This year’s CES, which starts this evening with a keynote by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, tells us a story of convergence and heightened competition. Technology is infiltrating more and more parts of our daily lives, far beyond the electronic gadgets we routinely use: PCs, smart phones, tablet computers and all of the other networked devices that form the heart of today’s communications and collaboration. We’re embedding increasingly powerful electronic brains into our kitchens, our cars, our bodies and the larger environment — just about everything else that can benefit from added intelligence — and we’re connecting it all via digital networks. CES celebrates these trends.

Convergence and competition are nothing new in this field; when digital technology is the core of a business, companies have a way of invading what had been perceived as other people’s turf. It came as no shock to anyone who was paying attention some years ago when companies like Hewlett Packard started selling digital cameras. So it’s no big surprise this year to see Vizio, a company that has risen from what looked like nowhere to become a major seller of televisions, moving into the adjacent business of tablet computers and even smart phones. For the same reason, it’s not a shock to see Vizio (and every other TV maker) putting all kinds of Internet-related features into tomorrow’s televisions.

Vizio and other TV makers are trying to do what so many others have done: blur the formerly distinct lines between devices, in part by creating ecosystems around their products. If you are the center of an ecosystem, where others create products that support what you’re doing, you have an advantage. Two examples: OnLive, a Silicon Valley company that offers a sophisticated online gaming platform, is putting its system into Vizio’s new TVs; and Panasonic has embedded Skype into some of its TVs (announced at last year’s CES).

Vizio’s tablet, like so many others that have become one of the show’s themes this year, will be based on Google’s Android operating system, which is surging in use by hardware makers around the world. Vizio specializes in selling solid but not spectacular hardware for a very fair price, and its move into the computer business is a wake-up call for companies like Samsung, which got an early start in the Android tablet business with its Galaxy Tab. An early start in a nascent trend, however, is just about meaningless unless you’re Apple, when you almost literally create the trend (as with the iPad).

Another big trend for CES will be 3-D televisions. Years ago, flat-panel TVs were everywhere at the event, long before they were affordable for people’s homes. But technology seems to be accelerating these days, and in the near future it won’t cost much for manufacturers to add 3-D capabilities. Look for this to be a part of every new set before long. An important element in this adoption will be “passive glasses” that will replace the bulkier “active-shutter” glasses that have been required to see 3-D television.

I’ve been to several keynotes by Microsoft’s Ballmer, and while he’s often been on the mark about what technologies will be big in the coming year, his company has been way behind the curve in doing them. This is especially true in tablet computers and mobile phones. In the latter category, Microsoft has made huge strides with its Windows Phone 7 operating system (I’ll be reviewing one of these phones soon), but it’s still way behind in the tablet world. Rumors have it that Ballmer may announce a TV system based on some version of the Windows operating system. The TV forays by Google and Apple have not been impressive so far. So Microsoft has a real chance to make inroads in a market where it needs to play.

Some of the most intriguing things to see at CES are not from major companies. I make it a practice to visit booths in the show’s outer fringes, where booth space is more affordable for the exhibitors and hungry upstarts often show things that turn into big deals later on. I’ll let you know what I find.

Meanwhile, if you’re a gadget freak, there’s an unbelievable supply of breaking news from CES. And now, back to the madness.

Disclosures: Kodak has paid some of my travel expenses to attend CES, and I’m speaking on a Kodak-sponsored panel (and receiving an honorarium) later this week. In addition, I spoke to the CES Board of Industry Leaders in 2009, and received an honorarium for that as well.

But the floodgates are opening, and it’s safe to say that 2011 will see a huge number of tablets hitting the market, and not just Android and iPad models. Gadget lovers will see a cornucopia of choice. Many others may see an uncontrolled flood of devices. Either way, this is going to get interesting in a big way.

The Android market is going to be particularly noisy, especially when Google releases version 3.0 of the operating system, which the company says will be the first version that’s tablet-ready in a serious way. That hasn’t stopped hardware companies from selling tablets based on current versions — I own one, and I review it in an accompanying piece — but Google’s caution is at least worth noting.

