 On
The Net - Computing News
with Chris Goh
The Year that Was
2002 was an interesting time from a technology perspective.
Microsoft had the last laugh with the final ruling in the drawn out anti-trust case, which basically said they did it, now don't do it again. A private anti-trust campaign by Sun was more successful.
With that under their belt, the Gates gang launched a new games console the Xbox, frustrated the travel industry by buying out travel businesses and gaining considerable market share. They launched Windows XP, probably their most stable platform (but that wouldn't be too hard), but are facing tough opposition from the growing popularity of Linux, which now has the backing of large organisations like IBM.
The big news was the buyout of Compaq by Hewlett Packard. Price Waterhouse Coopers spent millions on a marketing campaign to change its name to Monday, only to be bought out by IBM. The IT industry was under close scrutiny this year when the Enron and Arthur Anderson debacles were followed by the accounting rort at World.com.
On the computer front, the flagship Pentium IV's release signalled the most stable platform of the year. Intel's decision for an early move to 0.13 micron technology was a strong piece of one upmanship on AMD, their only rival.
What can I say about computer consumables? Now is the time to buy that peripheral you're after.
Monitors have stayed stable in price for the last five years because the technology has generally remained the same. The introduction of LCD screens will see strong competition, especially as production costs diminish and demand increases. So now is the time to buy that 21-inch monitor you've always wanted. Video cards and sound cards are looking good, particularly video as ATI and NVidia battle it out for the fastest card (which was all NVidia's way until the end of this year).
You'd be crazy to get a normal CD-ROM on your machine now. It's not that much extra to get a CDRW or rewritable. The discs are even available in supermarkets. For a couple of hundred extra, splash out on a DVD/CD Rewritable, which allows you to watch DVDs and burn CDs at the same time. For your PC, AMD's Athlon XP chip is still the best value, although for sheer power, Intel had the edge by year's end.
Printers are a bargain - a quarter of the price they used to be. For under $100 you can get a decent inkjet. Lexmark wins on value with all bubble jets now having separate cartridges for colour and black inks. Epson corners the middle market, while Canon and HP battle it out in the high end quality stakes. Laser printers are also very cheap, with Kyocera winning for value and being environmentally friendly.
Notebooks, PC Tablets, Pocket PCs/Palms? The innovation continues to amaze. New entries pushed down the price of earlier devices by around $300 to the $700 mark. It will probably fall further as demand increases.
On the digital camera front - you really should have one. You don't know what a good photographer you are until you try one.
Olympus and Minolta take accolades for quality. Canon has some excellent features and good bundled software and Nikons have great features, but still come with that Nikon price tag. Fuji and Sony win on the range of cameras and reliability. I know that doesn't make your choice easier, but the quality across the brands is very good, so choose the one you like the most.
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