Three things I saw at CES that I'd actually buy

The Archos FamilyPad has a 13.3-inch screen and a list price of $299.

(Credit: Rick Broida/CNET)

LAS VEGAS--So I've pretty much wrapped up my visit to CES 2013, and you know what? I enjoyed it. Most of my fellow bloggers and journalists will tell you it's a crowded, noisy, soul-sucking waste of time with nothing good to see, but I discovered some pretty cool stuff this week.

Stuff I'd actually buy, in fact. And as most of you well know, it takes a lot for me to unshackle my credit card from my wallet. Here are three things I saw at CES that I'm looking forward to owning:

1. Archos FamilyPad CES is a sea of tablets, most of them hard to distinguish from one another. The Android-powered Archos FamilyPad caught my eye with its ginormous 13.3-inch screen, which means it's not really intended to be conveniently portable, but rather to be something that lives on kitchen counters or sits in laps by the TV. (Heck, it could be the TV.)

I looked, I liked, and then I waited for the bad news. Surely a tablet of this size would cost $500-$600. But guess what? It's $299. That's less than the price of any iPad. Or a 10-inch Google Nexus. The display resolution is perhaps a bit anemic at 1,280x800 pixels, but it does appear to b... [Read more]