What will 2005 hold in store for us in the computing and electronics world? Let's see…
PCs will continue to become commodity items, and the cost to repair them will rise a bit. Thus, the decision of whether to repair the old one or buy a new one will tilt more and more towards the new. Nothing wrong with this, if the price is right, but we all will need to understand in more detail how to migrate data - or to keep our data in some place other than our hard drives to minimize the impact of replacing the hard drive or system. For example, if you kept all of your documents, spreadsheets, email, etc. on an external USB "thumb" drive, then you wouldn't be trapped within one physical PC. I expect to see thumb drives as common as floppy diskettes soon - and the price is right.
You will not see any really significant increase in PC performance in 2005. Intel has given up trying to produce faster single-processor chips and is concentrating on multiple-processor chips. But you need specialized software to take advantage of multi-processing, and those programs are (and will be for a while) few and far between. About the only significant change will be the release of the 64-bit Windows sometime in 2005. Ditto for memory and hard drives - no significant changes on the horizon.
Speaking of operating system (OS) software, I don't expect that Linux will make any more inroads into Microsoft's monopoly next year. Linux has a niche market with servers, but it has yet to penetrate the desktop. Very cheap Linux PCs will not be cheap enough to overcome buyer reluctance at leaving MS.
The convergence of the PC and the home entertainment center will continue to be a ho-hum. Companies, especially Microsoft, have been pushing this for years, and each year I report that it hasn't taken hold. I don't know of anyone who has their PC feeding audio to their home stereo system, and mine doesn't either. Sale of music on the Internet will continue a steady growth. I don't do a lot of this myself, but I think the price of $.99 per song (or less) and the convenience of only buying the tracks you want make this a mature product. Say goodbye to music CDs.
Finally, finally, we are seeing music on DVDs. For the uninitiated, most DVD players can also play music, and the advantage of using the DVD format is that it can hold many, many more songs. The music industry is, of course, against this, as it will drastically reduce their revenue. But we are starting to see music collections on DVD for sale this holiday season.
Software will continue its boring march onwards, slowly. I can't think of any really significant new application (ap) in years. More software will enter the follow-on market for digital camera owners, but that market is already overcrowded and contains some very competent software.
The only really hot market, digital cameras themselves, will continue to add new and better technology. I expect that my 6 megapixel SLR will be outclassed very soon. Yes, you can get 8 megapixel cameras now, but my Nikon D70 has other attributes that make it a stellar performer. But pro level cameras are into the 14 megapixel and more range now. Expect more, and soon.
On the spam and spyware front, things are going to get much, much worse. Already in the fourth quarter of this year, the number and fierceness of these programs has risen sharply. One piece of this junk, Cool Web Search, is particularly nasty and hard to eradicate. Do not expect a significant improvement in anti-spam or anti-spyware software - by definition, these programs will always lag behind. I believe that many people will begin to abandon the Internet, rather than expose themselves to these problems. Just as the CB radio craze flamed out when the crazies got a hold of it, so will the Internet. Expect to see the rise, again, of private networks and private email services not exposed to the general Internet.
Expect your traditional old, wall-mounted, analog signal telephone to start to disappear. Time Warner is already starting to offer digital phone service via your TV cable in the Wilmington area, and of course cell phone usage has become common. Many of my friends no longer even have wall phones, using their cell phones for all calls. Expect this to continue in 2005. By the way, my daughter in Carborro has the Time-Warner phone service and it works very well.
Interestingly, although the phone companies now offer their own high-speed Internet via the phone line (DSL), they don't seem to be gearing up to change over their analog phone lines to a digital signal offering. Sounds to me like they are abandoning the market.
Wishing you all the best for the New Year!
Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.