2008 Top New Technologies

[mygorillanet]

ULTRA WIDE BAND (UWB)

It would be great if we could free ourselves from all the USB cables we have lying around our homes. That is where the wireless USB adapter comes in handy. It can create an invisible bubble around your favourite gear allowing them to talk to each other at around the same rate as the cable.You can display your pictures from your camera or your cellphone directly to a display. You can get rid of all those cables from your mouse, hard drives, any of those cables that are around your computer

It is about twice as fast as wi-fi and 200 times faster than the latest version of Bluetooth which is why the Bluetooth tribe is eyeing up UWB for its next version: Bluetooth 3.0. Now there are few disadvantages. It has a short range - less than 10 metres. So wi-fi might still be the ticket to home networking - but for getting rid of the cables around your PC or for hi-def streaming, this is a step up.

SOLID STATE DRIVES (SSD)

The solid state drive is the future of hard drives - unfortunately, it could also be the end of the hard disk.
A solid state drive could be shaken to an inch of its life yet it will still play a movie onto a screen; proving that unlike a conventional hard disk it does not worry about knocks and bumps.
A traditional mechanical hard disk would not be able to provide the data flow to keep the film going with that amount of agitation. These drives are quite expensive at the moment - a 64GB drive could set you back $1,400 (£700) - but prices will be coming down over the next year.

NEAR FIELD COMMUNICATION (NFC)

An NFC or Near Field Communication tag is the technology that allows devices to communicate with each other simply by being put close together and they are starting to be incorporated into phones.
When a phone with built-in NFC is near a Bluetooth speaker, also with NFC built-in, the two devices can pair and work together.
In some countries we can already buy tickets on the web and use handsets to redeem them when we get to the concert.
In Japan they already use this kind of technology to pay for things. The phone knows how much is in your bank - the transaction takes place with a simple swipe.
NFC chips in photo frames due out this year will automatically recognise a friendly phone and start the transfer of your pictures or print them out again without wires or the need to manually set up a Bluetooth connection. "NFC isn't just about phones. Imagine being able to take your home remote control and touching it to all the different components you've got and all of a sudden you're miraculously connected!

Ill keep diggin for more!!!

[HomerJ]

The solid state drive is the future of hard drives - unfortunately, it could also be the end of the hard disk.

That would be pretty fortunate I think. SSDs are much faster and could save you on your electrical bills.

[roctronic]

well i do agree that solid state drives will take over, but in how long? right now it costs almost a grand for 100gb. I really dont think alot of people want to pay that, unless they are real gamers/enthusiasts. My opinion is that solid state drives will kill the hard drive as we know it but solid state drives wont come into real play until way later on. unless the maufacturers of solid state drives want to lower thier prices dramatically, i truly dont think that we will be seeing alot of computers with RAIDed solid state drives. Especially since alot of people use over 1TB of data and in solid state drives that would cost roughly 10000 bucks. A little to much for me . solid state drives are a great idea and is the future but for now it will only be a rich mans toy.

Roctronic

[chewett]

ssd's are better in all ways but price

until they go down they wont be commercially avalible in computors you buy of the net

[Xemnas]

This is why I love technology: it can only go forwards, and it just keeps getting better! I really would love to have an SSD, except the price kind of kills it. But still it would be awesome to have one in an earthquake! ;)

[HomerJ]

well i do agree that solid state drives will take over, but in how long? right now it costs almost a grand for 100gb. I really dont think alot of people want to pay that, unless they are real gamers/enthusiasts. My opinion is that solid state drives will kill the hard drive as we know it but solid state drives wont come into real play until way later on. unless the maufacturers of solid state drives want to lower thier prices dramatically, i truly dont think that we will be seeing alot of computers with RAIDed solid state drives. Especially since alot of people use over 1TB of data and in solid state drives that would cost roughly 10000 bucks. A little to much for me . solid state drives are a great idea and is the future but for now it will only be a rich mans toy.

Roctronic

Yes, but eventually they will be affordable. As they grow less expensive, the demand for hard drives will fall. SSDs will take a larger portion of the market while hard drives will take less. Eventually, SSDs will be affordable to all computer users, and hard drives will die out.

[satbir]

All looks koollllll

[diabolo]

I like the sound of UWB, but wouldn't so much of those light rays..(I don't know which one they use) would be harmful, since it is constantly emmiting it>

[roctronic]

Yes, but eventually they will be affordable. As they grow less expensive, the demand for hard drives will fall. SSDs will take a larger portion of the market while hard drives will take less. Eventually, SSDs will be affordable to all computer users, and hard drives will die out.

of course,

like all things the price will drop,

for example 2GB of laptop RAM last year on tigerdirect.com was selling

for about 650 now you can snatch one for 40 bucks.

Big price drops are comin! (always do hehe)

[Spartan Erik]

Don't care about any of those technologies except for SSD.

The problem with SSD: (Wikipedia) "Slow random write speeds – as erase blocks on SSDs generally are quite large, they're far slower than conventional disks for random writes"

It's far too expensive as of now, but soon enough when the technology is better, I'm sure it will replace what we have!