Maybe it's because the presidential political season has finally really started, with Iowa caucausing last week and New Hampshire holding the nation's first primaries on Tuesday, but I can't get the political term "coattails" out of my head, thinking how it applies to this year's CES and the new crop of printers and related gadgets. The political definition of the term refers to the effect of a popular candidate for higher office sweeping along others of the same or similar persuasion on voting day. And the comparison this year is with the Zink/Polaroid partnership "heading the ticket", so to speak, and others, notably the $299 PRINTSTIK portable printerfrom PlanOn, helping bolster the printer portion of the CES buzz as well as they themselves benefitting from an overall piqued interest in the category. A great blog post from Al Sacco at the CIO Advice Blog exemplifies the effect.
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