With continued high unemployment and an economy still in the doldrums, last year was kind of a bummer on many fronts. But you sure can’t tell that from the talk and general sense of excitement at the Consumer Electronics Show this week.

In his Wednesday night keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer noted that 2010 was an exciting year for the company and its customers, with the launches of Windows Phone (News - Alert) 7, Office 2010, KINECT, Office 365 and other products. The cloud, natural user interface, machine learning were all big bets Microsoft made relating to those products, he added.

And, needless to say, he went on to comment that KINECT helped Microsoft rock the 2010 holiday season.

“This has been the biggest holiday…for Xbox,” he said.

Intel (News - Alert) President and CEO Paul Otellini expressed similar sentiments about 2010 in his comments during a press conference Wednesday morning at CES Press Day. During the event, he mentioned that both Intel and the industry had its best year ever.