On the road again: Las Vegas/CES, day 3

Today's rhythm was the same as yesterday's: work, CES, work, out, work. We hit the South Hall of LVCC today and saw a fair amount of cool stuff, though nothing that really blew us away. We hit our first netbooks, and our take is decidedly mixed. We tried multiple Asus offerings, and after typing on them for several seconds, we both concluded there was no way we'd personally want them. The HP Mini family, by contrast, was interesting, in large part due to its keyboard's larger size and more sensible layout. We also found the HP Media Server of interest.

Dinner tonight was flat-out great, courtesy of Robuchon, where we had the special tasting menu featuring black truffles. Every dish was a winner. Wow.

After the meal, we worked a bit and then headed to the Bellagio to see O. I've seen this Cirque du Soleil show five or six times now, and tonight, like every other time, it was magical.

I wish I could afford to take all my friends and loved ones to Vegas so they could eat this meal and see this show.

If in my books I can provide moments of magic anywhere near as powerful as those in O, I will have achieved a very great deal indeed.

Apple's new iMacs

As tech geeks everywhere know, yesterday Apple announced its revamped iMacs. At one level, the announcement is a yawn: the iMacs remain all-in-one units that cost more than PCs and run Mac OS X. So what, big deal.

Except that they're beautiful: sleek, small footprint, aluminum and glass, and all the computing power most people need. Everyone knows that Apple excels at physical design, and with the iMacs they've done it again.

I don't understand why other PC vendors can't design equally attractive units. Sure, great design usually translates into units that command premium prices, but every major vendor now offers premium units, so why not well-designed systems?

I use MacBook Pro and Dell XPS notebooks every day. Both were top-of-the-line the day I got them, and they cost about the same. The Mac is simply more pleasant to use, feels slightly to significantly faster depending on the application I'm running, looks niftier, runs cooler, and weighs two pounds less.

I wonder how big Apple's market share has to become before Dell and HP and Gateway and Lenovo will start paying attention.