Wandering around CES 2009's many halls, there's one piece of games technology you see that keeps cropping up in the oddest of places. It's not the Wiimote, either. It's the Rock Band or Guitar Hero drum kits. Wherever you go, ones not too far away...

With the fact everyone and their dog seems to be buying a netbook, and eeePC seems to making up a fair chunk of that, you could almost forgive ASUS for going light on hardcore motherboards and gaming rigs and focusing solely on the small boys...

NVIDIA devoted a reasonably equal amount of space to all its technologies - except for 3D where they went huge. Punters could check out Guitar Hero, Far Cry 2, World of Warcraft, even Tomb Raider in glorious 3d-o-vision.

The way the tech works is a little convoluted. The glasses have a IR hub that connects to your PC via USB. NVIDIA says a full charge will last around 40 hours...

Lian Li were one of the original gods of case tech, with wickedly indulgent PC housings finding their way into many a gamer's household over the years.

Their CES 2009 space was mainly lined with anonymous matte black boxes. Faux Hi-Fi style models for media centre usage prevailed alongside more conventional oblong numbers for desktop use. There was also a stack of conventional games/power-user PC units, as well as their new number...

Okay, this outfit is nuts. I realise that liquid cooling is nothing new, but these guys are heavy duty psychos for it. You just know the guys who design and make this gear - which previously had heavy duty applications before they started setting it up for home and personal use - are all rocket scientists.

They wanted mainly to talk about this little baby, the Domino ALC, apparently selling for under $100 in the US...

Intel didn't exactly keep quiet about the power of the i7 Core, but their focus seemed to be heavily on mobility and internet TV.

Things kicked off with a seemingly humble showcase vehicle...

There's no shortage of TVs on display at CES, but the one that has taken our breath away (at least from what we've seen so far) is Samsung's Luxia series...

They don't say the "i"(phone) word around Palm, but heck the company isn't down yet.

They've announced the Pre, a touch-based phone with a brand new operating system called (imaginatively) "Palm webOS"...

The Sony keynote just concluded... amongst the chat about the revival of 3D film was the news that Electronic Arts has joined Home, as well as 2000 hours of MTV programming. EA will be offering a casino as well apparently. Perfect timing with today's economy.

Why are we talking about this? Because there was no rabbits pulled out of the hat, really. Tom Hanks and Usher were on stage, but for now it's business as usual @ Sony.

Verdict: anticlimactic.

As I type this, dry arid countryside rolls past my bus window as we roar down Route 66 towards Las Vegas, aka Sin City, Lost Wages, and 100 other lurid tags. Overfed livestock stare absently at the traffic, but my fellow passengers paid for their tickets too, so no complaints.

Why? Because CES 2009 is happening, from tomorrow through to Sunday. We'll be providing updates from the show floor daily, trying to highlight upcoming tech that's useful, interesting and downright stupid. Games has a healthy presence at CES as well, and we'll be trying to get our greasy hands on the latest fun stuff.

If you've got something you know will be on show or even suspect will be worth looking out for, let us know in the comments and we'll get on it.

CES official site