The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Welcome to trade show season. While the writers in the U.S. are on strike, turning TV into a wasteland of reruns and old shows, the geeks are still hard at work churning out new things for us to buy. Last week saw the largest trade show in the world, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), taking place in Las Vegas. This show, filling millions of square metres of space, is the event which technology manufacturers traditionally use to release new products to the public for the upcoming year. The event is also heavily dominated by Microsoft, which always sees that this show is hosted early in the year before MacWorld, which begins this year on January 15. This is another year that has seen the release of hundreds of new products, but nothing that really breaks ground into new territory. Most technology changes are slow and steady, existing products being improved and changed, but truly new products that completely change things are few and far between. While the CES show may be a geekÕs dreamland, it is more useful to look at it as a place to spot the trends in tech for the coming year. One thing that is coming out of the show is the push from multiple companies behind Ultra Portable Mobile Computers (UPMC). These are tiny laptop machines with screens in the range of about 10 centimetres. Larger than a cell phone but smaller then a laptop, they are meant to be put in your pocket or your bag and used throughout the day for e-mail, instant data access and for keeping in touch with people no matter where you are. As more people want their data and their machines with them no matter where they go, these computers have a large possible market. The only sticking point is the price. With most of them still being over $1,000, the cost needs to come down for them to become truly popular. One more change that seems to be showing up is the battle between HD DVD and Blu-Ray. Since these two high-definition DVD formats have come out, the battle has been on. Studios releasing movies in both formats, stores having to stock both formats and consumers spending a lot of money, betting on one or another. While the war has not yet been won, the battles seem to be tipping in favour of SonyÕs Blu-Ray. Last week both Warner Brothers Studios and Paramount Pictures announced they would be releasing their works from now on exclusively on Blu-Ray. While this is not the end of the road for HD DVD, results over the last few months show more companies tipping in favour of the Blu-Ray format. I have neither an HD TV nor a HD DVD player in my house, but if I was considering shopping for one now, I would be careful to keep my eyes on the headlines to watch which direction that battles are moving. The biggest thing to watch for at CES continues to be TVs. Some companies are showcasing them this year up to 105 inches in size. Research shows that people buying new TVs are consuming over 30 per cent of their household electronics budgets and wanting to hold on to them for longer periods of time. Wireless TVs that can bring data from hard drives and even from DVD players will also hopefully see the end of some of the clutters of wires piling up under all of our tables. Let the writers be on strike. The geeks still make the best stuff anyway. ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
