A year of expansion, not breakthroughs

Zatni Arbi, Contributor/Jakarta

Almost 30 years after the birth of the Altaire and 23 years after IBM came up with the world's first PC, have computer scientists and standard organizations hit a brick wall?

At any rate, computer components such as modems, scanners, printers, Web cameras, speakers, 200 GB hard disks and DVD+RW drives are now taken for granted.

Cordless peripherals such as the cordless mouse and keyboards accompany today's mainstream PCs. Even flat-panel TFT monitors in sizes exceeding 20 inches very rarely make the headlines -- except that they cost a lot of money to buy.

It's all the same with MP3 players, even though we have seen the birth of market leading MP3 players such as the Apple's iPod. We call them market leaders not only because they sell like hotcakes but because, after a short while, many other gadget makers come up with similar products.

Multifunction devices, Wi-Fi

Similarly, printers no longer cause ripples. More recently, single-purpose printers began to be gradually replaced by all-in- one devices that can print, scan, copy and fax documents. More and more printer makers have come up with their AIO models.

And, what about a PC with a built-in TV tuner and floor- shaking sound? Well, for a long time it has no longer created excitement.

Meanwhile, you must have noticed that Bluetooth has become a common feature in more new digital devices. Its widespread use has added a new term to the computing lingo: Personal Area Network (PAN).

Wi-Fi is also built into new notebooks today, as Intel keeps pushing the Centrino specifications. As more and more people buy Centrino notebooks, hot spots are sprouting everywhere like mushrooms in the rainy season (or Carrefour stores inside Jakarta).

With the help of their high bandwidth, VoIP could become available to us at faster rates -- and let us save a lot on long distance and international calls -- if only the authorities were on the consumers' side.

Unfortunately, some governments -- including ours -- have still not grasped the beauty of deregulation.

What was new in computing?

So, has 2004 been a boring year for computer aficionados? In general, it has -- except for some new but barely important trends. For instance, we now have multimedia notebooks with wide screens and a new resolution standard, WXGA.

Meanwhile, however, Tablet PCs are still struggling to gain a foothold as "must-have" portable computers, while more and more people wonder if they are actually still-born babies.

What about CPUs? Are we still hungry for more speed? Today, only serious gamers and professionals in desktop publishing and graphics artists want to upgrade their computers. The rest of us seem to have wised up.

My work PC, for example, still runs on a Pentium III 755 MHz, which I overclocked to 812 MHz. So far, I have no justification to replace it with the latest and the greatest.

By the way, each time we talk about speed, we talk about the processor chips that serve as the brain in the entire computer systems. The processors no longer compete in terms of GHz but more on true performance.

Intel's recent move to change the way it labels its processors underscores the shift. GHz will no longer be part of Intel's Pentium processor. So, for instance, what we used to know as the Pentium 4 running at 3.2 GHz will be labeled Pentium 4 540. The Celeron processors, which most of us shun, will be labeled the Pentium 300 series.

Cell phones and PDAs

Throughout the year, attention has basically shifted toward mobility. Not surprisingly, stylish and feature-rich cell phones as well as PDAs that are easier to use have been gaining the spotlight.

Yes, the PDAs based on Symbian, Palm and Microsoft Pocket PC platforms are now so user-friendly that we do not really need to read PDAs for Dummies to use these devices. More and more of today's PDAs can connect to the Internet using high bandwidth connection, including EDGE and Wi-Fi.

The cell phones have also been adopting new -- albeit marginally useful -- functions. Among others, subject to the availability of the service, some models can now function as walkie-talkies.

Their Push-to-Talk (PTT) feature will automatically connect us with a number of other users -- whom we have included in our group -- and communicate with them as if we were using CB-radio.

A six-month mobile TV trial took place in Berlin, Germany, with Nokia leading the way. The format they were using is called DVB-H, which stands for Digital Video Broadcast for Handhelds.

This is different from the standards used in other countries such as Japan and South Korea, which have been available since last year's World Cup.

