(This is the final article in a four part series of articles about what it’s like to be at CES. The final post is written by Sr. Editor Shawn Chen, who has the most experience out of all of us attending tradeshows)

Monster booths. Just no other way to describe it. CES has some of the largest booths around, but you’d expect that as the exhibitors try to impress press and corporate buyers (Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc) alike. So, if you’re a regular normal kinda guy and walking into these booths, it’s hard not to want to grab something or just seal it off for yourself as your own personal man-cave.

It’s really hard, it’s dang hard, to walk into these booths and not think “Welcome to my crib!” and just imagine yourself living all high and crazy with some of the coolest gear around.

Of course, unless you want a whole bunch of security guards jumping on you, you fight the urge. You understand that all the stuff here is laid out to try to attract you to visit, eye-candy and billboard marketing at it’s best. Look, watch, come on in…that’s what these booths are about.

Not unlike previous years, everywhere you go, you’ll be surrounded by the warm glow of plasmas and LCDs. Not just any dinky 42″ types…oh no…we’re talkin’ full blown 60″+. It’s go big, or go home. Samsung’s booth is the best example of this. You walk in, and there’s no mistaking it, they’re pushing the thinnest LCD you’ve seen, silvery, shiney goodness. The booth from entry to exit is blue and shiney, lest you forget their corporate colors.

Did I mention the booth is big? Floor to ceiling big. Probably 3 or 4 stories high and mounted top to bottom in screens. Pretty, doesn’t describe it.

Bright and lively…then you come to Sony’s booth.

Their design needs to be refreshed. Seriously. It’s dark, but the black is over done. Sony’s always been conservative in their booth designs, they go for classic white on black. I get it though, they’re going for the professional look contrasted with stark white lighting. Things pop out sure, but Sony…it’s getting old. Where the other booths are noisy and sometimes too noisy, there’s definitely life and energy pulsing throughout. For Sony’s booth, it’s quiet and a good environment to look at stuff, but there’s just a warmth and an energy that’s missing. Pump some Crystal Method next time guys and try to kick up the energy.

That being said, there’s still some freakin’ cool stuff at Sony’s booth. Like most big-name exhibitors, Sony’s had movie theaters built into their booth.

Come back from these events and go shopping at your local Best Buy/Fry’s and you’ll just feel like the screens are smaller somehow. Kinda like going back home after that summer at camp when you got your first growth spurt. You know? Things just feel familiar and smaller at the same time.

Check out the hardcore 3D camera that Sony was showing:

Something tells me that going free-hand camera style in 3D is going to be really tough. I’m looking forward to NAB to see the harness system that folks will develop for this thing. Jeez…it’s gotta be painful.

There were tributes too, like a few to MJ. The one at Sony’s booth stood out and it wasn’t overly promotive of “This Is It”, very nicely done in my opinion.

But it wasn’t always booth size or unique products that exhibitors used to get you in. Sometimes, they just hit you on your emotional level. Our other articles covered the “ooglers”, and we’ll stay away from the topic of “booth personalities”, but man, the cars:

Solar powered (Sharp’s booth), Lambos, Ferarri’s, and okay…Chevy Volt (which kinda almost doesn’t belong in that grouping). Coolness enough to grab your attention.

There were smaller booths as well, 10×10’s or 20×20’s (in feet). Those were very typical. The thing here is you find exhibitors in those booths were absolutely more energetic and interested in talking to you. Perhaps they were more desperate for the business or perhaps they were just friendlier people, I don’t know, but we sure enjoyed speaking with as many of those as we could. Of course, there were those that were too busy eating or doing something else to pay any attention to people walking by the booth.

We did find, while the majority of exhibitors were more than willing to speak with us, others couldn’t give a crap. They were there looking for distributors, agents, and trying to make sales. That’s cool with us, as some of us did that job before, so we totally understand. But, we always tried to give a crap when folks from the press or bloggers stopped in to talk to us and anyone else for that matter.

Some of these exhibitors weren’t prepared to answer questions and that was okay too, it’s the fact that they didn’t make an effort to get us the answer to a simple question that could be answered on their product spec sheets (power consumption or other softball questions like that), that really irked us.

Okay..okay…enough soap-boxing, or as my favorite history teacher says, pontificating.

So from the show, what was my favorite thing? I’m a sucker for things like this:

I dunno…just a working phone that size seems cool to me. I mean you can keep your touch screens in your pockets, when I make a call, I really make a statement…over compensation.

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