2002: A slow year for IT in RI

2002: A slow year for IT in RI

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta

If you have been traveling much in the past year or two, you must
have noticed that in a growing number of airplanes the headrest
now can be molded in such a way to better hold your head up as
you sleep. Most of these new seats have headrests that can be
height-adjusted, too.

These are just two small improvements that by no means deserve
to be considered technological breakthroughs. Still, they have
made sleeping during extended flights far more bearable. Since
your head can now be well-secured on the headrest, it will not
end up resting on the shoulder of the poor fellow sitting next to
you. More importantly, the adjustable headrest prevents you from
waking up with a stiff neck.

In the information and communications (IT) technologies, there
have been small improvements much like these ones that we could
observe throughout the year. To start with, Personal Digital
Assistants (PDAs) now come mostly with a color display. Cell
phones, too, come with sharper screens that make SMSing more hip.
Notebooks and brand name computers -- even the multimedia PCs for
home use -- come with an RJ-45 port to connect it to a local area
networks or a cable modem. These were not breakthroughs, only
small improvements that meant a lot to us.

Networking itself has become very easy thanks to improved
support that is already built into the operating system. Routers
and switches have also become affordable. Home networking is the
way to go as broadband access to the Internet has been gaining
momentum worldwide. With a home network, family members can share
the same 24-hour Internet access.

Unfortunately, in Indonesia, the number of broadband
subscribers has been largely stagnant. Stephanus Jonatan,
Marketing Manager of CBNNet, said the total number of cable
Internet subscribers in Indonesia basically remained unchanged in
the past year; they were just moving from one ISP to another to
find the one that could serve them better. The way the
infrastructure and service is in this country, it would be an
illusion to expect that cable internet could offer complete
customer satisfaction. It is, however, still beyond the economic
reach of most Indonesians with home PCs.

It is also a pity that the market for broadband services are
not growing. It means that it may be some time before we can
enjoy the convenience of wireless LAN with Wi-Fi hotspots in
Jakarta.

On the hardware side, we have seen more or less the same
frequency of new product launches this year as in 2001. Color
laser printers have come down in price-and gone up in output
quality and speed as one would expect, but home users still
cannot justify the investment. Inkjet printer makers seem to have
run out of ideas on how to make their products cheaper, better
and faster, as they are already so good. Multifunction devices --
printer with a scanner, a copier and a fax -- are slowly gaining
popularity in Indonesia, although consumers still think that
these four functions actually require four different machines and
therefore combining them into one single unit will only reduce
their reliability.

Like the digital cameras, new PDAs compete in the slowly
growing market. PDA makers continuously add features to lure
consumers. Sony, for example, recently added a video camera to
its Clie NX70V. In the meantime, PDA and cell phone combos have
already appeared on the market.

Among the more active segment in the hardware industry is the
graphics subsystem. In the past, it was completely ridiculous to
imagine that a graphics card would be equipped with 128 MB of
high-speed memory, but that is more and more common today. The
funny thing is that this expensive component is coveted more by
hardcore computer gamers, and the card alone can cost as much as
a low-end PC.

Intel topped out at 3.06 GHz this year, but it should be very
easy to predict that the Pentium 4's speed will reach or even
exceed 5 GHz by the end of next year. We have been asking
ourselves whether we really need this much speed, but, obviously,
it is not for us to decide.

The prices of LCD monitors have leisurely moseyed on with
their downward trends, although in a price-sensitive market like
ours buyers still opt for the CRT monitors. Digital projectors
have also become less expensive, although not yet affordable to
the masses. Today it is hard to find a computer maker that does
not offer a digital projector, while the traditional players such
as Canon, Epson, Infocus, NEC, Sanyo and Sony have continuously
raised the bar on versatility and reliability.

Digital cameras have virtually become a mass-market commodity.
We no longer talk enthusiastically about their 4, 5 or even 6
megapixel capability, knowing that we can get a decent photo with
only 3 megapixel resolution. One thing that was confusing was the
wide array of removable memory devices, including the Secure
Digital, MultiMedia Card and Memory Stick. Each of them requires
a different type of slot, and a device typically can support two
slots at the most. The situation will get even worse next year,
as there will be more choice -- including Sony's high-capacity
Memory Stick "Pro".

You may have noticed, too, that new notebooks now come without
a floppy disk drive but with a CD-RW instead. Clearly, we will
still be using floppies to share computer files, but CD-RW has
definitely become commonplace. The good news is that the software
tools for burning your own CDs have become easier to use, and the
technology has also matured and become more foolproof.

Talking about innovation, we have not seen much of it on the
software side. That is not surprising. Word processing and
spreadsheet programs have become so good today that adding more
functionality simply has the potential of lowering productivity
because the new features will interfere with the work too much.
Corel released Version 11 of its flagship product CorelDRAW, but
it did not create so much as a ripple, because the earlier
versions already offered most everything that we need. It seems
that in 2002 software development projects were largely focused
on meeting the demand of businesses rather than the individual
home users.

Perhaps innovations can be expected in the development of
applications for Microsoft's Tablet PC, which was officially
launched on Nov. 7. Handwriting recognition, which does not force
us to write in a shorthand form, is a progress that hopefully
will continue next year. Add to it the improvement in voice
recognition and text-to-speech synthesizing. However, for most
notebook users in Indonesia, Tablet PCs are not likely to be
their primary need.

What else do we have coming next year? The leaders in digital
photography are getting together to work out a standard so that a
digital camera from one vendor can print directly to a photo
printer from another vendor. It is certainly the adjustable
headrest of digital photo printing.

And, if you have an e-mail address, you will be receiving a
lot of spam. There is no question about it. Spam and viruses have
been on the increase throughout the year. People will dump all
sorts of garbage on almost all e-mail addresses they find, and no
filter can keep up with the influx. You will have to live with
it.

If you regard spam as an act of terror, you should listen to
one of IDC's projections for next year. As reported by CNet, they
believe that "a major cyberterrorism event will occur in 2003,
one that will disrupt the economy and will bring the Internet to
its knees for a day or two." It seems that we can also call PLN a
terrorist if they let a blackout hit Jakarta again for a day or
more like they did on Sept. 12.

And, with the fear of actual terrorism still thick in the air,
surveillance systems will continue to be one of the most
lucrative industries. Thanks to tiny cameras and wireless
technology, you will have less and less privacy as a human being.
And the proliferation of camera cell phones, you have to
constantly remind yourself that you are being watched. Oh, what a
life it will be!