

I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Technology Report, from voaspecialenglish.com | facebook.com/voalearningenglish Tablet computers were the stars of this year's Consumer Electronics Show. The international gathering in Las Vegas, Nevada, is the world's biggest technology trade show. Companies launched more than eighty handheld computers similar to the popular Apple iPad. Tara Dunion from the Consumer Electronics Association is a spokeswoman for the show which ended January ninth. She said twenty eleven is going to be the year of the tablet. There are going to be many different kinds of products available. Examples include a new Wi-Fi version of the Galaxy Tab made by Samsung of South Korea. The Taiwanese company Asus announced four new tablets for this year. One of them can connect to a keyboard to make it more like a laptop computer. Another has a keyboard that slides out.Both of these tablets use Google's new Android Honeycomb operating system. Motorola, based in the United States, also demonstrated that system on its new Xoom tablet.Reporter Arash Aalaei from VOA's Persian News Network was at the show. He says more and more companies are offering 3-D images on devices like tablets and notebook computers. There are 3-D Blu-ray players, cameras, camcorders and printers. He looked at the newest three-dimensional televisions, including some that require no special eyewear. He said Toshiba introduced a new line of televisions that enable users to watch 3-D without wearing the glasses.Arash Aalaei also looked at some of the different products marketed as green technology at the show. He said many companies are selling products that run on solar energy or wind energy to recharge cell phones or other small devices.And, speaking of phones, Tara Dunion says smartphones keep getting smarter. She said "super phones" have fourth-generation chips in them that permit immediate access to videos and photos. Popular products at the Consumer Electronics Show also included Internet TVs and devices to stream video onto existing high-definition sets. More than one hundred twenty thousand people attended the show.One big announcement involved the British company ARM and the Microsoft Windows operating system. Microsoft said the next version of Windows will work on devices that use ARM processors. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. (Adapted from a radio program broadcast 10Jan2011)