Slashdot Mirror
BBC: 2005 Looking Good for Gadgets
wiggles writes "The BBC says, 'The relentless pace of development in the hi-tech world and rampant competition in many of its sectors, particularly among mobile phone firms, all suggests that 2005 is going to be a very good year.' They talk about that (overused?) buzzword 'convergence' and the implications for gadgets in 2005 as we further approach the 'convergence' asymptote. So what 2005 gadgets are Slashdotters looking forward to?" I'm forecasting that 2006 and 2007 are ALSO looking good for gadgets. You heard it here first...
Control4 looks especially interesting.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
If you live in Korea or Japan you already own the cool gadgets we'll see in 2006 ...
I'm looking forward to a PDA that has decent battery life, costs less than $150, has good software and a decent OS installed on it, accepts compact flash cards, is well-supported, is light and thin, and syncs with my Linux machine without having to use duct tape and an extensive knowledge of kernel operations.
If there actually is a PDA out there for lazy farts like me, then I'd be grateful for the tip. If there is no such animal, then I hope some company stops focussing on cramming multimedia stuff into a smaller and smaller box and listens to lazy farts like me who just want a good basic PDA and are Linux users.
I am getting one of the new wireless VoIP phones. A friend of mine has one and it is absolutely awesome. As long as you live in the city or an areas where there are many access points it is the best phone you can imagine. Crystal clear calls worldwide with no noticeable delay at minimal bandwith consumption and no cost. WiFi phones rock!
I want the phone I used to have. I bought this Nokia 8600 (8200?) in the year 2000. It was excellent. It was tiny, got great reception and had amazing voice quality. I paid around $150 for it, and it was worth every penny.
I dropped it once and it stopped working. When I went looking for a new phone, I discovered that Nokia had discontinued the 8600 and the only options for new phones were these large monstrosities with cameras, video games, color screens and picture messaging. Absolutely horrible.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to the days of wearable computers, but when it comes to a cellphone, all I want is a phone that is small and has good voice quality. The 8200 was the perfect phone. I have no idea why it was discontinued, but all the cell phone makers are playing the same game -- gadgets, gadgets, gadgets. I don't want crazy features, I want something that does its job well, not 15 jobs poorly.
Here's to hoping that in 2005 cell phone makers will go back to producing good cell phones, and not try to include a camera and an atari emulator on every model!
I hope the rumors about this little beast are true-- I'd love to get as many family and friends as possible to switch away from Windows, and the existence of a cheap Mac would be a big help.
Once when I was responsible for infrastructure for a major company, my boss the CIO said to me "OK, people are talking about how they'd like the servers to be faster. This is good, because they're no longer saying they'd like the servers to stay up -- they just assume they will."
:)
I don't need a cellphone that takes pictures and plays MP3s, but I'm looking for one; and I don't need an iPod that can store 40Gb of music, but it sure is nice not to have to worry about what to transfer over to the iPod and just put _everything_ there so I can access it.
It's natural, when what we actually _need_ is taken care of, to start looking at the next step -- the things we'd really, really like.
The truth is (well, the truth filtered through my liberal biases) that people need to feel secure in their person, that they need to have a way to make sure they'll have food on their table tomorrow, and a way to exercise a certain sense of autonomy. A roof over their head would be nice too.
While in much of the world the above can't be taken for granted, most of us who read Slashdot already have this. We're probably not going to get shot in the street; we probably don't have to worry about being able to afford a loaf of bread tomorrow. So we start looking at the next, more optional stuff. That's OK -- there's nothing wrong with wanting more out of life than the bare necessities -- as long as we don't confuse "Man, I'd really like to be able to play 'Baby One More Time' as my ringtone" with a need
Here's to hoping that in 2005 cell phone makers will go back to producing good cell phones, and not try to include a camera and an atari emulator on every model!
I travel quite a bit to customer sites, and many of them - particularly organizations with very valuable intellectual property (e.g. trade secrets) - explicitly prohibit cameras of any kind. It is my hope that the major mobile phone vendors recognize the need for nicely-featured phones without cameras for use by consultants and other people working in these facilities.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Call me foolish, but I for one am not lusting after convergence. I'd rather have good Bluetooth support. That way, my cell phone, which is good at GSM communications and picture taking, for example, can talk with my iPod which is good at data storage (where all those pictures go). Or my PDA, with it's nice big screen, can download web pages via my cell phone. Or my cell phone can get the next 24 hours worth of appointment information from my PDA, in case I want to travel light for a little while. The scenarios go on and on...
It just seems a little more elegant than carrying one monolithic brick around with you.