Occasional Observations

Although I don't tend to live at the bleeding edge of top new tech, there's an upside to not being the world's earliest adopter. By the time I'm finally ready to get on board with something new-fangled, it's probably time to buy stock in the companies providing it ... because it's going mainstream.


After that caveat, here's my top 10 tech tips for '10.

1. Making friends with Mac. We've been living with a 13" MacBook Pro for the last couple of weeks. Getting it set-up was a snap, even installing Parallels to provide access to an already-licensed copy of Microsoft Office. Having used an iPhone and iPod Touch, the Mac OS is already familiar - a master move by AAPL. Little niggles remain, for example the hard edge of the aluminum casing can dig into my palms, and the lack of a right click button on the mouse (holding down the Control key is the answer), but overall, it's very useable and nicely packaged. Installing software is really simple, although I've yet to master Garage Band. Of course there is a high retail price to pay for the packaging.

2. The mobile internet. Over the last 12 months I've moved increasing towards surfing the web on a mobile device - to start with, my BlackBerry Bold - although the screen really is not surfing-friendly, and since the fall, my iPod Touch. Given a choice I'll always reach for the Touch for any web browsing. And let's face it, BlackBerry Apps really don't cut it ... yet.

3. The iPhone. On the subject of the mobile web, the iPhone delivers the most complete package today - although I expect fierce competition through '10 from Android. At first, I hated the response-free touch-screen (but the BlackBerry Storm's very responsive screen is very horrible indeed) and decided in favor of the Bold, mainly for the keyboard. However, in '10 I'm hoping to spend less time pumping out info and more time absorbing it - which means I need a better mobile device for browsing, and I'm not carrying two devices on the road.

4. A return to Internet Explorer. I'd been a Firefox fan since it was in a zero point something beta as Firebird, and it's still a really great browser, but I've made a concerted effort to use IE8 and it's not at all bad. I'd never managed to fully escape the MS browser lock-in, as some web apps demand IE - and even with the excellent IETab in Firefox, it has still been faster to have only one browser running. As for Chrome and Opera - well, I've tried them but didn't feel the "wow" factor.

5. Widespread Windows 7. It's here to stay, and although I was sceptical a year ago, it's so great to be in a Vista-free zone. I can't really see any performancer improvements over XP although there's greater functionality.

6. The emergence of the eBook. I didn't like the Kindle 2 at first, which is a good sign actually. It's quite convenient for carrying a big pile of reading material, and a bigger screen than the iPod Touch helps, but I'm not lugging it everywhere ... yet. I've got a niggle with the battery life, which seems to show almost full charge for ages, then suddenly plummets into the red - maybe the next software update will fix that.

7. The death of CDs. I've got hundreds in the basement and haven't touched a single one all year. Most of my listening is done via Spotify or Last.fm anyway. Not sure what my feelings here are; my sensible side suggests selling them before CDs go the way of LPs and you can pick up a box-full for pennies.

8. The analog satellite switch-off. I say so with certainty since the service is due to go end-of-life at the end of 2010 ... it's just a race to see if the rust-worms can conquer our old dish before then. DVB-T TV here we come - in 2011.

9. Office online. Why use an installed word processor when an online version is lighter, and takes care of saving and backups, too? I'm trying MS Office 2010 and it seems to offer new functionality, but what's the price premium I'll pay versus Google docs? And don't give me the old argument that "all your data belongs to GOOG" because I've also got Google Desktop installed.

10. No more local storage. A 1TB external hard drive for ?90 is tempting - except that I've already got that much storage. It's been years since I've been in danger of running out of capacity, thanks to drives with hundreds of GB, and why should I bother backing up manually to an external USB drive, when I can do it all online? So far I've only got around 65GB of data online, the great bulk of that is JPG images from our cameras. I've stopped worrying about backup because my online service is working optimally, period.

So what's planned for 2010? Further adoption of these 1o points, and keeping an open mind to new stuff, such as the new Firefox mobile browser (maybe it will make Bold browsing a less-frustrating experience?), and perhaps getting around to even thinking about how I might sell some CDs.

Labels: predictions, tech