"Why would one bother to have TV on one's cell phone?" you may ask. With mobile TV, we can watch the latest news while on the go -- without having to tote an extra gadget such as one of those Casio TVs.

Internet and bloggers

Meanwhile, popups, spam, spyware, phishing and identity theft continue to make our Internet life dangerous, especially if we fail to update our system and install the patches. There have been suggestions for combating these digital threats, including the introduction of sender identification -- akin to the Caller ID in telephony.

However, in the digital world, it's never too difficult to find an antidote to an existing antidote. We are fighting uphill battles.

Talking about the Internet, blogs were perhaps the biggest trend in 2004. The word presumably came from "Web log", and it allowed people to publish their personal thoughts on the Web. If you are repeatedly made unhappy by the customer service of your local hypermarket, you can check blogger.com and check what other people have experienced.

Looking Ahead

What about next year? For one thing, a lot of activities are under way in bringing broadband to our homes -- wired or wireless.

The good news is that these are happening in Indonesia even as you read this. 3G will become available in more countries, even in Indonesia in a limited scope. The issue is, as it has always been -- the chicken or the egg?

Without the assurance that there will be sufficient market demand, operators will be hesitant in making the necessary infrastructure investment. Without the availability of the infrastructure, the public have no idea of what they can do with the new technology. Patience, patience!

WiMAX, which some have touted as the 3G killer, is unlikely to become available next year. However, it will be interesting to see whether it will indeed become a disruptive technology, given its 70 Mbps data transfer capability and 45 kilometer range.

Also, it remains to be seen whether our government will once again intervene as the high bandwidth makes VoIP a very attractive option.

Perhaps a hope rather than a projection, research in fuel cells should make more progress next year as environmental concern grows. Japanese companies such as Toshiba, NEC and Hitachi are working hard to come up with practical solutions, and they have made advances with small gizmos such as cell phones, PDAs and notebooks.

Next year, for example, visitors at World Expo in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, will be able to rent cell phones that use Hitachi's fuel cells and Li-Ion batteries.

Users can have 13 hours of talk time with these cell phones. Hitachi, as reported by Jiji Press English News Service, is targeting 2007 for the commercial availability of their fuel cells.

Another category of product that we can expect to become more widely available next year is the network media player. Using these computer-based systems, we can distribute different kinds of media-again, with or without the wire-to networked TV sets, speakers and other output devices around our houses.

There will be a wide variety of product features, but the basic idea is to use the PC to store and share multimedia materials.

The Digital Video Player (DVP) is another obscure category of computer product that may have a more matured definition next year. More and more cars now come already equipped with the DVP, with is basically an MPEG player that combines functions such as video recorder, MP3 player and data storage center.

And, those travelers who always feel helpless each time they get cut off from the Internet may rejoice as more and more airlines will provide Internet facilities -- even mobile phones -- while they are 30,000 feet up in the sky.

And, don't forget the RFID. Already used to simplify supply chain management, the chips will be attached to the pack of beef that you buy at the supermarket, the brake shoe that your mechanic fixes into your car, and the medicine bottles that your pharmacy disperses.

Sun Microsystems has already seen a big future in the implementation of billions of Radio Frequency ID tags, and they are the first major vendor to provide the middleware for RFID, which they call Java RFID system.

What improvements should be made?

What would I like to see progressing faster? Of course, one of them is the powerline data transmission. Imagine if people could plug into their wall outlets and obtain Internet access in addition to getting the electricity to power their PCs!

This technology will quickly multiply the number of people with access to the wealth of knowledge that the Internet has.

My other wishes have to do with services rather than the technology. One of them is the availability of service that allows motorists to check traffic in real time.

With such a service, each time I head for Jakarta's Soekarno- Hatta International Airport, I could check -- using my cell phone or PDA and the digital video broadcast technology -- whether the airport toll road is congested or not.

You see, the inventory of advanced technology that we now have is probably more than we need to make our lives more efficient and more comfortable. More than ever, it is the services using the existing technologies that we need.

We need these services everywhere, not just urban areas.