4. Hardcore Business IT Products?

I found plenty of exceptions to Comdex' alleged "Business-only" focus, but I'll just single out three for special mention. All of these products had been introduced before Comdex, but they were new to me!

BestSoft's Action Stick looks like a microphone stand but is actually a game controller. It can control eight actions by following various body movements. I watched it demoed with a fighting game and you can get quite a workout using it. Maim your opponent and lose weight,too!

TERK's VR-1 TV Volume regulator does what it says, keeping volume steady when you change channels or commercials come on. It uses "Volume Logic technology" from Octiv - whose founders come from the pro audio industry. MSRP is around 50 bucks and should be available at your favorite consumer electronics retailer. Don't ask me what this has to do business-to-business IT, but if it works as advertised, I may be giving my wife one for Christmas!

The last product in the why-is-this-at-Comdex categroy is the DreamFree EEGfree Digital Brain-charging Instrument. The EEGfree looks like a set of slimmed down Virtual Reality goggles and uses a combination of blinking LEDs and audio that DreamFree says can temporarily alter your brainwaves. It has seven basic modes including Concentration, Sleep and Relaxation (sorry, nothing that will make your, um, member grow... at least I don't think so). And if that's not enough it has a serial port that allows you to download more customized programs from a supplied CD or website.

The reason this product caught my eye was that the booth was constantly swamped with a feeding-frenzy of people, many of whom wanted to buy the samples being demoed! They'll have to wait to part with the $300 or so that is the expected price, since DreamFree's main mission at the show was to sign up distributors for the product.

And that, folks, about wraps it up for me from Las Vegas. Maybe this all won't be here next year, but all my crystal ball will say is "Ask Again Later".