The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) brings 140,000 people to Las Vegas every year. It is a showcase for new trends in technology and product announcements.

I was reading about how Microsoft announced that the Windows 8 operating system is going to be 'application driven' meaning that when you start up your computer or tablet PC, it will look like a smartphone with the tile icons for your favorite applications. Drilling down, it's possible to get to your folders and stored document files.

This is the last year Microsoft is going to participate in the CES, in the sense of using it as a forum for making big product announcements. Apple Computer dropped out after last year, not so much to do with Steve Jobs dying, but rather that they want to make their announcements on their own schedule. Same reason given for Microsoft.

One of the notable items at this year's show was the extremely thin big screen TV set - the thickness of a stack of four credit cards. But the big buzz this year was about 'smart' appliances, meaning that your refrigerator could send you a text message that you need to buy milk, or the cheese is past its sell-by date. You would also be able to use the Internet to turn on your oven or your dishwasher.

I'm trying to figure out how much work you have to do on the front end to educate the refrigerator about its contents so it can track them. Maybe milk cartons are going to have one of those scrambly printed boxes on the side encrypted with the expiration date so you can scan everything in as you put away your groceries.

We already have a smart electric meter in our house, and could go on the Internet to turn the thermostat so the air conditioning would come on and cool down the house when we are coming back from vacation, and ten years ago it would have sounded far-fetched. It's also used to 'read' the meter remotely, which is why the power company put them in.

But I'm not going to go looking for a texting refrigerator any time soon.