NETGEAR's New Goods (01/08/2007 2:00 PM)
Normally meeting at 9AM on a Sunday would be out of the question (as in: insane), but this is CES and Netgear’s press conference was standing room only. Being part of the team, I was able to secure a front row seat for the festivities.
New Chief Marketing Officer Debbie Williams and Vivek Pathela (VP of Marketing) were our emcees. As part of their introduction, I learned Netgear is one of the fastest growing companies in the US, with 50 new products introduced last year distributed throughout more than 16,000 retail outlets.
Of course, the purpose of the gathering was to introduce new products:
Dual-mode Cordless Phone with Skype
Building on the success of Netgear’s original Skype phone, this new DECT model connects to both a landline and to Skype (via the Internet) allowing us to make or receive calls from either service. The handset includes access to the Skype niceties one would expect, including a contact list and voicemail.
Bonus: Add three more handsets for whole-home coverage.
Available now, for $199.
Storage Central Turbo
Netgear intends to help us organize our growing collection of multimedia with this NAS enclosure. Pop in two SATA drives of any capacity for disk mirroring via Z-SAN.
Bonus: Integrated Gigabit Ethernet for super speedy transfers.
Available early 2007, for $249.
Digital Entertainer HD
Much more than a traditional “media extender,” the EVA8000 brings all sorts of content from all sorts of places to your television... in high definition video (1080p) with digital audio. Stream photos, music, video, RSS feeds to the tube from a computer (PC and Mac), external (USB or networked) hard drive, or via the internet.
Bonus: PC client software has DVR functionality to record and stream television programming for those with a tuner card.
Available early 2007, for $349.