Set in the United States' most unlikely city, the Las Vegas-based event took second place to Jobs' MacWorld announcement in San Francisco, dominating the news cycle and creating an Internet buzz that persists even though the product won't be available until June.

Imagine, a new cell phone putting a gigantic electronics conference put on hold!

The odds that I am going to spend between $500 and $600 (depending on the model) for a telephone are precisely zero. But what intrigued me at first about the iPhone was its computing potential.

What I've been hoping that Apple would produce all along is a hand-held computer that runs its OS X operating system, one with a superb screen (as the iPhone seems to have) and the potential for running third-party software programs (which the iPhone apparently lacks).

So is the iPhone a computer or a telephone? If more computer than telephone, I might still be interested, but Jobs is precise on this point, saying that the device should be thought of as "reinventing the phone."

When asked about third-party software, he answered that you can't have rogue programs interfering with telephone calls. That means Apple will keep tight control over what runs on the iPhone. In that sense the new device is much closer to the iPod than to a PC. And in fact, it incorporates the music player's features.

I have all the respect in the world for Steve Jobs, but I'll believe he has reinvented the telephone when I can pick an iPhone up and get a crisp, reliable signal every time, with no dropped calls in the mix. And I think I'll have to wait a lot longer than June to see that day come, no matter how gorgeous this little phone might be.

As to the Consumer Electronics Show, I checked what came out of it during its four-day run, Jan. 8-11. The kinds of gadgets displayed there -- televisions, cameras, mobile phones and so on -- is expected to reach $155 billion this year, a $10 billion gain over 2006.

All this plays to the continuing convergence trend that we've been hearing about for years now: uniting digital devices throughout the home, from huge TVs to hand-held music players.

Thus Palm's announcement that users of some of its Treo cell phones will be able to watch television on their phones' minute screens and control their home TV with the devices. That's via software from Sling Media, which allows you to transfer anything you're watching on a home TV to the hand-held device. Palm's new Treo 750 retails for $200 less than the iPhone.

Of course, all that video eats up storage space, and the quest for larger disks continues to push manufacturers forward. I've been waiting to see who would release the first terabyte drive -- that's 1,000 gigabytes -- and it turns out to be Hitachi. The new drive should hit the stores this quarter, edging out Seagate's soon-to-be-released entry into this rarefied niche. The Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 should check in at about $400.

And since we're spending in record amounts, how about $1,200 for a DVD player, this one a hybrid that will handle the Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats? Now you can play true high-definition DVDs in a single device, avoiding the format wars that have hung over this technology and reminding consumers of the dust-up between VHS and Betamax back in the paleolithic days of video cassette recorders. LG's BH-100 should appear at major electronics outlets in February.

IRobot, the maker of the ingenious vacuuming robot, Roomba, has released a product called Create, which should be turning more heads than it is. IRobot (irobot.com) is betting that robots will attract the next generation of hackers. Create is all about building a machine using the provided wheels, motors and connectors, but relying on its owners to write their own programs for the resulting device. Hacking machine intelligence? It's only a beginning, but my guess is that creative ideas galore will spring from this impulse.

And here's a product that might improve your life just a little. Powercast has developed a way to beam power over short distances. The continuous signal, which might be placed in your living room or your office, charges up any nearby battery-powered device equipped with the tiny Powercast receiver. Because I plug in a phone and two hand-held computers every night to keep them operating, I'd welcome a technology that let me forget about batteries altogether. Available by year's end, the concept might not be flashy, but it offers a benefit that could be more useful than yet another upgrade to your TV screen.

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