My crystal ball performed well, especially with the extra storage
- Published: 30/12/2009 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: Database
Well, we made it to the end of 2009 and now it's time to see how well my predictions went for the year.
My first one was easy, a general slowdown in new products and IT hires. Looking at the markets generally there seemed to be a little bit a slow down in products but the IT field is one where you can always seem to count on new products.
I predicted that Windows 7 would be a huge success but it is still a little early to tell. The normal business adoption cycle is 12-18 months after release so any large movements will happen next year. Homebuyers will be getting it as a matter of course with any new PC or notebook they purchase. The problem with this so far is that it is often the Home version and this is missing quite a few features of the other versions. I was right about Vista never really taking off. What I did find out during the year was that service technicians hate working on Vista because everything takes them about twice the time to fix as it would on XP Pro.
I got the OLED guess correct as well - it was not adopted this year, except for one or two very narrow markets. Even mobile phone manufacturers did not really take to the technology. However there are alternatives coming in the pipeline that look interesting.
I was also correct on the hard drive sizes. We reached 2TB sizes, but not 4TB. 16GB and even 64GB thumb drives are now common, but I was wrong that this would be the max size, however, with 512GB drives now available and 1TB units in the pipeline. Laptop drives did indeed make 1TB as well. Other memory formats like cards for phones and digital cameras also went up more than I thought they would.
Blu-ray made very little inroads this year with DVD still the format of choice for the majority. There were some whispers of a competing format but nothing sold apart from the Chinese format option. I don't think that Blu-ray even made 5 percent of the market this year. It seems to have settled into a niche market mostly fed by PS3 users. A number of manufacturers were giving away free players with a TV purchase but this did not have a big impact on disk sales.
As expected, not much happened in the digital music player world. A few more colours, some larger capacities, but nothing special. Sony and Apple did not expand their format support.
I was disappointed that none of the large audio companies brought out a media player. This must be a growing market but the brand names are all still relative unknowns. HD recording is supported by some major brands for TV viewers. I also missed with my estimate of USB 3.0, which will not really hit the streets until next year. I guess that either the economic slowdown affected this one or that there were some technical implementation difficulties.
As predicted, the Web is being used more and more as a news source. The major media outlets have moved even further into the opinion market and away from presenting all the facts. Blogs have taken over from the TV news as one of the few places to get an alternative opinion in the West. The Internet continues to grow but the inter- connections between countries has been unable to keep up with the demand.
It took most of the year but the human-caused climate change con was finally exposed with the release of the CRU emails by a whistleblower. This incident has not yet fully been understood but when it does a large number of news outlets will find their viewership drops and even more people will move to the blogs. Readers can be assured that we here at Database will continue to prove to be an excellent source of news and information.
I keep hoping to be wrong about printers and printer supplies but this year has been no exception to the last decade with toner and ink still expensive but the units continuing to drop in price. Colour laser printing has now become available to the majority with inexpensive A4 units now easy to find.
Also as expected the push into the multi-core front continues with no real single core power gains this year. Multi-touch screens are still a little way off and while technologies seem to improve, Microsoft's support of them didn't move much. This will be a 2010-2011 issue now.
Malware seemed to just keep getting worse and worse, with a shift in the balance between worms and other products but still increasing in numbers. Luckily for many the detection technologies also got a lot better. A couple of large spammers were taken out this year but that just moved the sources to other countries. The US has lost a lot of market share in the malware production field.
As usual, do not download anything you are not sure about. Remember also that if there is a problem with your bank accounts, someone will call, they will not use the Internet to contact you.
Digital books have started to take of and with Apple joining the mix next year I expect things to get even better for devices and users. I love my Kindle 2 and with the expansion into other parts of the world with the International Edition, some of my non-US readers can now get one as well. No matter what brand you get, make sure it is using eInk technology because it works so well outdoors.
It is not often I have to change my comments on something I write but in the case of the game Evony I have no choice. Imagine that you have been spending a lot of time in the game building up your forces and even spent some real money to help the process along. You are surrounded by other players who want to take your resources that you will of course vigorously defend, this all being part of the game.
Now imagine what happens when the administrators of the game accuse you of cheating or using some unfair tool to make your game-playing easier and they suspend your account for five days. Knowing that you have done none of the things you were accused of, you send e-mails to have the situation reversed - they made the mistake, after all. But there is no response to your e-mails and the money you just paid them is also trapped.
This is what happened to me and is still going on as I type this. At first I expected that when the suspension expired, those who have had 5 free days of attacks will have probably taken over my cities and I will be without resources. When I had someone check my cities, they found I was in holiday mode so at least I won't be facing that possibility. Given the lack of response from the game administrators I now have to warn the readers that if you play the game, the same thing could happen to you. After the incident I did some checking in blogs and other places and found others have had the same experience that I have. You have been warned.
I wish our readers a safe holiday period and a successfully 2010 for all.
Email: jclhein@gmail.com
About the author
- Writer: James Hein
- Position: Database Writer
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