While some think of smartbooks as a new category of device, they are actually an evolutionary progression from smartphones – a smartphone in a notebook form factor. There’s no hard drive in the IdeaPad U1; instead there’s a pop-up USB with up to 16GB of memory. There is also 8 hours of battery life for playing HD video – ten hours if you’re just going to be surfing the web via AT&T’s 3G network.

The IdeaPad U1 Hybrid is a notebook with a snap-off screen that is actually a tablet device. Both the notebook and the tablet have their own processors, operating systems, batteries and WiFi. So if you are going to a meeting, just bring the full-screen tablet for taking notes, going online or linking to videos. Then when you get back to your desk, snap the tablet back on and you have your full-size keyboard for typing as you would normally. How cool is that? Cool enough to win Best in Show in the Computers and Hardware category.

I also loved what I saw at Kodak’s booth. Kodak has three products launching this spring that caught my eye and the eyes of the CES judges. The Kodak Slice is a touchscreen camera that can hold up to 5,000 photos on 2GB of memory. The photos are backed up onto your computer, so you can carry your entire photo collection with you without fear of losing it if you lose your camera. Kodak’s EasyShare is the latest generation of digital photo frame on the market – but get this: you can drag your photos from your Kodak Slice wirelessly onto the Kodak EasyShare regardless of where it is. So you can take a photo of Junior in Raleigh, N.C., and immediately have the photo appear on Grandma’s photo frame in Calgary, Canada. I liked the Kodak PlaySport underwater video camera – with a price point of $149. It’s waterproof and at a great price, and includes up to 32G of memory card storage for easy transfer of video files from under the sea to your PC or Mac. It is great to see Kodak back in the game.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention the most amazing smartphone innovation at CES from Sony Ericsson – the Xperia X10. The X10 is the most powerful Android-based smartphone on the market with a 1-GB Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 8GB of onboard storage, and a high-end 8.1 megapixel camera. The touchscreen is huge, but the overall phone size is about the same as the original iPhone. But it’s the Nexus UX (for User Experience) software on top of the Android OS that makes it really special.

The Xperia X10’s two showcase apps are Timescape, which provides a time-driven view of your sms, email, photos, Facebook, and Twitter – so you get a sense of everything going on in your world in real time, or at any given point in time you want to go back to, such as New Year’s Eve. Mediascape does the same type of aggregation of your media. But wait – there’s more. The camera functionality of the Xperia X10 features face recognition so all you need to do is tag someone once. Then whenever you take another picture of that person, the Xperia X10 will automatically recognize that person and organize the photos with your contacts. Click on the person’s face again and your X10 will automatically bring up the person’s contact info, Twitter account, Facebook page, and any other photos of them. The Xperia X10 is what we’ve been waiting for from Sony Ericsson.