Flat screen LCD monitors see light of day
When it comes to monitors, almost everyone agrees on two points: Today’s traditional monitors are too heavy and take up too much desktop space, and the sleek flat-panel displays cost too much. Thankfully, the second part of that equation is changing quickly, and you can expect flat-panel displays to begin usurping the bulky, cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors on many desktops in 2001.
The reasons: prices of flat-panel monitors are quickly falling within reach of many computer users’ budgets, the latest generation screens are compatible with the majority of today’s graphic cards, and the standard 15-inch flat panel monitor gives you as much screen real estate as does a typical 17-inch CRT.
DVD-RAM edges out CD-RW
There’s never enough storage pace, and this is just one
reason why DVD-RAM will become a mainstream commodity in 2001. DVD-RAM is a writable and rewritable form of DVD (which stands for “digital versatile disc”). Currently, DVD is a marginalised product, of interest only to those who wish to play movies on their PCs – admittedly a small group.
When we are able to write to DVDs at affordable prices, the game will change entirely. The primary interest in writable DVDs lies in their capacity – a whopping 16 GB can be written to a double-sided, double-density disc. That means that DVDs could be used not only for archiving the mounds of digital photos and digital audio files currently cramping the hard drives of many computer users, but they can also be used as a viable backup medium for entire hard drives.
What’s holding DVD-RAM back? They are currently very expensive; a DVD-RAM set-up will run you about 500 dollars. In addition, CD-RW drives have become so popular that they have temporarily made DVD-RAM a side-show. Unfortunately, because of their limited storage capacity, CD-RW drives wonÕt last long, and DVD-RAM will gradually replace these drives as prices decrease through the second half of 2001.
Digital cameras for everyone
The year 2000 will be remembered as a turning point for digital cameras – and to some degree, digital video camcorders. If you didnÕt buy a digital camera in 2000, chances are good you at least thought about buying one – or you did some research on them.
The reason that digital cameras have become popular is that their quality is finally competitive – and in some cases
better – than the quality you can receive from traditional film-based cameras. Plus, there are many advantages of digital
cameras over traditional units: you can have complete artistic control over your photos, you can take as many pictures as you like without worrying about the cost of film, and you can print out just those pictures that you would like – assuming you have a colour printer at home. In addition, the cost of digital cameras came within reach of many budgets in 2000.
In 2001, expect digital camera makers to leverage their growing installed base of users with a plethora of upgraded models designed both to push the limits of the technology and to entice people to upgrade their cameras. In 2000, cameras boasting a resolution of 3.1 megapixels were at the top of the consumer-level category, but already late in the year some manufacturers were pushing that limit.
As digital camera consumers become more sophisticated about picture taking, you can expect their demands for high-quality units to increase as well. The rush to meet those raised expectations was already apparent in early 2001, when
manufacturers such as Olympus (www.olympus.com) released the sturdy, 35mm-like E-10 and E-100 cameras, and Canon (www.canon.com), with its new EOS D30 camera, began bridging the gap between consumer-level and professional-level digital cameras.
Colour inkjet printers set the pace
Colour inkjet printers became affordable over the past two years. But that does not mean that they could match the quality and durability of laser printers. That’s changing, though – to the point that colour inkjet printers now makes sense as laser replacements for most users. What’s more, over the next year, you can expect to see colour printers that can reproduce
photography of stunning quality.
Already, the Epson 2000P and Epson 1280 printers are leading the way in this regard. The Epson 2000P is the first desktop printer capable of reproducing photographs of archival quality – intended to last as long as 200 years.
Alternative computing devices mature
Clearly for a lot of people traditional computers and notebooks are simply too constraining. PCs require that you sit at a desk, and notebooks computers continue to be too heavy and too power-hungry. That’s why personal digital assistants
(PDAs) – small, hand-held, computerised organisers and computing devices – took off in 2000. Expect good things from this category of consumer electronics in 2001: Prices will come down, features will be loaded on, and more people will come to rely on them for everything from scheduling e-mail to note-taking.
Speech recognition continues to percolate
In the traditional application arena, there’s nothing more cutting-edge than speech recognition. And the big news is not that the technology exists – it has since the late ’80s – but that it has finally reached a point of accuracy that makes it usable. Will that make it mainstream in 2001? Probably not.
The main reason is that although speech recognition is
surprisingly accurate if you take the time to “train” the program to recognise your voice, the technology is not yet “speaker independent,” meaning that you cannot sit down at any PC containing speech recognition software and expect the PC to recognise what you say.
Broadband Internet access makes strides
Of all of the technologies likely to change the way you use the computer in 2001, broadband Internet access is likely to have the largest impact. That’s because you probably already use the Internet on a daily basis. It’s just that, for most people, using the Internet still means waiting for pages to download.
With broadband, everything changes – and the telecom-munications companies are finally beginning to be able to meet the demand with high-speed digital subscriber line (DSL), and cable companies are pitching in with high-speed cable access. What’s more, with high-speed, two-way satellite Internet technology now also a viable option, 2001 may be the year that finally takes you into the Internet fast lane.
