CES wrapped its opening week in Vegas with a flood of flashy reveals—AI-infused phones, rollable laptops, earbuds with live translation, and a tidal wave of “intelligent” everything. From Xiaomi’s slick new flagship to Lenovo’s solar-powered Yoga concept, the show floor looked like a playground for the future. But if you’ve worked in tech as long as I have, you start to ask a different question: Are we solving real problems, or just chasing sizzle?

Don’t get me wrong—some of this gear is impressive. Real-time voice-to-video AI interaction? That’s not just cool—it has serious implications for accessibility, education, even remote healthcare. But then you see companies rolling out the “world’s slimmest phone” like that’s going to feed a family or fix a workflow. When you’re helping small businesses run lean and stay competitive, you care a lot less about flexing OLED displays and a lot more about battery life, uptime, and whether the tech works every time.

For my fam out there running clinics, shops, mobile services, or consultancies—here’s the takeaway: don’t let the show floor fool you into buying future problems. Focus on gear that fits your business, scales with you, and won’t require three firmware patches just to print an invoice. That might mean skipping the sexy new “pro” device and going with something tested, stable, and a hell of a lot cheaper to maintain.

We’re not just architects of infrastructure—we’re stewards of sanity. Our job isn’t to install the flashiest toys. It’s to keep things running when the Wi-Fi drops, when the cloud hiccups, or when someone spills coffee on the modem. CES is fun. It’s full of promise. But when you get back to your shop, your office, your server rack—remember: it’s not about what’s next. It’s about what works now.