Heads-up on technology for 2008

As the New Year rolls out one of the questions I frequently get asked is, “what’s going to happen this year in terms of new technology?”

Beats me — but here are a few guesses.

If you’re a Mac user the next two weeks will offer a definitive view of the direction Apple will be taking for 2008. The Macworld Conference and Expo, next week in San Francisco, showcases Mac products and Steve Jobs’ Keynote address gives us the first glimpse of new Apple products.

The rumour mill is buzzing with talk of a new line of super-thin laptops and even a flash-based laptop. A flash-based laptop would be super-fast in booting up and super-slim because it doesn’t require a hard drive.

Multi-touch devices are also rumoured, although I’d seriously doubt that we’ll actually see any of those this year.

There’s also talk of a new generation of iPhone, although it still won’t be available in Canada.

You can probably look for changes to the iPod line, as Apple keeps reinventing the wheel to keep ahead of the competition.

The online music/movie biz will heat up this year as Amazon and Apple introduce movie rentals on their sites. It’s expected that Apple will announce that you can rent movies through its iTunes store — in the US.

PC users will have to wait one more week, as the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the week after Macworld, introduces thousands of new products.

PCs are going to get faster than ever before, and I think we’ll see the introduction of some new all-in-ones to compete with the iMac. Dell already has one on the market and it’s beautiful, so I’d expect to see more of them available.

More features on faster devices — that’ll be the norm this year.

Larger hard drives will become more common, as terabyte drive prices drop. It used to be that only large companies could afford a terabyte of storage, now you can have a 1TB or more drive on your desktop for under $300.

Watch for the introduction later in the year of USB 3.0, which will dramatically increase transfer speeds.

Digital camera prices will continue to fall and quality will continue to improve.

You’ll be better able to integrate your computer and home entertainment systems than ever before with the introduction of some new devices this year. It’s getting easy to transfer video and audio files from computer to television, and speaking of TVs, the introduction of the Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) will make for thinner, flexible screens. OLED screens are already available, but they’ll drop in price this year and will become the standard in the near future. They use a lot less power, are brighter, thinner and flexible, so they have many more applications than current TVs.

This should be another banner year for new technology, and January is the month for the introduction of all the new stuff that’ll have an impact on us this year — so stay tuned. Murray Hill

@ The StarPhoenix 2008
@ Palangkaraya Post 2008