The Pace of Technological Change

February, 2010

By Wayne Maruna

            I think we often take for granted the incredible pace of technological change in consumer electronics and its impact on our lives.  Look back on the last thirty years or so.  There are microwave ovens in every home. VCRs have come and gone, giving way to DVDs and personal video recorders like Tivo.  Cordless phones have replaced corded phones at home, and shirt-pocket sized cell phones are ubiquitous and even web enabled.  Oh yeah, the web.  Talk about a wholesale change in life-style – you can find misinformation about anything in seconds.  You can download books onto your Kindle, though for me it’s hard to beat the printed page.  My car gets its radio stations from satellites floating in space, and the cell phone, on those rare occasions when I foolishly use it while driving, requires no hands to use because it is talking through a so-called BlueTooth connection.  I talk to the car, the car talks to the phone, the phone talks to a satellite, and…..well, you get the picture.  Amazing!  Sadly, none of these advances have eradicated hunger in the world, solved health care issues, or brought us any closer to world peace, but still one must marvel.

Fast, Cheap Computers

            I was recently asked by some folks to recommend new computers for ‘average, non-technical’ users.  For $600 on sale at Staples, one couple obtained a package which, only five years ago, techies would have lusted after.  The computer has six (!) gigabytes of memory, a full terabyte (that’s one thousand gigabytes, or a one followed by twelve zeroes) of storage space.  The price included a 20” widescreen LCD monitor, which not too many years ago would have cost the price of the full package.  Running under Windows 7 64-bit, the latest operating system from Microsoft, the machine set up and ran flawlessly.  The buyers also purchased a wireless printer/scanner for $125.  I had my concerns about setting that up, as wireless can still be a bit of a black art, but kudos to HP for providing easy and flawless set up software that connected the printer wirelessly to both the new desktop and a new laptop.  Software with this sort of ease of use is a real break through.

Webcams

            Although I’ve been known to spend money on computer gadgets like a person in need of psychological help, I’m at heart a cheapskate.  I’ve been using one of the very first Intel webcams for, I don’t know, maybe fifteen years now.  I use it to communicate with my son’s family in Michigan via Skype, an amazing free computer service.  I recently decided it was time to update that webcam, so I ordered a Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 unit that cost me about $50, assuming the mail-in rebate actually happens.  The difference in picture quality is significant, even substantially better than that of the Logitech 4000 webcam that attaches to our laptop.  If you’re in the market for a new webcam, the 9000 is highly recommended

MP3 Player

            MP3 players are more or less descendants of the original Sony Walkman cassette players.  Light-weight and with solid state memory and no moving parts, they are ideal for walkers and joggers who want accompanying music.  MP3 players are certainly not new, and their capabilities are built into many cell phones.  I recently acquired, for reasons even I don’t fully understand, a SanDisk Sansa Clip+ MP3 player.  Apple’s iPod rules the MP3 world, but what drew me to the Sansa Clip+ was its incredibly small size.  In a mere 2” high by 1-3/8” wide by about 3/8” thick, smaller than a pack of Tic-Tacs, the Clip+ is capable of holding around two thousand songs, and the sound quality is great!  It’s an incredible piece of technology.

Digital Cameras

            I’m not an expert on cameras.  I belong to the ‘Point-and-shoot, ain’t-that-cute’ user contingent.  I’ve been using a Canon PowerShot S30 digicam for several years.  The missus and I decided it was time to replace it.  I ended up with a Canon SD940 IS, part of Canon’s ‘ELPH’ line.  Talk about small…this thing is smaller than a pack of playing cards, yet can take 12 megapixel photos, which essentially means I can blow up the printout to the size of a wall mural.  Even with 4X optical zoom, it weighs next to nothing and can get lost in my shirt pocket.  Thankfully the ‘IS’ in the model number stands for ‘Image Stabilization’ which helps to compensate for the fact that holding something this small requires a very steady hand. 

Streaming Videos

I recently helped some Taberna folks set up their Samsung Blu-Ray DVD player to enable it to talk to their wireless router so they could download streaming movies from Netflix.  This is a really cool service, truly video on demand, and if you’re a Netflix subscriber, there is no extra charge once you’ve sunk your money into the player.  For about a third of the price of the Blu-Ray player, one could also purchase a Roku unit designed solely for video streaming, no DVD player included.  As a Netflix subscriber, I had to check this out.  Unfortunately at this point one cannot enable English subtitling for the hearing impaired as can be done with actual DVDs.  Since I increasingly rely on this feature, I am going to have to wait for that service to become available, something NetFlix says they hope to have later this year.  On the plus side, the Roku unit does allow you to pause a streaming video and resume later.  This would be helpful as it would allow me to run off to the necessary room while my wife goes off to milk her Farmville cows on Facebook.

Ah, progress.  It’s a wonderful thing.