Android isn’t the only contender. Consider, among others:

• RIM, maker of the Blackberry phones, is coming out with its “PlayBook” tablet, a model that RIM promises will be “everything the real Internet offers” — a dig at Apple’s refusal to allow Adobe Flash to run on the iPad or iPhone.
• Microsoft, which hasn’t gotten much traction with its Windows Tablet PCs, which run full-blown Windows operating systems on which users interact with a stylus. But the company and its hardware partners are expected to move more seriously into the iPad-like tablet market with updated software.
• Even Linux is getting into the act, with Ubuntu — the most popular distribution of desktop Linux — adding features for gesture-based tablets. The rumor mill has an Ubuntu-powered tablet launching early in 2011. Keep in mind that this is only a rumor at the moment, but it’s a certainty that Linux tablets are on the way.

The sizes of tablets will vary widely, too. Apple only sells a 9.7-inch model (which I predict will evolve into a more varied line), but other tablet makers are ranging up and down the scale.

But anyone who thinks all this activity is bad news for Apple is mistaken, at least in the short run, because Apple jumped early into this market and combines hardware and software better than its would-be rivals. Moreover, the iPad will surely see an update. Apple’s lead in this space is not trivial, though (as I’ve said again and again) there are excellent reasons to stay away from the iPad if you want a tablet that’s smaller or a tablet that lets you install the apps you want, as opposed to solely the ones Apple allows.

Look for prices to plummet, at least for non-iPad devices. The Android market, in particular, is going to be absolutely cutthroat as vendors seek a sweet spot of function and price.

Many of the new tablets will be shown at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I’ll be there, and will let you know what I find.

And, yet … While I can recommend it in many ways, I have some lingering reservations.

First, let’s look at the Tab’s positive features. At the top of that list, from my perspective, is its size: almost three inches smaller (in diagonal screen measurement) than the iPad. It weighs half a pound less than the iPad, and is easy to hold for long periods with one hand. (It fits nicely into a jacket pocket, but with the padded case even that becomes a bit of a stretch, figuratively and literally.) In area, the Tab is roughly half the size of the iPad. But it has a 1024-by-600 screen resolution compared with the iPad’s 1024-by-768, which means that it’s displaying about 615,000 pixels compared with about 785,000 on the iPad — still less to see but not nearly as much as the difference in screen sizes suggests.

The Tab is available around the world as a mobile device. It has Wi-Fi, of course, and Samsung promises vaguely to release a Wi-Fi-only version at some point, but it’s currently sold in the U.S. mostly through the mobile-phone companies. The 3G radios differ from model to model, since the 3G networks differ among the carriers, which remains one of the most backward and progress-thwarting aspects of American mobile service. Mine is a T-Mobile version. I bought it without a service contract at the full $600 price. (Several retailers have dropped the Verizon pay-as-you-go model to $500, according to several news reports, but you have to sign up for a month of wireless service plus a setup fee.)

Google insists that its Android 2.2 operating system, which powers the Tab, is not suitable for tablets. Samsung has tweaked Android in some clever ways, and from my perspective it’s just fine for a first version of the hardware.

The apps that come standard with the Tab are good enough, but I’ve ended up replacing many of them with apps from the Android market, among other places. For example, I prefer Opera’s mobile browser rather than the one that Samsung installed. If you’re a heavy Google user, especially for e-mail, Android devices are excellent, period; I’m not much of a Gmail user, and while the e-mail client software that Samsung bundles with the Tab is OK, I prefer an open-source package called K9, which I also use on my Android phone. A key benefit of using Android, of course, is that I’m not bound by Apple’s control-freakery in the software I can choose. I just wish the app developers would take as much care with their Android versions as they do with their iOS software; the differences are often striking.

Speaking of phones, one of the huge annoyances with the Tab is what Samsung allowed the U.S. mobile carriers to do: They’ve disabled the phone part of the standard Android system. The carriers want you to subscribe to an entirely new data plan, just as AT&T and Apple have contrived to do with the iPad, despite the fact that Tabs sold in other countries work just fine as phones; of course, the way people do this is with headsets, as a 7-inch tablet looks pretty weird if you’re holding it next to your face. The carriers’ brazenly anti-customer stance is unsurprising, but it’s a shame that Samsung is unapologetic about it. The hacking community is hard at work on a fix for this, of course.

Another annoyance is the charge-and-sync connector that comes with the Tab. It appears to be proprietary, just as the iPad and iPhone connectors are. Samsung’s U.S. public relations firm denied this in an e-mail, but didn’t respond to my follow-up queries about whether third-party companies need Samsung’s permission to create devices using the Tab’s connector port, and many reviews of the Tab have called the connector proprietary, with no apparent push-back from Samsung.

