Yes, it's that time of year again when everyone in tech does just enough to ease themselves back into the working world after Christmas before jetting off to Vegas to see all the shiny new toys on offer at CES.

Although, this year's show is looking a little more Primark than Armani given the current economic climate - iPod docks aren't really an essential purchase when money's tight, after all.

Keynote kickoff

The first sign that things aren't looking so hot is the complete lack of competition between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to try and out do each other in the keynote stakes.

Steve Jobs has already excused himself from making the Macworld keynote speech 500 miles away in San Francisco - which in the past has been almost deliberately timed to steal the show from Bill Gates' annual CES announcement.

This would be great, but 2008 was Gates last keynote - he's handing the keys over to Steve Ballmer from now on. But despite having no distractions to compete with it's looking like there'll be nothing ground breaking announced. Ballmer may surprise everyone with confirmation of the long talked about Zune phone, but it's looking more like Windows 7 and the promise it'll be better received than Vista.

There are also reports that attendance could be down as much as two thirds, with only 50,000 said to be turning up this year compared to the usual 150,000. It's too early to say what the final figures will be, but the streets of Las Vegas certainly seem a little quiet compared to previous years.

Sneaky surprises

That's not to say there won't still be new, fun stuff to play with - just that it'll be harder to find it in among all the iPod accessories. Sony has been teasing everyone over Christmas with hints that it might be entering the small, cheap laptop market - although it remains to be seen if it will be properly cheap, or just cheap by Sony standards.

There's also word that Palm is going to try and make (another) come back with a Linux based device and there's sure to be loads of other handheld devices to drool over plus the usual display of world's largest TVs, mobile phones, laptops, PDAs. And not forgetting robots, of course - when money's tight, it surely makes sense to spend what little you have on a robo-pal that only requires the odd AA to munch on every now and again and has no recognised labour union.