I get good battery life with the Tab, though not as much as the larger (and therefore more room for a battery) iPad offers. I’ve averaged around eight hours of normal use, though I don’t have the 3G radio turned on. This means I don’t typically charge it for several days. When I watch videos on airplanes, however, the battery doesn’t last nearly as long, but it does better than my smart phone in that regard.

The two cameras in the Tab — one front and one rear — are OK, but nothing special. That doesn’t bother me, because buying a smart phone or tablet for the camera seems bizarre in any case. I hope Samsung will soon offer better video-calling software than what’s currently installed on the Tab, because this is another area where Android trails Apple.

My favorite activity with the Tab is reading — books, that is. I have several e-book apps including Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook, and they are just as good on Android as on the iPhone, iPad and other platforms. The screen size is just about perfect for books.

So why would I not want to recommend the Tab without reservation? There will soon be a host of new Android tablets on the market, and they’ll cost much less than this one (unless Samsung responds by drastically lowering its own price). Early indications are that they won’t be as slick or have the overall quality of the Tab. But a tablet that costs half (or less) and is more than half as good will be a compelling proposition for lots of customers.

I’m not sorry I bought this device, other than having the standard early adopter’s regrets at paying a higher price than what I could surely find a few months from now. That’s the nature of gadgets, of pretty much all technology.

My spouse bought an iPad earlier last year. She told me (and isn’t the only one who’s said this) that she wishes she’d waited for this tablet. That’s only one reason why I’m sure that Apple will, sooner or later, release a tablet computer that’s smaller than the current iPad. For the same reason that Apple sells iPods of various sizes and capabilities, the tablet space — which bleeds into the smart-phone arena and vice versa — will be about different devices serving different needs. Samsung has found a smart niche, for the moment.

Now, the Galaxy Tab isn’t going to dislodge Apple from its high ground, at least in terms of market share. The iPad has a lead on the competition, and Apple has created a huge ecosystem around its mobile devices — a smorgasbord of hardware and software add-ons that Samsung and other providers of Android-based devices haven’t begun to match.

But if you were looking for a choice, you have one now. And in a few months you’ll have many, many more choices.

The most notable feature of the Tab is its size: almost three inches smaller (in diagonal screen measurement) than the iPad. That translates to a much smaller overall display, about half the size overall. But the Tab has a 1024-by-600 screen resolution compared with the iPad’s 1024-by-768, which means that it’s displaying about 615,000 pixels compared with about 785,000 on the iPad — still less to see but not as big a difference as the difference in screen sizes suggests.

Size matters in mobile devices, and smaller is usually better. The iPad is 50 percent heavier than the Tab, about a half a pound more, and that makes a big difference if you’re holding it for long periods.

In fact, the Tab’s size strikes me as nearly ideal. I’m using it, among other purposes, as an e-book reader and video player, ideal for travel and for around-town activities. It’s definitely not ideal for everything, as I’ll explain when I do a more thorough review in the next few days, but no device can do everything you want; tradeoffs are always part of this game.

I suspect that Samsung will sell a lot of these, especially if it cuts the too-high price its resellers — mobile phone operators — are currently charging ($600 for a tablet without a data plan; typically around $400 with a two-year data plan). And some early anecdotal evidence supports my hunch. At a conference in Phoenix yesterday, two people told me they owned iPads but wished they’d waited.

Verizon will start selling the iPad on Oct. 28, starting at $499. It can’t access Verizon’s network directly, but the carrier will sell an add-on gadget for about $130 that bridges the gap, with the same $20 data plan.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a rare appearance on Apple’s earnings conference call on Monday. He slammed both Android and the notion of 7-inch tablets, calling them “dead on arrival.” Their screens are not big enough to justify the step up from a smart phone, he said.

Apple calls its own pricing for the iPad “aggressively low,” with margins less than most of its other products.

Google itself hasn’t encouraged the use of Android in tablets, saying that it’s designed for smart phones and that hardware makers should wait for a version adapted for tablets.

AT&T Inc. already sells a somewhat smaller hybrid of a tablet and a smart phone, the Dell Streak. It costs $300 with a two-year contract.